Ep 16: The Way You Make Me Feel

God has wired us with Eight Indicators that point us back to the genuine ideas and desires in our hearts… if we’re curious and courageous enough to explore them. Let’s discuss our second Indicator: our emotions.

What do we do with our emotions?  Do we chase after them, hoping they fill our hearts’ desires?  Or do we reject them because “mature” Christians shouldn’t feel things like anger, confusion, and sadness?

Let’s dig into the confusing and sometimes derided world of feelings.

For more information about the podcast or free resources, visit www.soilandroots.org.  

TRANSCRIPT

The Role of Emotions in Discipleship

Welcome to the Soil and Roots podcast: journeying together into deep discipleship. I’m Brian Fisher.

This is Episode 16: The Way You Make Me Feel

Am I Allowed to Feel?

Many years ago, my wife, Jessica, walked into our tiny living room with a big smile on her face, grinning from ear to ear.  She was holding a pregnancy test, and it was positive.  We were going to have another baby. Our firstborn son, Caleb, was going to have a little brother or sister. 

We were overjoyed.  We had recently moved our little family into a townhouse outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  I had a good executive job with a growing company, Caleb was doing great, and we couldn’t wait to meet our new addition.

We waited a few weeks to share the news, and then my very creative wife came up with a crafty way to tell our families that she was pregnant.  They were all overjoyed, and we began preparing for our new baby. 

But just a day or so later, something went wrong. What appeared to be a healthy pregnancy turned out not to be healthy, and within a week or two, our baby was gone. Jessica suffered a miscarriage.

Too many of you know this story – somewhere around 25% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.  And though the shock and grief of the miscarriage were terrible, what struck us was the response from other Christians. 

The statute of limitations for grieving a miscarriage is apparently about a week and a half.  After that, we realized that everyone else had moved on, and we had better move on as well, otherwise, it might look like we lacked faith in God. 

About four weeks after the miscarriage, I brought it up to a close friend. He looked at me incredulously and asked in all seriousness, “Why are you guys still upset about this?”

Jessica and I have rarely spoken about our baby in public since.  Yet it’s been over twenty years, and on many days, maybe most days, I still think about our child.  I imagine our baby is a girl, and I miss her.  I long for her.  I want to meet her.   I will someday, and there’s hope in that, but I still feel the grief. I still feel the loss. I still feel sad – even a few decades later. 

Am I allowed to feel this way?  Aren’t I supposed to just feel joyful?  Aren’t I supposed to trust in God and happily look forward to that day when I meet my daughter on the other side?  Why should I still be sad?

Emotions…feelings.  They are often the most confusing, most derided, most misunderstood of our Eight Heartview Indicators. Feelings are something we either seem to be unduly dependent on to help us navigate our day, or something we outright reject because, of course, Christians are to be universally “content.”

And apparently, contentment means going about our lives in peace and tranquility even when we’ve lost a child, or we’re sick, or we’re persecuted, or we’re just struggling.  If we feel rage, anger, fear, shame, or sadness, we need to quickly suppress those things because those aren’t feelings that mature Christians are supposed to have, right?

Ironically, in modern Christianity, it’s okay if we are emotional about someone else’s circumstances, but if suffering comes to us, we must bear it with a smile and a trite expression about God’s goodness.

When someone else loses a job or has a dream dashed, we understand and sympathize with their grief and confusion. But if it happens to us, we know that as “mature” Christians, we must learn the secret of being content in all circumstances.  And that means putting aside, ignoring, and certainly not showing feelings of hurt, loneliness, fear, or sadness. Because those feelings supposedly convey a lack of faith, or a lack of trust, or a lack of belief in our good God.

Emotions as an Indicator

This season, we’re exploring the Discipleship Dilemma. The lifelong journey to become more like Jesus means we need to know two people really well: Jesus and ourselves.  Deep discipleship is the slow, progressive transformation of dark ideas in our hearts into light ideas, but we don’t always have the time, space, or permission to explore the hidden ideas in our hearts in our modern context.

Yet that’s what Jesus was constantly doing when He walked the earth – inviting those around Him to explore His heart and their own hearts. 

Though our hearts are really pretty mysterious and hard to read, the great news is God has wired us all with Eight Indicators – signposts that point us back down to the ideas and desires that govern us.  If we pay attention to these indicators and curiously explore them with God and trusted friends, we are well on our way to becoming deep disciples.

