Emotions

I read an article recently that was very good, but I had a quibble with the statement that “emotions have no moral value”. I understood what was being said, but it is not quite right. I think it depends on where the emotion comes from. I have just read in Zechariah where God says that he has a “great passion” for his people. God is good, so that emotion must be good.

Some human emotions can be good. If I am angry at injustice because the Holy Spirit stirred me, that emotion is good. The compassion that the Good Samaritan felt for the wounded man was good. We need to get better at experiencing that kind of emotion and responding to it with positive actions. On the other hand, the glee that some of the crowd felt when Jesus was dying on the cross was probably stirred up by the bad spirits they carried, so it was evil. Some emotions can be good or evil, depending on where they come from.

Then again, emotions that come out of hurts that have been done to me by people in the past, or trauma that I have experienced as a child, just tell me what is happening within me and how my memories of those events are affecting me now. These emotions are unpleasant or uncomfortable, but they are not good or evil. They are neutral; just an indication of who I am, although they might be teaching me something about myself which is uncomfortable, but true.

The most important point is that our emotions tell us nothing about our value in God’s sight. We were all created good, in his image. His heart is always towards us for our good, no matter how we are feeling.

Person (8) Emotions Analysis

I have identified five core emotions. Each one has a positive form and a negative form. This makes ten in all. There will be some blurring across the boundaries.


The table should be read as follows.

The positive emotions are on the top half of the table. The negative emotions are on the bottom half. God created us to experience both the positive and the negative emotions, so they are both good. Joy is the natural emotion when things have gone well. The opposite of joy is sadness. It is good to be sad when you have lost someone that you love.

Compassion is good if you see someone suffering. The opposite of compassion is anger. It is good to be angry when you see injustice, because it motivates you to action.

The scripture reference points to one example from the Bible.

Other Words are just that: they list other words that describe roughly the same emotion.

Although these emotions were created good, they have all been corrupted into something negative. When we get trapped in wrong thinking, a good emotion gets corrupted. These are shown under the heading Corrupted For example, compassion is good when directed to others, but when directed to myself, it becomes self pity which is destructive. Fear is good if a grizzly bear is coming down the road, because it motivates you to flee. But if you start living in fear, without faith, you get trapped in worry, which is a corrupted form of fear. Sadness is good, if you have lost someone you love, but it can get corrupted into bitterness, if you are not careful.

The Response To row explains what produces the emotion. Sadness is produced by loss. Peace comes from acceptance. Love produces joy.

Emotions are often associated with a particular physical response. Fear causes us to flee or freeze. Freezing is good, if you realise you are about to step into danger, because it gives you time to think. The corrupted form of the emotion often produces a different physical response, which is not as healthy. Bitterness can produce stomach illness.

A mood is a cluster of emotions. A mood can be influenced by attitudes.

Person (7) Emotions

Emotions get a really bad rap from Christians. When I became a Christian, I was told to walk by faith and not feelings, because feelings are tricky and unreliable. This is partly true, but it is also confusing. For a start, faith has the emotion of peace attached to it. If am walking in faith, I will experience feelings of peace.

When I was in theological college, I studied some of the catholic mystics. I read everything written by John of the Cross and some of Teresa of Avila. This proved to be a fairly dry well, but I learnt one really useful thing. These Christians referred to their emotions as their internal senses. That is a really helpful way to understand emotions. Emotions are not problems that we have to deal with. They are internal senses that are just as helpful as our five external senses.

External senses tell us what is happening in the external world. Our emotions tell us what is happening in our internal person. They are like the dashboard on a car. The various gauges tell us what is happening in the engine under the bonnet. In the same way, emotions are gauges or indicators telling us what is happening in our inner person.

• If I am always at peace, it is probably because my internal life is in good shape.

• If I am always over the top happy, something in my thinking may be wrong.

• If I am always feeling fear, something may be wrong internally. I may have a bad memory with fear attached that always pops out. I may be overusing my imagination and seeing a fearful future. My mind may be thinking wrong thoughts that cause me to fear.

Suppressing these emotions does not help. If the temperature gauge on your car dashboard is in the red, it does not help to paint it green. You need to look at the car engine, identify the fault, and put it right. The same is true of emotions. If I am continually sad, it is no use taking a pill to make me happy. That is like painting a temperature gauge green. I need to identify the reason for the sadness, and put it right.

There can be any number of reasons for sadness. It could be a bad memory associated with sadness that keeps popping out. It could be I am reading too many sad novels, and sadness is filling my imagination. It could be because my mother died a month ago, and I miss her. That feeling of sadness is good, and honours my mother, so I should not want to remove it.

Supressing our emotions prevents us from learning about what is happening in our inner person. We should study our emotions and learn to understand what they are telling us, in the same way as we respond to what we perceive with our physical senses. If I see a bear coming down the road, I go into my house. In the same, if we get the messages our internal senses are conveying to us, we can use them to grow in faith.

This skill is really important, but few Christian know how to do it. David cried out,

O my my soul, why are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me (Ps 42:5)?

This is a really great question that the Holy Spirit is glad to answer. When David had an answer from God, he knew what to do next. Often the answer was to focus on the goodness of God and praise him.

Once we get the messages our internal senses are conveying, we must to learn to work with the Holy Spirit, and other Christians, to find the cause of the problem, and if appropriate resolve it. (More on emotions to come).