Every now and then when I’m reviewing music for Plugged In, I’ll come across a lyric from an artist that succinctly encapsulates some aspect of our culture. That happened recently when I reviewed Gwen Stefani’s first new solo album in 10 years, This Is What the Truth Feels Like.
Before I talk about the lyric in question, let me give you some context. Last year, Stefani discovered that her husband of nearly 13 years, Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, had allegedly been having an affair with the family’s nanny. (Stefani and Rossdale have three young sons.) Following her divorce, Stefani has begun a new romance with country singer and fellow Voice judge Blake Shelton (who recently divorced from Miranda Lambert amid mutual accusations of unfaithfulness).
This Is What the Truth Feels Like might best be described as a kind of compare-and-contrast album. About half of it achingly articulates Stefani’s emotional devastation after learning her husband had strayed. The other half celebrates Stefani’s joy at having found a new love … one that she tells us is better than the old love.
Stefani’s certainty about the relationship is based upon the strength of her romantic feelings. Which brings us to those lyrics.
The chorus of the album’s (truncated) title track, “Truth,” proclaims, “So this is what the truth feels like/This is more of what I had in mind/This is what the truth feels like/And I’m feeling it, I’m feeling/Something about this just feels so right, alright/Something about this just feels so right, alright/So this is what the truth feels like/And I’m feeling it, I’m feeling it.”
For those scoring at home, Stefani uses the words “feels” or “feelings” a total of nine times in that chorus. So powerful, so self-evidently authentic are these emotions that she tells us they’re synonymous with truth.
In other words, if it feels so right, it can’t be wrong. Ergo, it must be true.
Our popular culture has long delivered variations on this theme, of course. But Gwen Stefani takes this idea one significant, philosophical step further here. She doesn’t just claim that her feelings are good, authentic, reliable or trustworthy. No, she equates them with truth.
Stefani may not even realize what she’s done here, but the statement she’s made is thoroughly postmodern. That philosophy rejects the idea of truth as an objective, discernable reality that exists over and above our own experiences. Instead, each person’s “truth” is what he or she makes it to be. In this case, Gwen Stefani equates her feelings in the moment with something absolute and unshakeable.
Increasingly, we’re seeing the same argument being unleashed elsewhere in our culture, too, from social issues to politics. If we feel something so strongly, if it feels so right, how could it possibly be anything but true?
But Scripture repeatedly repudiates this seductive idea. In Judges 17:6, we’re told, “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” In other words, they embraced whatever “truth” felt “right” to them—a practice that leads to chaos and judgment over and over for God’s people throughout the Old Testament. In contrast, Jesus taught that He was the embodiment of truth. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me,” He told his disciples in John 14:6.
Truth makes exclusive demands upon us. It is something that we submit to. It is not something that we get to define, no matter how strong our feelings may be. And in so doing, Jesus told us that we would experience abundant life (John 10:10).
We may certainly have experiences and emotions that do align with truth, of course. But the strength of our feelings alone does not mean that they are reflective of biblical truth as Scripture defines it. And, in converse, the absence of feelings or emotions does not mean that something is untrue.
In his book I Talk Back to the Devil, pastor and author A.W. Tozer wrote:
All those old saints and fathers of whom I have read taught that you must believe God by a naked, cold intent of your will and then the other things will follow along. A naked intent unto God—those old saints were practical men. They have exhorted us to press on in faith whether we feel like it or not. They have exhorted us to pray—when we feel like it and when we don’t. They never taught that we would always be lifted emotionally to the heights. They knew that there are times when your spiritual progress must be by a naked intent unto God.
Tozer’s words here—not to mention those from Scripture that I mentioned above—challenge me deeply. As someone who grew up in the late 20th century, I can be susceptible to exactly the kind of idea that Gwen Stefani articulates in her song “Truth,” even though I know better.
We live in a time that says feeling good on our own terms is what matters most. But it’s a false gospel. And a dangerous one, too. Because as much as I don’t like to admit it, my strong feelings aren’t always right, aren’t always aligned with truth. Only as I take those strong emotions to God, submit them to Him, and ask Him to work in and through me as I seek to follow Him are my feelings likely to be reflective of that truth.
But even then, they’re still not synonymous with it.
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