We’ve already explored our first indicator: our thought patterns.  Now let’s take a look at our second, our emotions. Just one sidenote:  I use the words “feelings” and “emotions” synonymously.  

Two Key Questions

We’re going to dig into just two questions about emotions.

1. What is the role of emotions in the life of a person who follows Jesus?

2.  What may we learn about our hearts by paying attention to them?

1.  What is the role of emotions for the person who wants to become more like Jesus?

The Christian life is filled with paradoxes.  A paradox is a “seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well-founded or true.” So, it’s something that on the surface appears to be impossible or contradictory, but still can be held together, even if we don’t understand how. 

Matthew 7 starts with the famous command not to judge.  But then the next few verses tell us about the circumstances under which we should judge.  John 7:24 tells us to judge with righteous judgment.  Well, which is it? Are we to judge or not to judge?

Jesus tells us His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  But He also tells us we are to pick up our cross and follow Him. Carrying a heavy wooden cross doesn’t sound easy or light. 

Jesus is known as the Prince of Peace, but He also claimed He came to separate families and friends and instructed His followers not to assume He came to bring peace. 

And in one of the most paradoxical passages in Scripture, Paul tells the Philippians to:

“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will

and to work for His good pleasure.^[1] And then Paul politely moves on without explanation.

The Paradox of Emotions

The role of our emotions often seems paradoxical. 

On the one hand, we think that too many people are ruled by their emotions.  They are governed by their feelings.  Their lives are ordered around things that make them feel a certain way.  This may be the Christian who jumps from conference to conference, from emotional service to emotional service, always seeking a sensual high from different ecstatic spiritual experiences. 

Or it may be the person who uses various types of addictions to numb their pain, replacing it with drug-induced happiness.  Or the thrill-seeker and adrenaline junkie who wants to feel the exhilaration of conquering a physical adventure or business acquisition, but they get depressed when they aren’t overcoming something.

The flip side is people who consciously or unconsciously believe that most emotions are bad or wrong.  That a good Christian is calm, peaceful, tranquil, and even-tempered all the time.  They quote Galatians 5 and the fruits of the spirit, though they fail to talk about Jesus making a whip and overturning the tables in the temple, intentionally insulting the Pharisees, and getting irritated with His disciples. 

These Christians generally consider so-called “negative” emotions to be signs of immaturity, or they think that feelings are more related to personality than to character. “Some people are just more emotional than others.”

Some of my all-time favorite authors paint this picture of a mature disciple – someone who goes about life with a placid, calm demeanor, suffers betrayal and persecution with a smile on their face, and is seemingly unfazed by evil and trial.

I’m not sure how we reconcile that picture with Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Job, Lamentations, some of Paul’s comments, or the life of Jesus Himself.  The Bible is filled with people yearning after God who emotionally and passionately communicate their feelings: anger, sadness, grief, joy, confusion, doubt, and fear. 

At times, we may struggle to control or express our emotions, though those struggles don’t invalidate them.  God created us with feelings. They are part of His design for humanity and of the human experience. God Himself conveys a dizzying array of emotions throughout the Bible and uses rather strong language to make sure we know how He feels! 

So, emotions are just like the other Seven Heartview Indicators.  They can be corrupted, abused, and misused, though they are helpful tools for understanding the desires and ideas in our hearts. 

Jesus and Emotions

This podcast is about deep discipleship and spiritual formation.  How do our hearts grow to be like the heart of Jesus?  So ultimately, we need to look at Jesus to determine what role emotions play in the life of a disciple.

From what we learn about Jesus in the Gospels, does He feel?  Does He express emotion? 

Does He fit this picture of a calm, almost passive person who brushes things off with a polite word about God’s goodness, or does He show us His heart by showing us His emotions?

How about anger?  Jesus got angry, more than once. And He expressed it.  In a few cases, he showed it physically.  It certainly wasn’t His norm, but Jesus became visibly angry at certain injustices. 

Grief?  Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus, even though He was moments away from raising him from the dead. Matthew tells us Jesus was grieved and distressed in the garden before His arrest, so much so it had a physical impact on His body. 

