LETTERS FROM CHARITY

Introduction

Emotions and feelings are a tricky subject.  What in the world are emotions and feelings, anyway?  Are they merely products of our thoughts and understanding?  And is there a difference between emotions and feelings?  Why is it that some cultures seem to be so adept at understanding and expressing emotions and feelings while others appear mired in an inability to acknowledge much less share their emotions and feelings?  Does the Bible have much to say about emotions and feelings other than giving the impression that God is telling us to do our best to rid ourselves of the negative ones?

This is probably old news to you, but as I began researching for this study, I discovered that while emotions and feelings have a complex connection with each other, they are actually distinctly different creatures.  As with most things in this world, there isn’t a general consensus as to the exact difference between the two, but what I’m presenting to you seems to be the way a majority of psychologists, psychiatrists, and scientists explain how emotions and feelings are separate but connected.

Basic emotions are common to all and are instinctual.  They are coded into our DNA, residing in the realm of the unconscious mind and are not neutral or objective.  As one scientist put it, emotions are subjective ways of perceiving our lives and ourselves that reflect our needs and concerns.  For example, fear is an emotion that is experienced by all humans and all animals, and while it can be greatly destructive, it also serves a very good purpose.  The only way life can thrive is if we are safe from things in our environment that would do us harm.  We have a need to be safe if we are to continue living.  Fear assists us in keeping us out of situations and away from people and animals that would do us harm and stop us from continuing to live.

Feelings differ from emotion in that they are born out of emotion but colored and flavored by our individual experiences in life.  They arise out of mental associations and reactions to our circumstances and the emotions that those circumstances produce.  The way we feel originates from our interpretation of events and our perception of reality.

Perhaps this might help you understand the difference between emotions and feelings (bearing in mind, of course, that all analogies break down at some point) — emotions are like seeds, planted in the ground of our circumstances.  Our circumstances provide not only the soil but the nutrients which cause the seeds of emotion to begin growing.  The way we perceive our circumstances is like pouring water on the growing seeds causing them to blossom into a beautiful plant or, in some cases, a bramble.

I realize my extremely brief foray into explaining emotions and feelings probably can’t even be considered scratching the surface of such a complex and often confusing subject, but I wanted to get us thinking about emotions and feelings because it seems that a lot of people both inside and outside the Body of Jesus have a somewhat skewed view of what God and His Word have to say about them.

In my experience, I’ve usually encountered one of two reactions among church goers when it comes to talking about emotions and feelings — either that’s all people want to talk about or they’re terrified even to broach the subject.  And I get it.  I get both of those reactions.  But there’s an inherent danger in both approaches.  Focusing so much on emotions and feelings often means focusing solely on our side of the relationship with God, our reactions, our perceptions.  Fear of even speaking of emotions and feelings, on the other hand, denies the fact that we are created in the image of a God who possesses intense emotions and feelings.  Neither is healthy, and neither truly reflects God accurately.

So how do we keep from slipping to one side or the other?  The only way I know is to be people of the Word.  Endeavoring to understand our emotions and feelings is a good and noble pursuit, but what do you do once you gain that understanding?  The truth is, only God’s Truth as found in His Word can transform.  Only God’s Truth that He shared with us through His Word can help us truly understand the world around us and only His Truth can help us truly understand ourselves.

Some of the most emotionally packed and feeling-fueled writings are found in the Psalms.  They are a veritable roller coaster ride of human emotion and feeling, and I’m talking that glorious wooden behemoth of years gone by, the Six Flags Magic Mountain Colossus roller coaster.  I’m talking chugging steel bearing you to a height of 100 feet and dropping you down almost vertically at a speed of 60 mph.  Sadly, many have attempted to tame the Psalms, preferring to focus on the psalms that conform to the way we want our world to be, victorious, happy, and ordered.  They’d rather stick to the Little Dipper kiddie coaster instead of the Colossus.  But I am convinced that the truth found in the Psalms will never have a prayer of transforming our lives as long as we stick only to the ones that leave us feeling settled and feeling good.  We cannot blatantly ignore the realities of life and expect that God’s Truth will allow us to, as the psalmist wrote, go from strength to strength.

