The Inerrancy of Emotions
Listen long enough in almost any conversation about problems, about a decision to be made, about settling a disagreement in a church or a family, and you’ll notice it: We quote our emotions the way we should quote the Bible.
There’s a little proverb at my house: “Everyone has a Bible. For most people, it’s their feelings.”
In our day and place, we cite our feelings, chapter and verse, as though they are authoritative, as though they must be accounted for and reckoned with and obeyed. We speak as though our own affections and instincts are the self-evident truths reality must be conformed to. And we’re told by impressive voices to see it this way. As Harvard and Psychology Today will tell you, emotions should be validated.
Whatever you’re feeling right now is valid.
Feelings are the bedrock of reality.
The effects of this way of thinking are everywhere. Transgenderism didn’t emerge in a vacuum; it appeared plausible to a world already tutored to believe its own emotions were the real reality. We are in a culture that accepts the phrase “your truth” as something meaningful, as an expression of profundity, not an inane oxymoron.
We have been catechized to trust our hearts. Where generations past were instructed in the basics of Christian doctrine, we have been drilled subtly but effectively in the vaguer but less demanding dogma of the religion of self. The trappings of this faith, its Sunday School teachers and liturgy, include our childhood movies, our songs, and our books. Together they have impressed upon us the conviction that whatever is deepest inside us must be legitimate and credible. It should be followed, explored, taken notice of. This faith replaces a quest for virtue with a quest for authenticity. Its pilgrimage isn’t one of self-denial en route to the Celestial City; it’s one of self-actualization en route to so-called empowerment.
We are not taught to be suspicious of our own sinful motives, to protect ourselves from the wickedness of our own hearts, to ask God to sanctify our minds and change our priorities to match His own. Rather, we treat our own discomfort or fear or frustration as sacrosanct, as proof positive something outside ourselves is truly and objectively wrong. Likewise, we treat our happiness or cravings as good and worthwhile pursuits in and of themselves. We give more weight to our moods than to our Bibles.
Feelings are the sacred book, the inspired text of the American popular religion, and our Christian faith has become syncretistic with this pagan superstition. Worship in our churches on the Lord’s Day is not seen as something done for God to honor Him as much as a sort of spiritual recharging for the attenders. It isn’t assessed so much for its faithfulness to God as for its producing the desired effect in the congregants. Your church service is likelier to be held up to the standard of the feelings of those present than the standard of the Word of the One (allegedly) being worshiped.
Feelings have become the Pope of modern Christianity. And we need a Reformation.
The Bible We Actually Live By
All across the country there are pastors who are more concerned with how their people (or at least a certain subset of their people) will feel about or react to a sermon or ministry emphasis than whether it is faithful. And our churches are filled with people who have been trained to see their own feelings and reactions as the truest bellwether. This is why even in good churches we are far more accustomed to make emotional arguments than Biblical ones.
The Councils of Nicea (325 A.D.) and Constantinople (381 A.D.), the two gatherings of church leaders that condemned the heresy of Arianism, each lasted for about three months. That means that for roughly a quarter of a year, on two separate occasions, pastors met to nail down what the Scriptures truly taught about Christ’s divinity. Churches spared their leaders and those leaders invested their time for months on a point of Christology. Contemporary American Christianity doesn’t place anywhere near that premium on sound doctrine and faithfulness. If our leaders gather to discuss the future of American Christianity, even for just a week, they know full well that it had better be in honor of the feelings and sentiments of this or that part of their constituency. The unspoken rule of our day’s Christianity is, “Thou shalt keep them happy. Them. You know the ones.”
Try to imagine the typical pastor today saying, “It’s wrong that you feel that.” Uncomfortable, isn’t it? Feels almost like burning a copy of the Koran. It takes nerve to tell someone their holy book is wrong.
The average pastor from the squishy middle of Evangelicalism is far more likely to react to any negative emotion from a congregant the way a manager at Chick-Fil-A acts when you complain about your order. “I’m sorry that happened. Let me make this right. I’ll be right back. Oh, not at all; it’s my pleasure.” And the typical church member is going to expect him to react that way to his or her negative emotion. After all, the Bible was just brought out and quoted. And we believe the Bible here.
Hearts Lie
Contrary to the American popular religion, my actual Bible tells me I shouldn’t trust my heart. And for good reason. I doubt that I have ever experienced a single day where my heart did not lie to me. I doubt you have, either. Our hearts, this side of glory, are not trustworthy. To be sure, they aren’t lying to us 100% of the time, but then I don’t know any liars who do that. The threshold for trust can’t be, “Well, he doesn’t always lie.”
All of us are predisposed to follow our treacherous hearts, which are very often hostile to God’s ways. The siren song of your own heart is powerful, and no Christian is entirely free of the temptation to trust it more than God’s Word. And therefore Scripture warns us against it.
The Lord said to Moses, ‘Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after. So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God.’
Numbers 15:37-40
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?Jeremiah 17:9
“The heart is deceitful above all things;” if the Bible were this clear about the untrustworthiness of your favorite author or podcaster or preacher, you would stop listening to him tomorrow. But few of us consider our hearts false teachers or untrustworthy guides. Despite Scripture’s clear warnings, we listen to our hearts regularly. And it’s easy to see why we are so prone to overlook the danger. Our hearts are always with us, always whispering or humming or giving speeches or mumbling in their sleep. They are much more difficult to ignore or rebuke than external objects. We can’t turn them off or throw them in the trash or take them down to Goodwill.
But neither are we completely at their mercy. At least, not if we are Christians.
Free to Disobey Your Heart
Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.
Romans 6:16-17
When God enters a man, He does not leave him as He found him. He renovates him. He takes what was a spiritually dead human being, a child of wrath and son of disobedience like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2:1-3) and makes him alive together with Christ, spiritually quickened and able to please God, by grace through faith, for the first time in his life. A Christian is a man who was spiritually powerless and paralyzed, but who by grace has now been made a dwelling place for God’s Holy Spirit.
Every Christian now has a new master and has been invigorated with the ability to obey that master. The heart that was once stray and untrainable has now been tamed and can be made to obey. A Christian is a man given the power to compel his heart to do what it ought, a man given the freedom to disobey his heart in service to a better Lord.
Take advantage of that freedom, Christian. Disobey your heart often. Doubt it. Admonish and rebuke it the way you would a backsliding friend or immature son. Train your heart the way you would a horse or a dog. Don’t submit to it; it isn’t your sovereign.
An Errant Holy Book
The vague religion of American contemporary culture believes that emotions are inerrant. It holds that in their original, inspired autographs, the motions of your heart are free from error and utterly authoritative. Whatever is closest to the bone in your psyche is your hallowed scripture.
Shed that pagan nonsense. Our emotions are far from trustworthy, frequently sinful, and never omniscient. They are the stirrings of a still-sinful soul, and can never be counted on as much as God’s Word to be arbiters of reality. Be suspicious of your feelings. They are not an objective standard. They are not a neutral observer. They are not inherently righteous or even inherently innocent.
Feelings are fallible, often false, and riddled with errors. They make for a terrible holy book.