Sadness?  Absolutely, Jesus expressed sadness.  He was sad over the future of Israel, at the sin and death in the world. 

Happiness? Joy? Loneliness?  Yes on all accounts. 

Here’s the point. It seems that Jesus is a deeply emotional man, and He was free to express those emotions when He walked the earth. 

Jesus committed no sin, yet Jesus expressed all the emotions we just noted and more. He is the most “human human” to ever walk the earth, and He was a man of deep and expressive feelings.

So, if we want to become more like Jesus, if we want our hearts to embody His ideas and desires, we should probably expect to become people of deep and expressive emotions.  And yes, that means expressing anger, grief, sadness, loneliness, along with happiness, joy, gladness, and laughter.

A key to expressing our emotions is to avoid sin while doing so; thus, God’s warning to Cain not to sin in his anger.  Advice he ignored. 

Emotions are God-given gifts to humanity, and we are free to feel and express them appropriately. As we journey into deeper discipleship, we might find ourselves feeling new emotions or stronger emotions, though we do so with a heart bent toward the Kingdom of Light.

You may find yourself sad over something that happened years ago. Be sad.  You may find joy in a beautiful sunrise or a generous call from a friend. Be joyful.  You may discover, years later, that you are angry because of an injustice done to you.  Be angry.

Emotions tend to work like water in a pressurized tank.  They’re going to find their way out one way or the other.  Better to express them while digging beneath the surface to uncover what they’re telling us now, rather than bottling them up or ignoring them and causing suffering later.    

2.  Why are emotions one of our Heartview Indicators? What can we learn by paying attention to them?

I’ve quoted neuroscientist Curt Thompson before, and he wrote, “Remember that emotion is not a debatable phenomenon. It is an authentic reflection of our subjective experience, one that is best served by attending to it.”[2]

David Damico wrote a book called “The Faces of Rage,” which caught my attention because he makes the claim that it’s crucial we “attend” to our emotions. 

We normally think of rage as someone becoming red-faced with steam coming out of their ears, losing control, and saying or doing regrettable things. 

In relation to understanding our stories and how our hearts are formed, though, Damico wrote this, “Rage is as ordinary as the common cold, and neither vows of self-control nor confessing the name of Jesus in militaristic determination will effect a lasting cure.  Rage must be pulled out by its roots – and its roots are buried deep in the painful territory of unresolved loss that most of us don’t care to visit.”[3]

There’s that Soil and Roots again. 

Rage, according to Damico, is not the bold-faced response we tend to think of. Instead, it’s the result of NOT dealing with loss.  He defines rage as “the escape routes from dealing with our real feelings connected with real losses – no matter how insignificant.” 

“When we spend our lives consciously or unconsciously avoiding loss, we aren’t available for meaningful relationships – not with others, ourselves, or even God. In essence, rage is a self-protective shield we use to avoid loss-threatening circumstances or events…Rage’s sole purpose is to keep us from resolving loss, which would free us to love and experience life in the present.”[4]

So, rage can take many forms, and many of them aren’t visible.  Controlling behavior, workaholism, emotional distance, difficulty forming true, intimate relationships, emotional numbness, and insecurities about money. We may appear as wonderful, calm, peaceful Christian men or women on the outside and still be plagued by rage on the inside – the suppression of unresolved loss. 

This is an example of how these Eight Heartview Indicators blend together.  Someone who is unconsciously suffering from rage may not express it emotionally, but it will come out in their behaviors, their relationships, how they spend their time, or how they spend their money. 

Many Christians don’t want to talk about rage, because we don’t want to talk about unresolved loss, at least not in church.  If we don’t get the job we wanted, we just say it’s God’s will.  If we are struck with an illness, we tell our friends that God is the Great Physician.  If our marriage is loveless and routine, we remind ourselves that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

We’re Christians.  We’re supposed to suffer our persecutions and trials joyfully.
That’s what James tells us, right? 

Author Chip Dodd agrees with what we are claiming here, that emotions and feelings are signposts that point us back to the depths of our hearts and our stories.  We can learn to discern the ideas and desires in our hearts by paying attention to our feelings. 

