It was about ten years ago that I came to a conclusion. It was simple, really. And long overdue. I concluded that most of what the evangelical church taught about emotions was wrong. I was ready for some new thinking about feelings. It was time to correct some beliefs that had been held for 25 years.
I am very grateful to Campus Crusade for Christ and its deeply significant role in introducing me to the Christian faith and discipling me in the basics of the faith. I owe so much to that organization, its people and its resources.
But there is one (actually more than just one, but for now, I am just looking at one) way they led me wrong. In doing this, they were not unique. They were just echoing and passing on the conventional biblical wisdom of the day, which turned out not to be wisdom at all! I now refer to it (and others like it) as:
Conventional unWisdom!
If you ever saw a Four Spiritual Law booklet, you were introduced to the Train illustration. The train consisted of the Engine of Facts, the Coal Car of Faith and the Caboose of Feelings.
Without explaining all that is in this diagram/theology, the main idea for now is that the Caboose of Feelings is unnecessary to the "running of your Christian life." All you really need are the Facts of the Bible, fueled by the Coal Car of Faith.
Over the years, I heard and was taught (over and over) that emotions are suspect, they can be dangerous, we do not rely on emotions, they work against us, they mislead us, we need to rise above them, they will lead you astray, they are counter to faith . . . and on and on it went. I was never fully comfortable with that theology, but since it was the conventional wisdom, I just went with it.
If you want this view fully explained, read James Dobson's book, Emotions: Can You Trust Them? The title tells you his answer. (Actually, don't read it. He is wrong about almost everything he says when it comes to emotions.)
The fundamentalist and evangelical versions of conservative Christianity became even more adamant about the dangers of emotions with the rise of the pentecostal and charismatic emotions. Here, they believed, were emotions run amok, rampantly out of control with disastrous consequences.
So on it went, this evangelical diatribe against emotions. Blissfully unaware of the substantial and solid treatise by one of America's greatest theologians, Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections. As far back as 1746, Edwards had already wisely explored the role of emotions in light of the First Great Awakening that had generated a new level of emotional faith and much controversy. We could have saved ourselves much heartache, much damage to our souls, and much brokenness to our spirits if we would have paid attention to Edwards and not Dobson and his tribe.
Control your emotions we were told. In most cases that meant two things.
First, suppress them. Which means, don't feel them, don't connect with them, but stuff them, ignore them, hide them. Well, the problem with this is that suppressed, repressed, buried emotions are still there. And that is when they become dangerous.
There is a whole world that we could explore out of this.
Second, it meant - reinterpret your emotions as thoughts or beliefs or perspectives!
So, instead of feeling joy, we were told to intellectually consider it, count it, reckon it, affirm it, as joy. It wasn't that the joy of the Lord was our strength. It was our idea or belief system about the joy of the Lord that would be our strength.
Instead of feeling love, we were told that love is really at its highest obedient duty. (I am sure God's heart is delighted when our heart has no emotion or passion for him, just obedient duty!)
Instead of feeling sorrow and grief, we were told to forget these things because we have hope (which by the way was robbed of its affective, emotive aspect and reframed, again, as an intellectual idea to hold).
Taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). We don't do that! Instead, we intellectually discuss ideas about the goodness of God, cognitively affirming He is good (as long as He makes life work out for me, that is) but actually experiencing and "relishing" (J. Edwards as well as the more contemporary John Piper) his goodness. Not much of that in our Christian lives.
All of this, of course, was fueled by the extreme rationalism of modernity which became the norm for Christian faith in the time of modernity. I think this is one of the factors that defined Christianity for evangelicals and fundamentalists as mainly a belief system and not a relationship. (It is time we confront the Brute Fact (Jim Collins) and admit that while we talk about relationship with God, we then promptly forget it and spend our lives arguing about belief systems about all things Christian.)
We were thus diminished. We were lessened. A vital aspect of our humanity was cordoned off, as forbidden to us.
I think this is one reason why the evangelical world has been weak in the areas of art, poetry, music, literature, film, dance, and such. For all those spheres are deeply intertwined with emotions and arise to give expression to them.
I think this is one reason why evangelicals have leaned toward propositional views of faith and life and shied away from story. For story must involve the affections.
I think this is one reason why evangelicals were more interested in exegeting Paul and not experiencing the Psalms. Although, the tragedy is that Paul was deeply experiential and relational in his faith and fully in tune with his emotions.
This post is getting long, so if you want to read some thoughts about the way out . . .