As Michael Card wrote in his book, A Sacred Sorrow, we are in desperate need of knowing God’s Presence.  We need to know that He is there with us in this life that seems much more like going from sorrow to sorrow and disappointment to disappointment rather than strength to strength.  The Psalms deal with every human emotion and feeling known to humanity, and they invite us not to find easy answers but to find unending, persistent, relentless PRESENCE.

Remember I said feelings are born from emotions but dependent upon our interpretation of events and perception of reality — something that the ancient Israelites who penned the Psalms grasped in a way that we struggle with is that within the context of their relationship with the LORD, every aspect and experience of life related to Him in some way.  They didn’t address only their positive circumstances to God while assigning the negative ones to the enemy.  Because of that interpretation and perception, they felt that it was good and right to lay every single emotion and feeling they had at God’s feet, sometimes even blaming Him for their unhappy and unpleasant circumstances.  The only faithful thing to do was to cast everything on God and not in politically correct, non-offensive language of tolerance and acceptance.  Their words were raw, emotional, full of passion and feeling.

The Psalms invite us to find a language that expresses those most intense and deep-seated emotions and feelings we experience, whether it be joy or sorrow, contentment or worry, or anything in between.  In the Psalms we find language that is not passively accepting, not even in the psalms of praise and thanksgiving.  You don’t sense that the Israelites were docile people who merely accepted the goodness of their circumstances and the God who gave them those circumstances with hands quietly folded in their laps.  We hear joyous, unbridled, unrestrained celebration of the relationship they enjoyed with a God who would be willing to bless them in such ways.  By contrast, in Psalms like Psalm 40, 69, and 88, the language is equally unrestrained.  You don’t sense any sort of “praise the Lord, anyway” attitude.  Instead, you get boldness, aggression, agony, and rawness.  The psalmists understood that in moments of sorrow and confusion, we tend to go one of two places:  1) we accuse people of being unjust but maintain that God is righteous and trustworthy; 2) we accuse people of being unjust and we see God as being in collusion with people.  When the psalmists found themselves in the first category, their natural response was to appeal to God to correct the problem.  On the other hand, when they found themselves in the second category, they rejected the system that such unjust people had set up and they took God to task for seeming to support injustice.  Astonishingly, both responses are seen in the Bible to be faithful and righteous.

After I finished writing this introduction, some things happened in the Christian world that I feel compelled to address because they tie in so closely to what we’ll be discussing in this study.  A well-known Christian author and a prominent Christian musician both announced within the space of a month that they no longer believed Christianity to be true.  The author flat out stated that he no longer considered himself a Christian, while the musician wrote of struggles and doubts, finally landing on the statement that Christianity was simply not for him.  [NOTE:  the musician has since deleted his original posts on Instagram and instead has released another statement revealing that he is not entirely walking away from his faith but he is dealing with a lot of doubt...]

The aftermath of both these announcements has been troubling, to say the least, as the internet exploded with multitudes sharing their takes and opinions.  Responses ranged from harsh pronouncements (“they were probably never Christians to begin with”) to appeals for tolerance (“we can’t judge them, we just need to love them”) to pushing one’s own agenda (“that’s why we need to teach kids apologetics with strong material like what I offer”) to glee (“glad these guys are finally getting it and starting positive trends”).

This all brings me to one particular comment from someone who I am sure was very well-meaning but encapsulates what I see as a gargantuan issue in way too many Christian circles.  When talking about how to respond to people who seem to “lose their faith,” one blogger recommended that we “stand on truth and not feelings.”  Now, I totally get where he was coming from because I’ve been indoctrinated with that way of thinking my entire life.  Feelings are subjective, truth is objective.  Feelings change.  Truth doesn’t change.  I get it.  I’ve even taught it.  And I’m still convinced that the ideas behind those statements are solid.  Life has been teaching me, however, that there are way more nuances to the validity of those ideas, and I want to clarify what truth I think lies in them.

