See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. – 1 John 3:1-10
For the past few years, I’ve been working on an M.A. in clinical mental health counseling at Indiana Wesleyan. IWU is both a Christian university and CACREP-accredited, and something that comes up quite often in that context is the role of emotions in mental health and in the life of the Christian.
The Action
I’ve heard it said that in the church, for every action there is an opposite overreaction. Perhaps that’s the easiest way to explain many of the conflicts in Christianity throughout the ages. I have a friend who often points out to me that the modern Catholic church is as much an opposing reaction to the Protestant church as early protestant theology was a reaction to Catholicism. This kind of reactive thinking has led to the conflict I’m discussing in this entry.
With the proliferation of the American stripe of the Charismatic Movement in the 20th century, there came a greater focus on emotions as a component of worship. I don’t think this was actually new, but before the Charismatic movement, which in many ways was the forerunner of the contemporary/seeker-sensitive church movement, it wasn’t as mainstream. And some might say that, with the advent of the Christian Contemporary Music industry (CCM), emotionalism not only became “mainstream” in the church but was also commodified. I’m not so cynical, but I do think it is safe to say that when modern Western worship became more focused on the presence of the Holy Spirit, which, to be clear, is a very good thing, that Holy Spirit work became conflated with big emotions.
Again, emotions in worship isn’t a new thing, (nor is it a bad thing) we see it in the New Testament, however this newfound preoccupation with curating a spiritual experience did come with a belief that each week the congregation should expect to encounter God and they should therefore expect that encounter to have a profound impact on them and one of the ways they would expect that impact to manifest is through their feelings. I believe the expectation for God to show up every week is a good thing. I believe that being vulnerable enough to allow oneself to express emotions in worship can be a mark of Christian maturity. However, a lack of emotionality is not any more indicative of a lack of God’s presence than the presence of big feelings is always a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
Goodhart’s Law states that whenever a metric becomes a target, it often ceases to be a good measure. One of the things I do believe has happened in the last century of worship in the US is that we’ve often evaluated our worship experience based on emotion, and because that was a common metric, it became a target. As such, the focus, however unintentionally, would sometimes shift more toward the experience and emotions of worship than toward whether we were following scripture, listening to the Spirit, and employing our knowledge of how the Church has worshiped throughout history.
The Overreaction
Naturally, people from within and outside the contemporary and Charismatic movements began to notice this movement toward emotionality, and it didn’t take long for some to decry the role of emotions in the church. By the way, this isn’t new either. Many of Paul’s letters are arguably intended to admonish people who were being more guided by their emotions than by Jesus.
However, today, because of this overreaction to the Charismatic movement, there is a thriving notion amongst many evangelical Christians that emotions are either outright evil or at least mostly bad. Either way, it seems they’re never seen as helpful, and certainly not as the stuff of holiness. Yet, framing emotions as exclusively negative isn’t part of historical Christian doctrine. In fact, we see freedom from emotions as a popular idea in Greek Stoicism, Buddhism, and, of course, in the Vulcan culture on Star Trek, but it doesn’t really appear as a major theme in scripture.
And to be clear, the language rarely explicitly states “emotions are bad,” it is usually framed as talking about being “led” by one’s emotions. The implication is often that people who sin are led by their emotions, and people who don’t aren’t – the unstated, but obvious conclusion is that instead of emotion, we should be logical. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard a sermon about how we should be wary of being led by logic. Indeed, you might think that studying logical fallacies and learning the thought processes of history’s great logicians is a Christian value, given how emotion is often maligned, but human logic never is. So is logic the answer?
On the contrary, scripture is replete with examples of what we might see as seemingly illogical occurrences brought about by God, as well as great displays of emotion by God the Father and Jesus; the Holy Spirit is also seen inspiring emotion via His indwelling. (I’ll be going into the specific passages in future entries in this series.) While our God is not one to encourage mindless passion – I hope my readers already know that I agree that “follow your heart” is not Biblical advice – the opposite extreme, the idea that our logic is automatically more holy than our emotions, doesn’t stand up to Scriptural scrutiny either. When we’re told that His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9), it should be clear that our best rational thinking can be just as muddled by sin as our feelings.
