Good At Being "Bad"
I love Emotions, But They Dont Love Me
I do not know, if you asked, how my friends would describe me. I would imagine they would ALL mention my introversion and somewhat grumpy personality that has inevitably thwarted group plans more than once in our years together. Maybe they would say I am tall or that I lack a social filter…but I know the ones that KNOW me would say I feel feelings deeply. And to be honest there is nothing else I simultaneously love and loathe more than feeling deeply. There have been more than a handful of days and nights where Ive held the question “why did you make me this way?” like a knife in my hand pointed directly at God as if He is the cause of my greatest afflictions. And I know I know..that's bad theology. I understand the truth of the Fall and how that has brought suffering into the world, but I can never seem to leave the suffering be.
You see, if you have not yet already noticed it might be time to tell you; I am a “feeler”. An INFJ-A. An enneagram four (and no..this is not me endorsing or not endorsing the enneagram…) an Intuitive Driver. Even just typing that draws a long, melancholy sigh from my lungs. I don't know how other people experience emotions (...because I have only ever been myself) but as a feeler, emotions tend to be the main dialect we choose to dictate communication in our lives. If sadness was a meal, we wouldn't be peckish. We seem to devour each course until we know it intimately…sorrow as a starter, grief as the main and depression for dessert. At times it is gluttonous and therefore unhealthy…I think back to my early 20s and my time in high school. But in general, or those seasons of great health, that appetite still does not go away. Instead, the curiosity remains to explore every corner and millimeter of space within any given emotion that knocks on the door of our souls. The question is never “will I let it in?” but “how soon is too soon to embrace this stranger?”.
Because of this natural inclination, not just to wade but to soak in the depths of every emotion that washes up on the shore of my life…it has been far more noticeable when these feelings are the not happy ones. You know…the ones that when youre in a room with someone else experiencing them you don't know WHAT to do. The ones that cause you to clench your jaw while praying that someone else who is gifted in comforting others shows up and soon… those emotions that cause you to use words like “gutted” and “anguished” as if just to give someone the faint outline of the beast that has made its home in your heart. THOSE are the feelings that seem to raise crimson flags, not just in my mind but in the eyes of those who face me most often. I cannot help but wonder; is this bad? Am *I* bad for allowing myself to feel every rise and fall, every temperature change, every line of the graph recorded by the richter scale embedded in my being?
Excellent Servants, Terrible Masters
This past March as I poured over the pages of “Renovation of the Heart” by Dallas Willard, I found myself struck by one specific sentence. "Feelings make excellent servants, but terrible masters." This, I find, is a nuance not many people want to embrace.
Maybe you have grown up in a context that had absolutely barred any emotions that fell below neutral, claiming that to be a “good christian” means never showing any real sign of suffering. Finding the freedom in not being okay has, in many ways, saved your life. So maybe reading this causes you pause. But I must tell you that the pain of faking it was never meant to be a burden placed on the people of God. From the Garden to the Cross, God has never been in the business of hiding emotions, nor can we ever *truly* hide ours from him.
But we must also acknowledge the age in which we are living that tells us “feelings go first”.
When we look at the statistics of porn consumption, the rates and reasons for divorce and infidelity and the growing notion that non-affirmation = homophobia it starts to reveal how “pleasure obsessed” humanity is. We are told, over and over again, “do what feels good”, “you do you”, “to each his own…” as if our emotions can faithfully lead us to something truly good. Instant relief or gratification is only further fostered in a digital era. But we were never made to be lorded over by our emotions.
So what is call on us in relation to our emotions? I believe it is two-fold.
Offer the Sacrifice of Honesty
Psalm 51:17
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
The radical act of including the Psalms in the Biblical cannon is this: that God cared enough to give us an example of raw emotions being poured out to him in his Holy Word. Think about that. Honest confessions like Psalm 88…that does not end with emphasis on hope. Just the real “You have taken from me friend and neighbor—darkness is my closest friend.”.
The God of creation desires for you to lay it out on the alter, tears flowing, pain showing, anger forward. He invites us to get it out of our system, not behind closed doors, not edited, not ashamed of the weight of our reality. He leaves room for our expressions of grief, disheartened rage, swells of doubt. He wants to hear all of the things that have manifested their way into the crevices of our souls. So commit to letting that be your offering. Pour that out at his feet. Give what you can, even if it is only questions and doubts or curse words and snot.
Let Him Counsel You
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. (Psalm 51:7-12)
In the same Psalm where we are told to offer our raw brokenness, we see a significant submission of the psalmist back to God: a submission of those very same emotions. The ones that have stemmed from sin as well as the ones that have stemmed from brokenness. The author is saying to God “here I offer you an exchange…all my pain, self inflected and sown by others…and I ask you to clean me out…to tell me where to go…so I can be made new, in your image”.
In a world where autonomy is most prized, giving ours over to the One who can lead us towards paths of righteousness (Psalm 23) will also be seen as a radical act. It will look like self denial, offensive forgiveness, ludicrous peace in un-peaceful circumstances. It will look like giving up what is rightfully ours (including appropriate anger or acceptable rage) in circumstances where the world will want us to embody those things full heartedly.
But it will keep us, steadfast, on that narrow path.
So let your emotions serve you. When you feel the twinge or ache, let it inform your feet of where to run. Not to silence and not to god’s of self indulgence or self righteousness, but to God.
Set on the alter your sacrifice of real, gnarly insides and guts. And then wait for the exchange. Wait at the feet of Christ. For he has never left us, not once.
Your words are clear and encouraging. Thought provoking and settling. Thank you.