The truth of God most emphatically does not change.  How do we know this?  God tells us in His Word.  First, He stated that He does not change (Malachi 3:6); the writer of Hebrews wrote that Messiah Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8); and when we connect that to what Jesus said about Himself — “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life...” (John 14:6) — we find that the truth of God is, indeed, unchanging.  But what I think we need to be clear on is that we are talking about the truth of who God is, His nature and character.  It’s important to state that because it is from His unchanging nature and character that everything else flows.  Everything that we know and perceive about life flows from the unchanging nature and character of God.  And that absolutely includes our emotions.

Feelings, unlike emotions, will change depending on our life experiences and our current situation.  So in that sense, yes, they are ever-changing and most definitely subjective.  But does that mean that they are to be relegated to the status of “unreliable and undependable” and, therefore, to be considered useless at best and deviously evil at worst?  I don’t think that’s what God is telling us at all.  It is a dangerous fallacy to teach that all decisions and choices in life can and should be made based solely on intellectual reasoning devoid of emotion.  I know that’s probably not what the blogger I mentioned was saying, but the danger of statements like his are that he has no idea how other people are going to receive what he says, and there are definitely people out there (like me) who struggle with extremism and tend to see life as a “one way or the other” proposition.  It’s either intellect or emotions and never the twain shall meet.

Rather than making statements that make it sound like we should choose truth over emotion, I am convinced that we need to be telling each other a different story.  We need to realize that nowhere in all of scripture does God ever ask us to live our lives that way.  What He does ask of us is that we understand who we are and how we are based on the truth He gives us in His Word.  And His Word tells us that He created us as whole human beings.  We are oneness just as He is One.  We are to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength, and all our mind.  That means we are to love Him with all our conscious mental capacities (the ability and power we have to control our actions and make deliberate choices), all our emotions, all our physical abilities, and all our intellectual capabilities.  We cannot choose truth over feelings because feelings are part of truth.

One caution, of course, is that we are also not to allow feelings to dictate our every move.  When the Bible talks about self-control, it isn’t just speaking of the kinds of obvious sins that many people associate with lack of self-control.  I am firmly convinced that God wants His people to understand their emotions and their feelings so that they can also understand how and when they need to exercise self-control.

God knows how He created us.  He knows that we have emotions and that those emotions produce all kinds of feelings.  He knows this because He is our Creator, but He also knows this because He created us in His own image.  We don’t have a God who, at best, tolerates the fact that we have emotions and feelings and, at worst, insists that we purge ourselves of such things because they serve no meaningful purpose.  We have a God who deeply, intimately understands our emotions and feelings because every single one we will ever experience is a reflection of the exact emotions and feelings He experiences.

In this study, I am going to be using the Psalms as the foundation, but rather than just a straightforward study, I’m going to be taking a page out of the New Testament and presenting the material in the form of letters.  One of the things that intrigues and fascinates me most about the letters of the New Testament is that we don’t have the other side of the story in written form.  We can do a lot of guessing and sleuthing to figure out what issues Paul and John and James and Peter and the writer of Hebrews were addressing, and I think in most cases we’d be accurate if we do our research and use our reasoning skills.  But I like to think about the other side of things and wonder what inspired those men to take quill to parchment.  That’s the creative inspiration behind what I’ll be sharing with you in the coming weeks.

Life is often harsh and cruel, and declaring the full Gospel of God includes facing life head on when it’s at its worst, addressing everything we feel to God just as the psalmists did.  The ancient Israelite psalmists understood that their relationship with the LORD wasn’t something static that was set in stone.  They comprehended the glorious, awe-inspiring tension of the truth that the God who knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10) calls on His people to cry out to Him and even give Him no rest until He fulfills all His promises.

I pray that we would learn how to be such a people.  I pray that we will come to grasp the Truth of God that the psalmists knew — that God doesn’t always offer the answers we think we want, but He always offers us His PRESENCE.