A quick sidenote here, every person’s experience is different. If you grew up in a heavily charismatic world where a person’s commitment to Christ was expected to be commensurate with their emotional expression, then I can understand why you would want to detox from that environment. I don’t want to create another overreaction. I’m trying to present nuance. Emotions shouldn’t be used as targets, currency, or a way to judge people. I’m speaking to one kind of overreaction, and you may not be dealing with it. If that’s the case, I’m glad you’re here – we have diverse life experiences!
One thing is clear: we are going to experience emotions. We’re emotional people, and we serve – dare I say it – an emotional God. That is why I think it is important that we do take the time to see nuance on this topic and don’t try to demonize feelings, downplay the role of emotions, or over-emphasize their importance. If I convince you of one thing, I hope it is this: emotions are morally and spiritually neutral; it is our response to them – our choices and actions – that matter.
“The Heart” – An attempt at a word study
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” – Jeremiah 17:9 ESV
When we talk about the role of feelings in the Christian life, this is the passage I’ve heard most often referenced. I wanted to take a look at this and what I believe to be the operative word in this passage.
לֵב
Hebrew, “lē” translated “Heart”
The Hebrew word for heart used here is the word “lē.” Which appears in the Old Testament almost 600 times. While the modern, Western understanding of the metaphorical “heart” denotes a person’s feelings, this was only one of an array of meanings to the ancient Hebrew people. According to the Blue Letter Bible, while “feelings” is one way of understanding the role of the heart, there are many more nuanced understandings of this word:
- inner man, mind, will, heart, understanding
- inner part, midst
- midst (of things)
- heart (of man)
- soul, heart (of man)
- mind, knowledge, thinking, reflection, memory
- inclination, resolution, determination (of will)
- conscience
- heart (of moral character)
- as seat of appetites
- as seat of emotions and passions
- as seat of courage
- inner part, midst
See more at BlueLetterBible.Org
You’ll notice in the above list of meanings that only one, “seat of emotions and passions,” actually interprets “heart” as relating directly to feelings; more often, it has to do with a person’s will, character, or even their rational mind. So what is intended in Jeremiah 17:9? Well, scripture is the best tool fo interpreting scripture, and context is the best place to start. Since verse nine asked the question, it shouldn’t surprise us that the answer is in verse ten.
“I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” – Jeremiah 17:10 ESV
In context, we see “fruit and deeds” is the teased out meaning of the word “heart.” In this case, “lē” refers to a person’s character. This is also backed up by Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon as seen on Blue Letter Bible. Bonus fact: the word translated “mind” in 17:10 literally means “kidneys” as the Hebrews understood that kidneys are among the most vulnerable vital organs; they often used it as another metaphor for the most vulnerable inner self, just like the heart. This could be similar to the way we use “gut” in today’s language.
It is important to note that later in Jeremiah’s book, we find another passage on the heart, which should offer us hope about our own hearts. The same prophet who calls the heart deceitful tells us God says:
“I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.” – Jeremiah 24:7
Even while saying that the heart is wicked, Jeremiah assures us that there will come a time when God replaces this deceitful heart in his people. We as Christians get to live into this promise, as Paul confirms in 2nd Corinthians, which I believe serves as one of the New Testament antecedents to these passages.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” – 2nd Corinthians 5:17
Moving on to perfection
Christians – especially conservative Christians – often emphasize their own sinful nature. This makes sense because we should be aware of our need for Jesus’s redeeming grace. I don’t disagree with the desire to recognize one’s struggles and imperfections, but if we believe the scripture, a surrendered Christian is aware of their sin and is also no longer subject to it. 1 John is one of my favorite books in regard to nuanced theology for this reason. In Verse 1:8 John says, “If we say there is no sin in us we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” and in the same letter, John says “No one who lives in [Christ] keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” (3:6) and “We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them” (5:18)
This is a complex and seemingly paradoxical conundrum, but by my admittedly humble understanding, based on 1 John, we are sinful – that is clear – but we don’t have to continue sinning. Don’t mistake this for legalism. In this view, it is neither righteous acts nor lack of sin that determines whether one is following Christ, but the other way around. A person who is following Christ more and more closely will simply look and act more and more like Him.
When I was a teenager learning about holiness in scripture I asked my dad if he thought it was possible for us to be “completely sanctified” and he responded by asking whether I thought it was possible for him to be “completely married” to my mother. Obviously that phrasing makes no sense. It clicked for me then that holiness is much like marriage. It is both a current status and an ongoing process of growth in love. This is part of why we in the Wesleyan tradition call it “moving on to perfection” – perfection not in the human sense, but in the Biblical sense, meaning completion – becoming exactly who God intended you to be: a person who is comfortable living with Jesus and His followers in eternity. This term is rooted in the words of Jesus, who calls us to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Why would Jesus command something of us unless He would, through the power of the Holy Spirit, make it possible?
