The Emotional Christian

Copyright 2007 by 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 being. God Himself has emotions and it follows that creatures made in His image also possess them. Emotions are morally neutral in the sense that God never condemns a person for feeling them. For instance the Bible warns against the wrong use of anger but nowhere is anger, in and of itself, condemned. How we respond to strong emotion is where the potentiality for sin exists.

It may be that those who preach against “emotionalism” are reacting to a contemporary culture that encourages people to not only express emotion without restraint, but also to consider the way human beings feel at any given moment to be an accurate guide to reality. Such elevation of emotion to an arbiter of truth approaches idolatry. The truth is often not what our passions paint it to be.

However the unreliability of feelings does not warrant their demonization. Again we must remember that the word of God reveals Him expressing every kind of emotion we do, including jealousy, albeit a holy jealousy for His Church. God is passionate about us. He is not some kind of cosmic “Mr. Spock”. Our Creator is even capable of experiencing anguish. When Cain commits the first murder Yahweh asks him “What have you done?” and goes on to say “Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground”. “Say” is probably not the best word to describe how God spoke these words to Cain. The use of the exclamatory punctuation after “listen” indicates that it was more likely a cry. This was not what God had intended for the human race and He is anything but stoic about the fate of Abel.

The fully alive child of God will, in the course of a lifetime, feel all kinds of emotions and feel them deeply and God will not censure them for it.

What he will censure is the use of any emotion to justify sin. For instance it is one thing to feel anger against someone’s injustice. It is quite another to use that anger as an excuse to unjustfully judge and sinfully punish the offender in question. Jealousy is another emotion that can easily lead to sin. In fact, with the exception of a husband or wife who is being confronted with the infidelity of their partner, jealousy is usually unjustified. Actions taken based on jealous feelings have caused great damage, both inside and outside the church, throughout human history.

Generally speaking a truly mature Christian will acknowledge what they are feeling to those who they know are also mature enough to hear it. In this acknowledgment they will express whatever the emotion is without allowing the emotion to rule them at the moment they express it. As an example a mature believer who is angry may allow that anger to be apparent, but he or she will keep it under control. This person will not allow it to spiral into an uncontrollable and destructive rage. In this way the anger can be released in a way that is honest, yet not sinful.

Ultimately the key is self-control. Emotions are to be felt but not allowed to rule us. Only the Holy Spirit, the One who grants us the power of self-control, should be allowed to do that. As we grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ over the course of our Christian lives we can learn to be both emotional beings and righteous ones, for our God is both as well.