Feel

SOME PILOTS flunked out of flight training for academic reasons, failing to get passing grades on written tests. Most, however, failed flying itself, which was a difficult skill to judge. Evaluations were of necessity subjective, and, at times, arbitrary. Some criteria involved specific procedures, but most often, students were judged on their ability to control the aircraft. This required a feel for flying that each man had to find for himself, as one pilot explained:

As the plane climbed, he (the instructor) explained about coordinating rudder and aileron pressures in turns, about how too much rudder without aileron control made the airplane skid to the outside of the turn and too much aileron control without rudder made it slip to the inside. Demonstrating, he told me how to feel it in the seat of my pants when we slipped or skidded. Hanging on grimly, with increasing queasiness, I tried to feel what I should.

Before Jesus came into the world, mankind was in somewhat the same predicament as the student pilot, trying to get a feel for God and ways to appease him. Even after he gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments and other specific rules to follow, Jewish priests and scholars devoted whole careers to elaborating on and interpreting God’s law, trying to provide a rule for every conceivable eventuality. Try as they might, the Israelites were never able to live up to these expectations. The Old Testament is the story of man’s futile effort to live in obedience to the law.

The prophet Jeremiah foretold God’s solution to this problem, looking forward to the day when mankind would finally understand how to please God without reference to a rulebook. By sending his Son into the world, he would give those who receive him an intuitive understanding, or “feel,” for what is right and wrong that transcends the written law.