Day: June 6, 2012

“When our feelings are turned off or insulated by layers of protective defense, life loses something precious. We trudge on, accomplishing plenty but appreciating little.”

This quote by the writer Michael McGowan captures the dilemma of killing our emotions in order to “survive” repeated trauma in our lives. Christians are just as likely as non-Christians to fall into this trap. In fact Christians may actually be more likely to because of conservative evangelicalism’s tendency to warn about the dangers of trusting in feelings rather than in “pure” theological rationality. Some of our teachers and preachers even make it a point to admonish us about “emotionalism”, as if human emotions are somehow more corrupted by the Fall than human reason. The truth is that both are equally fallen, though in different ways.

Sometimes believers who have “turned off” or “insulated” their feelings to try to defend their hearts from further pain are exactly the ones who are preaching in an unbalanced way against emotionalism. Such individuals are not even aware that what is driving sermons that elevate intellectual cognition above passionate experience is an unconscious fear of what might happen if their own emotions were ever to be faced and experienced.

Without giving an apologetic for the opposite extreme, the pursuit of emotional highs in God’s presence that certainly do have the potential to foster an “idolatry of feelings”, I will state that a life largely free from spiritual emotion is, in actuality, more like a living death. If that sounds extreme I must plead guilty. It is extreme and I know this from my own unfortunate personal experience. I have known this kind of daily deadening of my life that has resulted from “feelings turned off” for far too much of my Christian experience.

As McGowan intimates, living with constantly repressed emotions does not necessarily keep one from achievement in the world’s or even the church’s eyes. The problem is that your achieving does you no good because you cannot even enjoy your success. Many of us even appear to have a certain spiritual maturity because of the emotional stoicism we have embraced as a defense from pain. We may seem more self-controlled and coolly competent than others in our congregations. But it is all a façade to keep ourselves safe from feelings which we are afraid will overwhelm us and even somehow cause us to sin in some spectacular manner. This is perhaps most often true when one of the primary emotions we are squelching is long held anger and un-forgiveness.

Thankfully in my own life I have gradually come to be able to open myself up to the experience of healthy emotion. This change has manifested itself in everything from becoming enraptured by the divine sublimity of nature to allowing myself to cry over losses I have experienced in life. Today I know not only that deep emotion is a desirable thing to have but also that, by God’s grace, I can have it. I can tear down the walls that have kept me locked up inside for far too long.

Both reason and emotion have important roles to play in our sanctification. It is in realizing a balance between cold rationality and reckless emotionalism that we come to enjoy the benefits of both mind and heart in right relation to God. It was Him, after all, Who has given us both and called it good and why would this not be, considering that our Lord Himself is both a rational and emotional Being? We are, after all, made (and being re-made) in His perfect image.