Emotions

The Bible is an emotional book, and the church is an emotional community. Relationships have a highly emotive content. Teachers and preachers know that emotions are the power behind effective communication. Parenting involves the emotional education of children. In fact, there is no area of human life that excludes the powerful thrust of emotions. They travel with us wherever we go, and they affect whatever we do. It is not too much to say that without emotions we are detached and mechanical, subhuman and not as God intended.

The Good of Emotional Expression

The Christian faith is an emotional faith. Jesus Christ endured the cross "for the joy that was set before him" (Heb. 2:2). The apostle Paul was a man who was "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." It was said of Jonathan Edwards that "he deeply savored the sweet sovereignty of God." C. S. Lewis insightfully remarked that the Lord "finds our desires not too strong but too weak."

In life we observe that interest energizes learning, creativity, and innovation; anger mobilizes energy for taking action against frustration, irritation or invasion; joy releases both celebration and stress as it it increases social exchange; shame assists us in discerning what is good and in making responsible choices; guilt motivates restoration of relationships and reparation of injuries; fear protects us by warning of imminent danger. The dysfunctions of each of these arise from exaggeration of the emotion and overload and overwhelming of the controls. But basically emotions are good.

Emotional expression serves several basic social functions. Our emotions signal the inner state of feeling; they request some response in thought or act by other participants; and they report when
the trigger of the emotion is some event, person, or situation in the context. In the expression of emotion we experience the intensity f both love and hate, acceptance and rejection, apathy and anger.

How We Feel About Our Feelings

Some people approach their emotions as being bad; those are the "stuffers." They treat their emotions as if they should never be expressed, repressing their own emotions and suppressing emotions in others. Such people say "I feel fine" or "I'm okay." But these are not really feelings. They are judgements about their feelings. Or they play one feeling most of the time (for example, anger or happiness) like a trombone with a stuck slide. The note may be pure, but there is more to a symphony than this.

Others approach their emotional states as if they had a right to express them in every conversation - they are the "gushers." These people feel that emotions are "who you really are." Bad temper for such people becomes a form of public littering in which others pick up the pieces. Unlike the stuffers, these people play all the emotions of the symphony, sometimes at the same time. Stuffers are afraid of gushers about as much as gushers are angry with stuffers.

There is a wondrous group of people who take responsibility for their feelings and see them as goal directed and purposeful. They are not dominated by their emotions, nor are they afraid of them. They see their emotions as useful. We will call these people the "emotional pragmatists."
Living as an emotional pragmatist may sound boring (to a gusher), but to a stuffer it must sound like heaven!

The Value of Emotions

Emotions serve four essential functions. First, they are an instrument of rationality. Gerhard Frost says that "the hungers of the heart outrun the reaches of the mind." Our emotions enable us to learn. They provide direction for what it is that we need to know. Emotions provide instant
rewards and punishment for truths held and values* broken.

Second, emotions are vital sensors to imbalance. They tell us if we are doing okay in social situations. Without emotions we would become like the leper who has no nerve endings and cannot know if he is breaking his leg or burning his arm. Emotions allow us the opportunity
to respond, to ask for forgiveness.

Third, emotions enable us to know if we have achieved genuine human contact with another. Without emotions we would be bionic automatons. Marital intimacy would become mere mating. Cherishing our children would be reduced to technological parenting, providing the correct punishment and reinforcement. Emotions answer the question, Have I made contact with this person?

Fourth, emotions give us the possibility of embracing another's experience. Without emotion we would not have the privilege to count another's experience as our own. As such, it is emotions that permit us to enter genuinely into human community and covenant.

What Are Emotions?

The word emotion originates in the Latin emuvare, meaning "to move ." We sometimes say, "That worship service moved me." That is, it motivated us in some way. We also say we are "moved to anger," as when we are cut off in traffic. The anger was in response to a frightening stimuli and resulted in a form of self-protection. As we understand emotions, we need to know that they are affective responses to some sort of stimuli-they occur in response to some idea, cue or influence.

