{"id":131,"date":"2012-06-06T10:23:16","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T10:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meditations.kafkasworld.com\/dir\/?p=131"},"modified":"2012-06-06T10:23:16","modified_gmt":"2012-06-06T10:23:16","slug":"the-un-emotional-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/06\/the-un-emotional-christian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Un-Emotional Christian"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
The Un-Emotional Christian
\nCopyright 2011 by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen our feelings are turned off or insulated by layers of protective defense, life loses something precious. We trudge on, accomplishing plenty but appreciating little.\u201d<\/p>\n

This quote by the writer Michael McGowan captures the dilemma of killing our emotions in order to \u201csurvive\u201d 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\u2019s tendency to warn about the dangers of trusting in feelings rather than in \u201cpure\u201d theological rationality. Some of our teachers and preachers even make it a point to admonish us about \u201cemotionalism\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n

Sometimes believers who have \u201cturned off\u201d or \u201cinsulated\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Without giving an apologetic for the opposite extreme, the pursuit of emotional highs in God\u2019s presence that certainly do have the potential to foster an \u201cidolatry of feelings\u201d, 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 \u201cfeelings turned off\u201d for far too much of my Christian experience.<\/p>\n

As McGowan intimates, living with constantly repressed emotions does not necessarily keep one from achievement in the world\u2019s or even the church\u2019s 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 fa\u00e7ade 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s grace, I can have it. I can tear down the walls that have kept me locked up inside for far too long.<\/p>\n

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.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Un-Emotional Christian Copyright 2011 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved \u201cWhen our feelings are turned off or insulated by layers of protective defense, life loses something precious. We trudge on, accomplishing plenty but appreciating little.\u201d This quote by the writer Michael McGowan captures the dilemma of killing our emotions in order to \u201csurvive\u201d repeated… <\/p>\n

Read more The Un-Emotional Christian<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-christian","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6GkOA-27","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":794,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2016\/02\/18\/the-emotional-christian\/","url_meta":{"origin":131,"position":0},"title":"The Emotional Christian","date":"February 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright \u00a0by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Ignoring or suppressing our emotions is not, contrary to the spirit of some teaching today, a sign of Christian maturity. What is a sign of that maturity is controlling where and how we express our feelings. Emotion is a God-given component of our\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":522,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2014\/05\/30\/the-myth-of-theocracy-in-america\/","url_meta":{"origin":131,"position":1},"title":"The Myth of Christian Theocracy in America","date":"May 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved In recent year Secularists have gotten a lot of mileage in the media out of warning of the threat to the United States of a home grown Christian version of Islamic theocracy. 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The term \u201csold-out to Jesus\u201d is an evangelical clich\u00e9 that nonetheless\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":183,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/27\/the-conundrum-persons-good-will\/","url_meta":{"origin":131,"position":3},"title":"The Conundrum of \u201cPersons of Good Will\u201d","date":"June 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Conundrum of \u201cPersons of Good Will\u201d Copyright 2011 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved If you have been a Christian for any length of time you have likely met people who clearly are not believers but who act better then many Christians you have known. These are the family,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1278,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2018\/05\/11\/fear-and-the-demonization-of-christian-psychology\/","url_meta":{"origin":131,"position":4},"title":"Fear and the Demonization of Christian Psychology","date":"May 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved There are some conservative Christians who have made a crusade out of attacking the rapidly growing Christian counseling movement. They particularly target ministries which they believe have succumbed to the wiles of \u201csecular psychology\u201d. 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This resistance is more pronounced in some Christians than in others and it is sometimes proportional to the degree of rejection they have\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}