New Creations
An overemphasis on how corrupt a Christian’s heart, mind, or kidneys are misses the point of sanctification. We are a new creation, and as such, every aspect of us remains in Christ. Therefore, it would be ignoring the sanctifying power of God’s grace to say that a transformed Christian’s emotions are only ever deceitful.
The apparent lack of transformation in the lives of Christians is perhaps the greatest apologetic problem for the church today. While many Christians become embroiled in arguments of young-earth creationism while trying to convince non-Christians of the authority of scripture, most of the world is left wondering how we can speak of sanctification out of one side of our mouths and seemingly allow for a culture that permits or even celebrates people – sometimes even Christian leaders – who don’t display a transformed life. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, maybe watch this, or this, or this, or this, or listen to this. The Christian church has repeatedly promoted leaders who have damaged the credibility of our message. Because of this, we need to have a measure of humility when engaging with irreligious people – especially those hurt by the church.
The myth of “Right(eous) Feeling”
Aside from the belief in apparent Christian stoicism, another misunderstanding about how believers should view emotions is the idea that our emotions should always line up with (what we think is) God’s will, or we’re not living into His holiness. Basically, the idea is that really, truly loving Jesus means our emotions will only ever line up with God’s will so if we’re not feeling happy with something that we think might be God’s will, then that means we’re not close enough to him.
I saw this growing up around other Christian teens in the form of a fear about not having “right” feelings. This was especially present any time someone got “re-baptized” or went down to the altar to ask God to save them again because they weren’t sure they really “meant it” the first five times. The trouble with this thinking is that it becomes a form of mental/emotional works-righteousness. While we agree that we’re not saved by our works it seems like we’ve fallen into a pattern of thinking that we are saved by our thoughts, feelings, and intentions.
When this thinking creeps in we have to ask: is salvation something that you do or is it something God does for you? If you’re a Wesleyan like me, then you’ve probably spent time explaining to Calvinists that we don’t believe we’re responsible for our salvation, only that we are allowed to choose God back so that His choosing us and our choosing of Him is mutual – you know – love.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9
In Matthew 21:28-32, we’re told the parable of the two sons – one who said he wouldn’t follow his father’s will but does, and then one who says he would follow his father’s will but doesn’t. He compares the Pharisees to the son who spoke correctly, but didn’t follow his father. He says the tax collectors and prostitutes are like the son who said he wouldn’t obey, but did anyway. And to make it clear, it says that the first son, the one who was said to have been right in the end, changed his mind.
1 John 3:7 says, “Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.” It isn’t what we think or feel that determines righteousness, but rather our actions. And yes, those thoughts and feelings are what lead to our actions, which is why they’re important, but we need to recognize that there is a gap between feeling/thinking and doing. I’ll be speaking more to this in the next entry in this series, but what if instead of blaming our emotions, we considered that it is our interpretation of those emotions that needs to be examined? So that our “right thinking” results in “right doing.”
There are passages that speak to having a “sober mind” (1 Ptr 5:8) and not falling to the “passions of the flesh” (2nd Tim 2:22) – I would propose these are not as much about the evils of emotions as they point to the real culprit when it comes to our poor judgment: the mind. It seems that the writers of scripture knew we would have strong feelings, but that the feelings weren’t the problem; rather, the problem was the way we understand them. Maybe this is why we’re consistently told throughout scripture not to be deceived, even by ourselves, which is a failure of thinking, not feeling. The mind is the tool by which all our emotions are interpreted, and when we fail to understand our feelings, it isn’t the fault of the feelings, but rather our understanding of those feelings.
I’ll speak from personal experience: there was a time when I was in college, and I would use this “right feeling” argument as an excuse not to attend church. I convinced myself I was being very “spiritual” by saying that I shouldn’t go to church if I don’t actually want to, because then I wasn’t being sincere in my faith and therefore I was lying to God about my spiritual practice, and so it would actually be more honest for me to not attend church. As absurd as this sounds, it is actually just an inversion of the same logic that makes us think we always need to feel the way we think God wants us to feel about everything, when we’re actually told predominantly to do as God wants us to do. I believe this is because God knows we’re far more likely to act our way into right thinking (which promotes healthy feelings) than to feel our way into righteous action.
