Christianity and Emotions (Part 1)

Few topics are quite as device and complex as the question of emotions and their relation to religion and morality. There are widely differing opinions on the subject, and the subject itself is by necessity somewhat complex and difficult to discuss. Some of you may remember my “Open Letter on Emotions” which I posted a couple of years ago, in which I treated this subject. But that article covered only certain aspects of the controversy, and so I decided to return to the subject and try to give it a more thorough treatment. So, in this and the following two articles, I want to examine the three primary questions relating to emotions: (1) What are emotions? (2) Can emotions be sins or virtues? (3) What is our practical responsibility regarding our emotions? In answering those questions, we will also discuss several related topics, such as whether God has emotions, the purpose of fasting, the definition of courage, the importance of birthday cakes, the rise of violence in western society, and the procedure for asking a girl out on a date.

Before I begin this article, I must state that I am approaching this issue as an amateur philosopher and Wesleyan theologian and not as a trained psychologist. It may seem to border on impertinence to attempt discussion of such matters without the proper training and education. But that's never stopped me before, so why should it now?

I have earned something of a reputation in controversy for being an opponent of the emotional side of man (especially in a religious context) because I feel that some people have tried to create an exclusively emotional religion that is disconnected both from abstract truth and practical righteousness. I think the dangers in that direction are very real. But that does not mean there are no other dangers. And at this point, we do not need merely an attack on emotions but also a defense of them. The answer to misuse is not abuse but proper use. The same essential sanity of financial stewardship is the answer for both spendthrifts and misers.

Emotions are the most transitory part of human life and the most tied to our earthly existence. A man may be consumed with a burning rage or sunk into a hopeless slough of depression or filled with overflowing joy--and yet an hour later be completely over his emotion and not be able to tell you even what caused it. Moreover, that cause might be something very trivial and irrelevant. The weather and our diet have as much to do with our emotions as anything else. Certain chemical stimuli, such as alcohol, can act as a catalyst to create or enflame these emotions beyond all reason. If you take “flesh” in its literal sense (of or relating to the body or bodily existence) then emotions are completely of the flesh and have nothing to do with the spirit. That is why rationalists scorn emotions; that is why mystics try to cleanse the mind of emotions; that is why some moralists are suspicious of the emotions; and that is why, in general, emotions are such a tricky issue for Christian theology. To many people, the ideal human existence would be utterly without emotion, without feeling; to many people, emotions and especially “negative” emotions (like fear or anger) are the enemy.

To begin with, we should make one thing quite clear. Having emotions cannot truly be a moral default for the obvious reason: Jesus, the perfect man, experienced emotions. He rejoiced and was sorrowful and disappointed and even angry. I will not discuss here whether these things should be attributed to His humanity or to His deity or whether that's even a meaningful question. But I do say that if having and showing emotion were truly a moral defect, it could not have been present in the perfect man. But that still doesn't mean they are either good or useful. They might only have been another cross which Christ was compelled to bear. After all, He had a normal human body, with all the weakness and disadvantages that come with that--and surely one of those disadvantages is emotions.

That must be the starting point of our discussion--the relation between our emotions and our physical nature. It is certainly true that there is a strong link between our emotional experiences and our physical existence. The rationalists are right when they point this out. What the rationalists usually forget is that there is also a strong link between our intellectual experiences and our physical existence. Drugs and alcohol can create or inflame the emotions. And they can also deaden or derange the reason. A man's mood is impacted by the weather or his own health and so are his thoughts. In this sense, reason is just as much a part of the “flesh” as the emotions.

And this is the interesting point about reason. Reason is tied to our physical nature and yet transcends it. If human thoughts are entirely due to physical and neurological processes, then human thoughts are meaningless. If we are to believe in reason at all (and if you don't, you should not be reading this article or anything else), then we must believe that this act, so tied to the body, nonetheless transcends the body--that when we are thinking, we are doing something more than just moving around atoms in our heads--that a head is something more than a hat rack or a neuron rack. The mere fact that something is tied to our physical nature does not mean it is entirely physical.

