The Tyranny of the Noble Sentiment

I was talking with a friend of mine and he brought up this idea he had. He called it "the tyranny of the noble sentiment." An interesting idea. Here, let me give you a simple, biblical example. Jesus was with His disciples at the end telling them He was going to die. Peter objected. "Lord, I am ready to go with You both to prison and to death!" (Luke 22:33) You know the story. Jesus told him not only would he fail to carry through on that, but he would deny he even knew Jesus three times before the next morning. That's a noble sentiment. "I am ready to go both to prison and to death!" The truth was something else.

The more I thought about it the more I started to think that this "noble sentiment" was a serious tyrant in our lives. We seem to be all wrapped up in it a good part of the time. It's not evil sentiments as much as these noble ones. Here, try this one out. I told you about the teacher who asked the Sunday school class about that John 9 passage with the man who was born blind. The teacher was quite sure that God didn't do that. It was a product of sin in the world, of genetics, that sort of thing. God didn't do it; He just used it. Lay that over against what God said to Moses. "Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?" (Exo 4:11) You see? The noble sentiment. "God doesn't make people blind." Except that God says He does.

Think about it. It's really huge. Terms like "committed, loving, same-sex relationships" and "a woman's right to her own medical decisions" and "equal treatment under the law" are all noble sentiments. But when they're in violation of God's Word they become "ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness" (Rom 1:18). "God is too kind and too loving to demand a sacrifice for sin" is a noble sentiment, but it stands in stark contrast with "the redemption which is in Christ Jesus whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith." (Rom 3:24-25) Even something as pure as "I love my wife", certainly a noble sentiment, becomes idolatry and sin when it causes you to choose to please your wife rather than obey God. That is, I'm not talking about explicitly evil people harboring evil notions. These are noble sentiments. They become tyrannical when they serve to overturn God's Word, views, authority, or rights.

The noble sentiment is a tyrant, commanding the things we like versus the things God says. It plays on how we feel as opposed to reality (read "truth"). And that's why it is so difficult for us -- everyone -- to arrive at the truth. We are determining truth by the tyrant Sentiment. You clear-headed people who complain "A guy is not a girl just because he feels like he is" should see in the same way that nothing is true just because we feel like it is. The trick for the Christian is to begin the lifelong process of aligning sentiment with truth. That's something we all need to work on.