“God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 1:8

The two big knocks I had against church people (back in the day before I actually discovered that Jesus was real) is that “going to church” seemed to knock the stuffing out of two of the best things in life: the brain and the heart.

Are Christians allowed to think? I remember reading a few years ago about a sign on a college campus in England advertising an upcoming Christian convocation. A skeptic had written at the bottom: Price of admission – your intellectual integrity. During most of my four decades of endeavoring to follow Christ I have searched and researched the intellectual credibility of trusting a God who cannot be seen. I am excited to declare that the evidence for the validity of the claims of Jesus of Nazareth has only become broader, deeper, and more compelling with time.

But the people I knew at church seemed to have another hang-up: Are Christians allowed to feel? OK, that’s probably not a fair question. I grew up Presbyterian. Such a thing would never enter the mind of a Pentecostal, a Quaker, an Orthodox, or a charismatic. But I grew up wondering if religious-minded people had to dull their nerve endings. Church seemed to be a place where paying attention to God required keeping it all together emotionally.

Paul shatters that illusion. In the 13 New Testament letters that are attributed to his hand, he admits to weeping, fretting, crying for joy, and throwing outright hissy fits. I love Philippians 1:8. Paul says that he “longs for” his Philippian readers. He is filled with something he calls “the affection of Jesus Christ.”

Bottom line: Paul is warm. His heart is beating. He is emotional. This is not the kind of verse that gets quoted by men’s groups that go into the woods on retreat to beat drums, sleep in wigwams, and discover their inner Chuck Norris. Paul seems to be the kind of guy who might play the cello or shop at Williams-Sonoma.

What’s great, of course, is the emotional balance we see in Paul. This is the same man who wrote that he “beats his body and makes it his slave” (I Corinthians 9:27) in order to pursue Christ – that would be a metaphor for spiritual perseverance, not an actual practice. We see both toughness and tenderness in his spirit; both head and heart in his faith; both kindness and resolve in his relationships.

Everything I had always longed for, emotionally, in my spiritual life, was always there. All I had to do was open up the Bible and read the words of Paul.