Talking about emotions

Most people who know me would say that I’m not a very emotional person. So, this blog title might seem strange. However, in the past couple of months my devotion time has taken me through the book of Proverbs. This book is filled to the brim with God’s wisdom regarding human emotion and how to approach these realities. Therefore, emotional though I’m not, emotions have been consistently on my mind. For the past 3 weeks I haven’t been able to preach, so I’m grateful this blog will let me do a little bit of what I love: share what God’s Word says.

Have you ever had a muscle spasm? I’m not talking about one that is painful. I’m talking about those little ones where something on you twitches for seemingly no reason at all. A while back I had an eye muscle that would twitch at random times day after day. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and seeing the muscle twitch and thinking, “Why are you doing that?”

That is how I’ve often approached emotions. I (and you) can have a wide range of emotions. When I experience them I will often approach them like I do when my eye twitches and ask, “Why are you doing that?” Emotions are fascinating, and I tend to enjoy putting on my lab coat and finding out why feelings are coming and where they are coming from. Some might say that this springs from an odd and twisted mind. Maybe it does! Yet, at the core, I desire to understand how the majority of people think about and process emotions while comparing their experience to what God’s Word says.

We were created in the image of a God who clearly shares his emotions. Thus, part of our image-bearing will reflect an emotional element. However, that element of image bearing was corrupted when sin came into the world. Though we were designed to reflect our God through our emotions, now we tend to forget that. This leads us to some strange places.

Hear me out…

Many people tend to equate emotions with truth. If I feel something, that feeling reflects reality.
– A child feels sadness. Therefore, there is real problem that mom must handle right now no matter how inconvenient for her!
– A man feels angry when something doesn’t go his way. Therefore, injustice has indeed happened and others better watch out as he rights this wrong.
– A woman feels angst. Therefore, life must be out of control and in need of her OCD habits or restrictive daily life.

Many people tend to accept emotions at face value, and they look to them as a way to validate what is true. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard men and women in my office state things like, “This is just the way I feel,” or “I just can’t help it,” or “It’s just so hard; I can’t do anything different.” We think that love is an irresistible force. Anger can’t be helped. Worry just happens to me. To be annoyed is always someone else’s fault. This is the way so many approach the emotions we feel. And why wouldn’t we approach it this way? It is comfortable to step back from being responsible for our emotions and instead dive right into their welcoming embrace.

Yet, do emotions always show truth?

To answer this, we must have a source of truth that exists outside of our emotions. We can’t approach the matter by whatever feels right. This is why I’m grateful for God’s Word; it is the source of truth that exists above, beyond, and greater than any emotion. Within his Word, God communicated everything he wants us to know, and it exists apart from how I feel. “In the beginning God…” is true whether someone believes it or not. There are many verses that talk about emotions, and to go through them all would be a book and not blog post. So, we’ll just look at one verse. Consider Proverbs 14:29a,
“Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding…”

This proverb is interesting because it connects an emotion (in this case, anger), not to the heart, but to the mind. That is not where most of us put emotions! The verse is saying that by growing in our understanding of life and God, the emotional response of anger is diminished. For this to be true, we cannot be mere victims of what we feel. Also, we certainly shouldn’t accept our emotion as a statement of reality.

I think this proverb is easily illustrated. Imagine a toddler named Bobby. It is a hot day at the zoo so Bobby’s dad gets him an ice cream cone. Little Bobby is ecstatic! In his exuberance he bites the ice cream so forcefully that it falls off the cone and splats onto the ground. Bobby looses it. He cries. He stomps in fury. He wails that the ice cream is all gone. But in doing so, he shows a meager level of understanding. He doesn’t know that the ice cream cone was only $2 and dad happens to have another $2 in his wallet. He doesn’t know that his dad possesses a willingness to purchase another ice cream. He doesn’t know another ice cream could be his in about 10 seconds. Bobby’s quickness to anger shows a limited understanding of reality.

What if we expanded that example to the things we deal with? The outcome would be the same. Even as adults, we are a lot like Bobby. We have emotional responses of anger which betray a limited understanding of this world and of our God.
– We have an outburst of anger whenever our expectations are not met, and we don’t understand that God is working on our character in more ways than we realize.
– We get upset when plans change, and we don’t see that God has something far better for us.
– We get furious when someone does something we don’t like, and we don’t realize that we are hypocrites in need of God working on our hearts to show us our sin!

The gap between us and God is far, far greater than the gap between little Bobby and his dad. Isaiah 40:28 says the Lord’s understanding is “unsearchable.” He just knows far more than we do. If we knew all that God knew, we would agree that whatever God allows is the wisest and best thing to have happen. However, we often choose to ignore this reality. This leads to chaos and sorrow. As emotions flair, reactions follow in ways that are unhelpful at best and sinful at worst. For those welcoming arms of emotions are often full of deceit. What they promise in comfort and justice can only be fulfilled in the reality of the gospel and the Savior it proclaims.

What are we trying to say in all of this? If we can’t trust the emotion of anger to tell us what is true, can we trust any human emotion to do so? No! We can’t! That is not why our emotions were designed. God guides us to what is true through his Word, and our emotions are a gift helping us worship as we live according to the truth. We should understand them and enjoy them, but never be ruled by them.