Honor and Emotions
A friend of mine recently spoke of her desire to "honor God with my emotions". That phrase prompted a lot of serious thought and made me dig into the Word to verify some things. An immediate gut-reaction from a lot of people would be; 'No way! You can't pick and choose your emotions like that! You just feel what you feel and that's that.' The real issue goes a lot deeper than feelings. Yes, you feel what you feel, but emotions aren't just little 10 second blips going across the surface of the brain. Some emotions pass very quickly, like when someone frightens you, but the kind my friend was speaking of are those which build up inside of us and can be both chosen, directed and given up.
In the Old Testament God chose the children of Israel and "set His love upon them". They weren't particularity worthy by any normal standard and yet God decided to love them. (Now remember that God's love isn't merely a feeling, but something which He demonstrates to us in countless ways.) Emotions and our wills are clearly related.
The choosing of emotions really isn't the biggest issue to most people as I see it though. It's the direction or focus of our emotions that I think must cause God sorrow. Although there are many to choose from, the two strongest emotions that come to my mind right away are love and hate. We are all created to experience these things but often the focus of our passions, for good or evil, is not honoring to God. Example: As a mom I truly do HATE the bickering, badgering and general nastiness that my children vent on each other daily. The trouble comes when I fail to separate the behavior from the kids. There are days when I am in such a black mood that I walk around muttering "I hate being a mother and I hate children". Neither of those statements is really true but because I have allowed the focus of my hate to leave it's real object both my kids and me suffer. This kind of thing has fueled war in the Middle East (and elsewhere) for hundreds of years and been the cause of atrocities throughout all of history and it all starts in an individuals heart! (A quote I came across in high-school: "When the heart is on fire, sparks will fly out of the mouth".)
Love seems pretty benign, to say the least, compared to the havoc of misguided, unleashed hatred but it can be dishonoring as well, if not outright dangerous. I think it was only a couple of years ago that a woman in Grand Rapids killed her two children rather than let them face a world that she saw as dangerous and corrupt. 'She was insane!' you may argue. Maybe so. It was still the emotion of love that prompted her to kill; love whose focus was so narrow that it
eliminated her ability to seek the help she needed. On a much less dramatic level, relationships between both friends and spouses suffer from misdirected love. Love has all different levels (you know, agape-pure God type love, philos-brotherly love and Eros-passion/physical love) and if an inappropriate love type is directed at someone.... The possibilities for problems from this type of wrong direction are endless and hardly honoring to God or man.
OK, I know I'm going on and on but compared to all that's been going through my mind this barely scratches the surface! On to my last point; giving emotions up. Here is where the human will really comes into play. There are so many emotions that we cling to and say that we just can't help feeling this way! * In this category I will toss hate, anger, jealousy, anxiety, worry, fear, sadness and frustration along with pride and love. The Bible makes it very clear that God knows what is going on inside of us. He formed us and knew us in every way before we were born. Not just our physical frailties but our emotional and psychological ones too. He knows what is built into us and what it will cost us to submit to Him; to give up those things which do not honor Him. We must be willing to daily say to Him, "this doesn't belong in my life, please remove it for Your sake." We need to be strong-willed when dealing with emotions, but only if the strength of the will is God-directed.
*I am not in ANY WAY denying or down-playing the havoc played in female lives, especially, by PMS and other hormonal 'stuff'.
posted by Eve Pfitzinger at 12:04 AM
1 Comments:
Some good thoughts and musings there.
Emotion can be likened to temptation: it's only a "potential." Temptation isn't sin, acting on temptation is the sin.
An emotion isn't necessarily sinful, but when the will comes into play, that's when it can become a sin.
My emotions may prompt me, at the moment, to lash out at my friends or family; but if my will is in control, as it should be, I will keep those emotions restrained.
A few words from the Catholic Catechism:
1767 In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage Reason and Will. Passions are said to be voluntary, "either because they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II:24:1) It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by Reason. (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II:24:3)
1768 Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons; they are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed. Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case. The upright Will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil Will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices.
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