Emotions

I posted a few days ago about a “good” kind of fear. I used purity as an example, but hope that my message was clear that Godly fear can keep us safe from a variety of harmful practices while we (or our children) are still too spiritually immature to obey out of respect and honor.

I’d like to continue to address emotions that we commonly view as being negative. I’ll do this as a series of posts over the next few days and I invite you to come with me and explore our emotions.

Culture tells us that negative emotions are always bad and to be happy, we must rid our lives from them.

I disagree. More importantly, I think that scripture disagrees.

A healthy person will not enjoy negative emotions (I do recognize the element who seek emotional lows so that they can get the “high” of positive, however this is beyond my scope), but we need to understand that just as pain is an indication that something is amiss in our physical body, negative emotions can be a sign that things are wrong in our minds and spirits. Therefore, to get the whole story, we need to determine the origin of the emotion, the purpose of the emotion, and the best way to deal with the emotion.

Emotions come from our perception of reality. Two people may experience the same emotion (fear, anger) but they are based in different origins and thus the appropriate response is going to quite different!  Two people fear a bear attack; both feel that there is a threat to their safety.  One is in Alaska in the summertime; another is walking a sidewalk in Miami Beach.  For one, the fear is a call to action, for the other… well, the fear probably warrants a call to a therapist.  Same emotion, different facts, equals different appropriate actions.

Some emotions I’d like to look at include:

 Anger

Jealousy

Regret

Shame

Whether we like it or not emotions are a part of our humanity, so the more we understand them, the less we have to struggle with them.