Emotion After Midnight

Last night a few good friends and I were up late, nearly 3 AM, sitting and talking about theology, life, what we’ve been learning, and a wide array of other subjects. A few things from our conversation stuck with me, and I’ll write about one of them today, the other will have to wait until tomorrow. Also – complete side note – we had what might be the excellent idea of getting various college age/young adults together on a weekly basis to sit down and talk about Christianity, theology, life, and the like and podcasting the conversations. Anyone interested? At the very least it would be fun for everyone involved, and I believe it would do excellent things for the vast majority of young adults today who seem to have the idea that people who talk about theology are pastors, scholars, and people who are paid to do so. Truly, that is an idea that must be shattered! As Joey Gaiman said last night, it’s not because we desire to be scholars that we spend time studying the meanings behind original gospel texts or reading commentaries or listening to men more knowledgeable than ourselves; it’s because that is one of the ways to grow closer to God, therefore it is the only logical thing to do! But I’m getting off topic…

During the course of our discussion, Danny brought up the concept of emotions and how there are times where we humans will deeply feel things and times that, even if we are in the exact same situation, we may not feel much at all. Take, for example, a married couple. It may be that at any given moment they may feel great love for each other, and the next day feel (emotionally) almost nothing. What then are we to do? Are we to simply flow at the whim of our emotions? By no means! The Bible makes it impressively clear that our emotions are not to determine our actions. Christ, Paul, and numerous others are examples of this. Christ in the garden of Gethsemane is perhaps the most potent example of a man not allowing his feelings or desires to determine what he does. “Not my will, but your will be done.” What then? Are we to simply continue doing whether we feel desire or not, not caring if the emotion is there? Again, I think not.

Emotions in and of themselves are things that our culture has crushed greatly in the last few hundred years. Biblically, the Psalms are a body of works that show massive depth and breadth of emotion, the likes of which it is rare to see expressed in common society today. C.S. Lewis also gives a very interesting picture of the way man has sought to tamper his emotions in the book That Hideous Strength as Merlin comes alive in England in the 1940s. (I would highly recommend That Hideous Strength, as well as the other two books in the trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. They’re amazing reads.) But oh, how trapped we are in our ideas of what is proper and improper!

I would submit to you, my friends, that our call as Christians is not only to be conformed to the image of Christ in the way we act and the way we think, but also in the way we feel. So many of our emotions are wayward and drawn to the most wretched things. Other times, it is as Lewis stated when he said, “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us…we are far too easily pleased.” Other times it is that our desires are far out of proportion to what is good. Our emotions and desires need to be conformed to Christ, just like the rest of our being.

It is not enough to go through the Christian life floating at the whim of emotions. To do so is a sure way to fall far, far from God. Neither is it enough to simply “go through the motions” and be completely emotionless. We are not to work from our emotions, but neither are we to work for them. Instead, let our aim be to feel what we truly feel; to express to God not only our love and joy in Him, but also our anger, frustration, complacency, and laziness, as they come and go. We are called to worship God “in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24), part of which is worshipping Him from the position we are truly in. On a Sunday morning do not come before the Lord with anger in your heart and attempt to hide it and cover it with another emotion. There is no truth in doing so. Instead, come before God in worship and in prayer and plead with Him to align your emotions to what He would have them be.” Is your heart so weighed down by sorrow that you have utterly no desire to read the Word? Do not let that sorrow keep you from what is good! Instead, come to the word though you have no desire to read and read, all the while pleading with the Lord to show you and teach you how you should feel.

Surely, the human heart is deceitful above all things! Do not let it guide you. Instead, as God’s grace guides you, lead your heart more and more into alignment with His. Is that not the cry of the true Christian soul, to say, “Oh Lord, ‘Tune my heart to sing thy praise!’”