I call “righteous feeling” a myth because our emotions are nothing more than the cognitive equivalent of physical sensations. When someone is experiencing pain in their arm, we don’t say “don’t listen to that feeling,” we examine what is causing the pain until we figure out how to help it go away. We don’t associate physical pain with some kind of spiritual failure, so why do we tend to imply that people who are affected by emotional pain need to mature to the point of not feeling them? Yes, we need to recognize the role of spirituality in emotional pain (and in physical pain), but we also need to realize that there can be many non-spiritual reasons for emotions, and while not all of our interpretations of emotions are accurate, all of our feelings have validity and shouldn’t be ignored simply because we don’t understand how they fit in with the Christian walk.
What about love?
Perhaps the fastest way to inflame any discussion of emotion is to broach the topic of “love.” As many seasoned Christians know, that’s largely because in English, the single word “love” refers to at least two different, though related, concepts. One is a noun, and the other is a verb. To return to the marriage analogy, there is a popular myth that one can “fall out of love” in marriage, as if it were an accidental event to which people fall victim. “Love” in this case isn’t a verb and isn’t at all related to the perfect agape love of God found in scripture, but rather the more modern idea of this fleeting bundle of emotions. Perhaps the most evident example of this modern misunderstanding is calling oxytocin the love hormone, reinforcing the idea that love is nothing more than chemicals in our brains, which we either have or don’t have.
In the Christian understanding of marriage, this is nonsensical because marriage isn’t just based on emotions; it’s based on the consistent pursuit of Christ-like self-sacrifice on behalf of each other. Yes, there will be times when you feel the emotion we English speakers call “love,” but when we don’t feel that, we do the verb we also call “love,” which paints a picture of a relentless pursuit of what is best for the beloved.
Ask most people in happy marriages, and they’ll admit that they don’t consistently live in the state of blissful emotional “love” that often started out their relationship. In the same way, there are times in our relationship with Christ when we don’t have the euphoric mountain-top feelings we may have experienced at the moment of salvation. There may be times when we don’t want to do the hard work of continuing with the spiritual disciplines. The question isn’t whether we feel like it – the question is, do we do it?
I suspect this is true for most mature adults, but there are many times throughout my day when I do things that I don’t want to do. None of us sees this as unhealthy; in fact, most of us probably see it as a necessary part of a healthy life, but we don’t apply the same logic in our spiritual/emotional lives as we do in our work lives or in our physical health. There are going to be times in our lives when we’re less than excited about our responsibilities, and we want to quit. There are times when you see people who get under your skin, and you want to tell them off. There are even times when someone you absolutely love does something that irritates you, and you want to snap at them. If you’re like me, you sometimes feel guilty about those feelings, even if you never acted on them. You’ve come to believe that simply having negative emotions is somehow evil and that only causes a spiral of more self-loathing, more wrong-headed thoughts, and more negative emotions, which start the cycle over.
I’ll be discussing more of this as this series continues. There is no doubt our emotions are deeply tied to our spiritual and mental health, but often not in the sense that we think they are. The emotions themselves are not problems so much as our interpretation of those emotions and the corresponding actions we take based on those faulty translations.
Like Jesus
In Philippians 2, we find a very important passage in which Paul admonishes the people of Philippi to have the “same attitude” as Jesus. Some translations say “have the same mind” as Christ. The Greek word here is φρονέω, phroneō – a single verb encompassing this whole phrase. It might be most closely translated as “understanding,” so it could be said, “Understand everything the way Jesus does.” Interestingly, according to Larry Pierce, creator of the Online Bible, it could be literally translated as both thinking and feeling and therefore could be worded “You should think and feel the way Jesus does.” This prompts the question: how did Jesus think and feel?
This is the crux of why I’m writing this. This is the question I seek to answer for myself and anyone who has struggled to understand the complex relationship between our thoughts, behaviors, feelings, and our spiritual lives. What does it mean to be like Jesus in specific regard to our emotions? So I intend to look at the whole of scripture and ask: when and how does God display emotion, and what can we learn from it? Feel free to join me and chime in as you see fit. I suspect we’ll all learn something about ourselves and our Heavenly Father.
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