He writes, “Feelings help us name what we are experiencing in our hearts.  Feelings bring us to the confession of how wonderfully frightening it is to live the mystery of being with God and others.”[5]

“…we have been taught to associate feelings with moral judgments against ourselves and others, rather than recognizing true feelings as created with us to allow us to face ourselves.”[6]

Let’s Sum Up

Let’s make a few summary points and then explore how we might better understand the ideas in our hearts by examining our feelings.

1. Our feelings and emotions are part of what it means to be human.  God created humans good, and He created us with good emotions.  They have purpose. They draw us into deeper relationships with God and others, and they help us understand the desires and ideas in our hearts.

2. Jesus is the most “human human,” and He is a deeply emotional man who regularly and naturally expresses his feelings.  If we want to grow to be like Him, we should expect to feel deeply and express those feelings in ways that honor Him and those around us.

3. In the Christian community, we often talk about people who are “ruled by” their emotions. This is probably incorrect.  They are ruled by their desires, which bend towards the Kingdom of Darkness.  Their emotions simply reflect their broken desires.  Emotions are indicators – they flow from the heart.  So, the true source of their brokenness is in their hearts.

4. We talked about anxiety a few episodes ago, and today we talked about rage.  In some ways, they are sister emotions.  They are both caused by our efforts to suppress or ignore feelings that are trying to point us to deeper issues in our hearts. Anxiety and rage don’t always show up on the surface. In fact, we may not be conscious of either emotion many times.

The way to recover from anxiety or rage is to enter into our stories with God and trusted, safe friends and to explore the roots of “the why,” why we experience anxiety or rage. And then embrace the healing of our hearts through time, habit, intimacy, community, and instruction.   It may be painful, but necessary in order to have a heart free to embrace the ideas of Light. 

A Practical Example

Here’s a simple example for us to think about as we end today.  Let’s say we struggle with anger. Not the rightful anger we should feel as a response to injustice, but we’re angry at little things, or nothing at all. We just get angry.

Next time it happens, instead of ignoring it or distracting ourselves with work, TV, or something else, let’s take a breath and pause. Take a quick note.  Write down when we feel angry and what was happening around us when it started.  If we get annoyed with our husband or wife over small things, we write that down too. 

Remember, emotions are not inherently bad; they serve a purpose.  If we pause and take some notes when we’re angry, chances are we’ll start to see a pattern develop. We then take our notes to a trusted, safe friend and talk to them about our anger.  Chances are, they’ll have some counsel for us. 

Sometimes we get angry when we don’t get what we desire.  Sometimes our desires are dark, but not always.  Sometimes good desires get trampled on, and we get angry.  Maybe you had unmet desires last week, though maybe it was years ag,o and your heart is inviting you to uncover the source of your hurt so that you can heal, and it’s telling you through some surprising and hard-to-manage anger. 

Remember the three-step Heartview process: Uncover, Determine, Immerse.  If we just pause, take a breath, and carefully uncover why we have the emotions we do, we can then move forward. With God and trusted friends in the Five Key Elements of Formation, we can begin the process of replacing our dark ideas and desires with those from the Kingdom of Light, and our emotions will follow suit. 

One last note: this takes time.  The ideas and desires in our hearts can and do heal, though it usually takes a while.  It works just like our physical bodies. If we get a bruise, it heals in a few days.  If we break your ribs, it takes months, if not years.  The deeper the wound, the longer it takes to heal.  Be patient with yourself and others.  But start the process. Look at your emotions and feelings for what they are – God-given indicators to help us dig into our hearts.

Thanks for listening! If you want more information on Soil and Roots, check out our website at soilandroots.org.  Soil and Roots help form and support small communities that intentionally embrace the Five Elements of Formation we’re exploring. 

These specific groups venture into deep discipleship together in some beautiful ways.  We call them Greenhouses, and if you’re interested in forming or joining one, you can find more information on the site, or feel free to email us at fish@soilandroots.org.

We’ll see you next time. 

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^[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Php 2:12–13). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.

[2] Thompson, C. (2010). Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices that Can Transform Your Life and Relationships (p. 164). Tyndale Momentum.

[3] Damico, D. (1992). Faces of Rage (p. 32). NavPress.

[4] Damico, D. Faces of Rage (p. 109). NavPress.

[5] Dodd, C. (2014). The Voice of the Heart: A Call to Full Living (p. xi). Chip Dodd.

[6] Dodd, C. The Voice of the Heart (p. xiii). Chip Dodd.