Suppose you were out walking in the woods one day and came suddenly around the bend in the trail to see a wolf crouched in the shadows, its fangs bared, poised as if ready to spring at you. In that moment, several things will happen. Your senses--your eyes and ears and possibly nose--will gather the data about the situation and transmit it to your brain. And your mind will interpret this data, coming to the conclusion that there is indeed a wolf in front of you and that wolves are (generally speaking) dangerous creatures and should be avoided for the sake of safety. That is reason. At the same time, you will probably feel a tightening in your stomach and increase in your heartbeat; perhaps even a throbbing in your ears and a general shaking feeling. And in that moment, you will feel fear; fear of the danger which is before you. That is emotion.

There is definitely a physical side to both the process of reason and the process of the emotion (though it is far more obvious in the second case), but I maintain that neither experience can be fully explained in physical terms. It is probably possible for scientists to use certain physical stimuli to create that feeling of fear on its own. It may be possible for them to rearrange the atoms in your brain so that your reason believes you see a wolf when you don't. But none of that changes the fact that wolves do objectively exist and therefore our rational and emotional response to them is grounded in reality. Our thoughts and feelings regarding the wolf are not merely physical phenomena; they do not merely exist--they mean; they point to a reality beyond themselves. The thoughts in our heads and the feelings in our hearts are like the words on a page. They exist as themselves but they also have a meaning that goes beyond themselves. Some cynics see no transcendent meaning in thoughts or feelings. Illiterate people see no transcendental meaning in words. To some, brains are only a mass of gray matter; to some, books are only a mass of black ink. But for the rest of us, we realize there is a meaning that goes beyond the merely physical facts--and for most of us that meaning is all we know, think, or care about. Nobody, seeing a wolf coming at them in the wood, would immediately think: “There is a processes of nerve relays and synapses inside my head which reveal the presence of a wolf.” For the cause of science and health, it is a good thing somebody thinks about the physical processes of the brain. But for the sake of the sanity and survival of the human race, it is just as well that not too many people think about it.

Thoughts are not merely biological processes. They point to a reality beyond themselves. They are like a sign saying; “Beware the Dog.” They have a referent outside themselves; they can be true or false. And I maintain that the same is true of our emotions. They are not merely biological processes; they point to a reality beyond themselves. Like thoughts, they have a referent and they can (in a much looser sense than thoughts) be “true” or “false.” Fear is a very good example of this. We recognize that there are times when we feel fear when there really is no danger. Many people, for instance, feel fear when they see a spider even though there are relatively few spiders in North America that can actually hurt a human being. Conversely, there are times that we don't feel fear when there IS danger. So, for instance, a child who knew nothing about wolves might see the wolf and feel no fear because they do not understand the danger it posses. There are situations in which fear is the proper emotion to feel and other situations in which it is not.

And while this is not as obvious with other emotions, I believe the same principle holds. There are situations in which joy or sorrow or anger are the proper or fitting emotions to feel and other situations in which they would be inappropriate or incongruous. We do not always have the proper emotions in particular circumstances but the very fact that we recognize that is a testimony to the point I'm making: that like thoughts, emotions can be “true” or “false” because they have a referent; they point to something outside themselves--something which they could not do if they were merely physical events inside our body.

And in stating this, we have already begun to get an idea of the relation of thoughts and emotions. Emotion give content to the reality that thoughts define. They are the colors which fill in the outlines of thought; often smudgy and imprecise and not infrequently going outside the lines, yet still making a complete picture of what would otherwise be a bare sketch. They give substance to what otherwise would be pure form, clothing bones with flesh.