There are thought to be a small number of primary emotions, of which all others are derivatives. Rene Descartes describes six primary emotions (what he calls "primitive emotions") that he believes encompass all human emotional responses: admiration, love, hate, desire, joy and sadness. Robert Plutchik sees the primary emotions as four bipolarities: destruction versus protection, incorporation versus rejection, reproduction versus deprivation and orientation versus exploration. However we define them, they are probably limited in number.

The developmental process of growth from infancy to adulthood begins with the emergence of the primary emotions of anxiety, basic fears, trust and mistrust, followed by anger, shame, self-doubt, guilt and inferiority, as well as joy, pride, self-confidence, curiosity, interest, grief, sadness, love, and forgiveness. As we move through the life stages, the periodic ascendance of particular emotions supports us during particular passages, transitions, losses, as well as empowers us to make discoveries and accomplish meaningful life projects. But where did emotions come from?

The Origin of Emotions

As early as 1872 in the first widely accepted work on expressive emotions, Charles Darwin argued that certain emotional expressions are innate and universal. These fundamental emotions, which
are recognized and labeled similarly across cultures, have been researched in multiple studies and include interest, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, disgust, contempt, fear and shame. Although the
interpersonal meanings of these vary from one cultural context to another, the basic spectrum of emotional possibilities is similar among humans of every group. While this describes emotions common to humankind, we can account for emotions by considering the intention of the Creator.

In our original creation we were "naked and . . . felt no shame" (Gen 2:25). Our creation emotions include trust, joy, and and love. We have these wonderful emotions because we are human beings created in the image of God. Through these feeling we express our full humanity and godlikeness. They are the emotions of worship. John Piper in his book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist begins with the statement "This is a serious book about being happy in God." He argues that the "chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever" (p. 14). God is an experiencing Being and needs to be experienced in personal and feeling ways. So we approach God in trust, joy and love. We do this boldy and directly because as Hebrews 4:15-16 says, "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one [Jesus] who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."

Our basic emotional needs as we grow are fundamentally related to healthy emotional expression. These needs include belonging; achievement or success; economic security; self-respect; freedom from fear; love and affection; freedom from feelings of guilt; understanding and being understood. As these basic needs are substantially met, especially in relation to God, we express trust, joy, and love.

Not all feelings however, are as wonderful as these. Some emotions are directly related to our sinful state. Genesis tells us Adam s experience after his rejection of God: "I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself: (Gen 3:10 NRSV0. The feelings associated with this behavior are shame, fear and guilt. Some feelings relate to the inevitable consequence of living in a fallen world and with the disfigurement of God's image in our lives - as described in Genesis 3:16-19. These feelings are sorrow, disappointment, grief, despair, frustration, depression, and anger.

Thinking and Feeling

To understand the naturalness of our emotions, we must also consider the difference between thinking and feeling and how the two are related. Virtually all research supports the conclusion that there are separate processes and systems for cognition (thinking) and emotion (feeling). There has been a long debate with some scholars supporting the primacy of emotion to feeling (in other words, the mind is a rational faculty that creates reasons for what the heart wants to do) and others supporting the prior existence of perceptions (cognitions) to emotions (in other words, inside every emotion there is a perception; in fact, emotions are simply the energy for experiencing and expressing our perceptions.) The current theories see the two as equal processes with distinct neural pathways that interact, influence, motivate, shape and direct each other.

The primacy of feeling in infancy and early childhood yields to the dominance of thinking in youth and adulthood, but both processes occur and control, trigger and interpret, the other. Some counseling approaches interrupt the cycle of thought and feeling by working with cognition;
others enter through the enhanced and clarified emotional world. Affective therapists employ ventilating, flooding, learning the language of feelings, developing new patterns of experiencing
and expressing these feelings; cognitive therapists utilize restructuring the cognitive programs of old self-instructions and learning new ways of perceiving, organizing, naming, thinking and controlling thought processes. Either process may be selected as a more appropriate point of entry in facilitating change. Both assume we have the responsibility to deal with our own feelings.

Responsibility for Feelings

The role of theology in relation to emotions is to assure us of the goodness of our emotional creation and to point us toward emotional wholeness as we claim the full range of human possibilities in work, play, worship, and relationships. Theology also helps account for the complexity of our emotional life