A Post by Darlene Wagler of Olive Tree Counseling in Seattle
What in the world do we do with our emotions? The messages I hear every day are conflicting.
“Do what is right for you”
“Don’t follow your emotions.”
“Follow your heart.”
“Your feelings can’t be trusted.”
“We just fell out of love.”
“Don’t let your emotions overcome you.”
While the message of the church not to follow our feelings might be a necessary response to the overemphasis of following our feelings in other spaces, I believe that neither message is necessarily correct nor incorrect. While I am no Hebrew or Greek scholar, a quick glance at Scripture doesn’t reveal that the concept of what to do with emotions or feelings is really addressed. The fact that we have emotions is assumed in Scripture, but we are not told whether or not to follow our emotions. I believe this is because emotions aren’t the central issue. Worship is. When Jesus says, “You can’t serve two masters, because you will love the one and hate the other,” we should not conclude that the solution is to try to love money less or try to hate God less. Our emotions are not the problem. The problem is what our emotions are motivated by.
So how should we think about emotions and what do we do with those emotions?
Emotions can be a signpost pointing us to other things.
If the fuel light goes on in your car and beeps periodically, I hope that you do not simply turn off the beeping and ignore the warning. I also hope that you do not come to a screeching stop in the middle of the interstate the minute the light goes on, despairing because your life is over. Like our fuel lights, emotions can point us to things we need to pay attention to in our lives. Envy can point to a place in our lives where we feel sadness and need care and attention. Anger can point to injustices in our lives or in the world. Joy, awe, praise, and love can point us to the love of Father dwelling in and through his creation. Rather than trying to silence our emotions or disregard them, we can listen to what they reveal about our hearts. If I decide to do what feels good for me in the moment such as having an affair, the issue is not so much seeking pleasure as it is self-worship.
Emotions can fuel us to action.
It might sound like I am saying to allow your emotions to lead you and maybe I am. In the life of Jesus, I see him moved with compassion, healing the sick. I see Jesus fueled by anger, turning over tables in the temple. I see Jesus moved by sadness, weeping with his friends over Lazarus’ death. I see Jesus, enduring the cross, by looking forward to the joy he would feel. We tend to think that our emotions get in the way of objective decision making, but in fact, this isn’t true. Emotions move us to action by helping us feel empathy, compassion, and connection with others. One of the things that can happen when we try to NOT follow our emotions is that we can get paralyzed by the fear of doing things for the wrong reasons. ie. “I would like to lead music in church, but if I want to do it, it must be wrong.” or “If I am angry, I shouldn’t confront that person’s behavior or let them know how it impacted me.” While there is probably wisdom in not bringing the full force of our anger to an encounter or not leading music for the sole reason of getting praise, not doing something just because we feel emotions about it can be unhelpful as well.
Emotions are not just a human experience
When I hear people talk about Jesus having emotions, sometimes it sounds like “Jesus experienced emotions so he would know what it was like to be human.” In fact, Scripture indicates that God has emotions. If God didn’t love us or only thought objectively about his Creation, he would have never sent Jesus to die for us. At different points in Scripture, God is said to feel anger, (Numbers 11:1) compassion, (Judges 2:18) jealousy, (Exodus 20:5) joy, (Jeremiah 32:41) love, (John 3:16) and more. The fact that God feels all these emotions also debunks the notion that there are good emotions and bad emotions. We don’t need to only try to feel joy or love; anger and jealousy can be holy emotions as well. What Scripture says about anger specifically is “Be angry and do not sin.” If we think of anger as inherently sinful, we have a hard time understanding this verse. If we understand how to approach our emotions, we can diagnose core issues more effectively rather than silencing the symptoms.
Emotions transformed by the Holy Spirit are unexpected
While it is evident that God has emotions, the emotions in Scripture defy earthly standards. For example, Jesus commands us to love our enemies. In Matthew 5: 46-47, 44, Jesus says “If you love only those who love you, why should you get a reward for that? Even the tax collectors do that. And if you are nice only to your friends, you are no better than anyone else. Even the people who don’t know God are nice to their friends. But I say to you Love your enemies and pray for those who treat you badly” (ERV). I can be at least a little nice to my enemies some of the time, but loving them is pretty impossible without divine intervention, especially when we consider that love is not just excusing or explaining away their bad behavior. Another mind-bending concept in Scripture is finding joy in suffering. James 1:2-3 says “Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance” (HCSB). Or in 1 Peter 4:13 it says “But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (NIV). I believe that these unexpected emotions are possible first of all, because of the power of the Holy Spirit, (Romans 15:13) but also because we worship Someone bigger than ourselves. We can offer love because we have been radically loved. We can feel joy because we know that there is more to the story than what we feel in the present moment.
In conclusion, how we handle our emotions isn’t so much a matter of trying to silence them or follow them, but understanding them as messages, motivators, and mirrors of God’s image. Our emotions can get tangled up with false gods, glorified as gods, or used to worship and glorify God. The core issue is not how we feel, but Who we worship.