I've heard people describe emotions (specifically, positive emotions) as “the icing on the cake”--that is, something not really necessary and even incidental but nice to have. I think that may be a good attitude to have in certain specific circumstances, but as serious philosophy, I believe it is wrong. Emotions are not merely incidental additions to situations that would be complete without them. They are, just like thoughts, a means of perceiving reality. Imagine a hot surface, say the burner on a stove. It is an objective fact which exists outside of our minds. When we look at it and note its red color and see the number on the dial or perhaps place a thermometer near it, our mind take in this data and deduce the fact that it is hot. That is the intellectual mode of perception. But all that data does not give us the full picture. If you put your hand near enough to feel the heat, that is also a mode of perception. That also gives you information about the nature of the stove. It is more subjective or at least fuzzy; there is no hard and fast way to describe the feeling of heat as there is for actual temperature. But the feeling of heat is a reaction to objective reality. To know how hot something is without actually knowing the feeling of heat would be to know only part of the reality. And, in an analogous way, to know the world intellectually without having any emotions would be to know only part of reality.

All of which is to say this: our emotional reaction to things in life is a mode of perception; it tells us something about reality which we could not find through the mere intellect. To know loss without knowing sorrow would be like knowing temperatures without knowing heat. To know danger without knowing fear would be like knowing food without knowing taste. To go through life without feeling; to experience good fortune without joy; to see wrong without anger; to have loss without sorrow and danger without fear--this would be an imperfect existence. Even if a man had the most accurate thoughts about all things, to know them without feeling any corresponding emotions would be to know only half of them.

Also, if a man went through life like that, he probably wouldn't live very long. Because emotions also play a functional role in life. Again, this is most obvious with fear. It is true in a loose, proverbial way that “There is nothing to fear but fear itself”--but in a more exact, precise sense the lack of fear would be something much more frightening. A man who actually (and not as a hyperbole) feared nothing would almost certainly end up in an early grave. Fear of danger is what drives us to react appropriately; it drives us to avoid or overcome the danger. Both flight and fight require fear as a prerequisite. A man who had no fear of danger would probably just ignore it. But while this is especially true of fear, it is true of all emotions. A man who truly had no emotions would live a probably short and certainly inferior life. If the good brought us no joy, we would not seek for it. If loss brought us no grief, we would not try to avoid it. Just as sensations like pain and hunger are necessary to move us to action so, on a deeper level, the emotions are also necessary to move us to action. People's emotional life differ--some are extremely emotional while others are not--just as people have differing pain tolerance, but that doesn't change the general fact that emotions do serve a necessary purpose and a person who was truly and completely without them would live a paralyzed life like someone without the capacity to feel physical sensations.

Having said all that, we can ask the question: does God have emotions? If emotions were merely physical phenomena within our bodies, then obviously God (who is spirit) would not have them. But as we have already seen, emotions are more than that.  Emotions, just like reason, are a means of perception, they are the way we see and understand reality. And so God, who is all-knowing, who is the source and standard of all reality, obviously knows that reality as well and far better than we do.

God has knowledge and understanding of all things. God is a God of reason. But that doesn't mean God ever sits down and thinks through a syllogism. It means that He has innately the kind of understanding which we can only obtain through a laborious process. So, in the same way, when the Bible attributes emotions to God; when, for example, it says that God is grieved by man's sin, it doesn't mean He has a heavy feeling in His stomach or a tightness in His throat. It means that God has an understanding of the nature of sin which we can only experience as an emotion.

Some theologians say that the verses which describe God as having emotions are metaphors and are describing divine things in human terms. I think the reality is the other way around. Our emotions and feelings are pictures--rather sketchy pictures with a good deal of smudging and blotting--of the reality which God alone can perceive without pictures. When we feel anger at some act of sin, we are seeing for an instant far away and indistinctly what the nature of sin is; something which God sees clearly and constantly. When we feel joy over the repentance of a sinner, that is only a miniature or metaphor for that joy which “shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” (Luke 15:7)

Emotions are a mode of perception about reality and they play an important role in life. The grief we feel at the loss of a friend, let us say, is not merely a physical event in our body (though we do experience it as a physical sensation) nor is it simply a sort of physic foam rising up on the surface of our soul. It is a real reaction to and perception of the nature of the event. And it serves a purpose in driving us to seek the safety and preservation of those we love. And when we experience emotions we are to some degree approximating an experience of God Himself, for we a perceiving (in a limited and incomplete way) the same reality which God can see clearly and consistently.