Emotions Are Not the Enemy

Every human being experiences the ebb and flow of emotion. Some ride an extremely tempestuous emotional ocean; others try to keep their feelings submerged. Teachers not only have to understand their own "mood tides " but also need to be wisely aware of how students under their care are faring as well. Below is an excerpt from Ron Horton’s Mood Tides: Divine Purpose in the Rhythms of Life, a study of emotions as a natural and intended part of God’s plan for completing us as Christians.

It is true, and deserves emphasis, that even the good things of creation, those God Himself cares for and cares about, can become sinful preoccupations if our love for them is allowed to outrank our love for God. Music is a worthy love but not if it is loved more than God. Children ought to be loved as God loves them, but even parental love can be idolatrous if it exceeds a love for God. And so it is with all our worthy attachments. "Lovest thou me more than these?" was the searching question put to Peter by the Savior (John 21:15). It is evil to worship and serve the creation more than the Creator (Rom. 1:25), even in things legitimate and benign. Yet Scripture sanctions an affection for the natural goods that come to us from above, fleeting as they may be, if we receive them gratefully and in a wisely discriminating way.

Duties derive from loves and are coranked with them. This truth was available to Israel long before it was restated by Jesus. When challenged by a Pharisee to enunciate the first commandment in the Law—the highest of all duties—Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:4–5. "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." He coupled the first commandment with a second commandment "like unto" the first, quoting from Leviticus 19:18: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Having conjoined these duties from the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus underscored their fundamental, all-inclusive importance. "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:37–40). That matters of duty are matters of love was reiterated by Paul, when he wrote that "love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10).

A proper ordering of loves justifies and even enforces love in proper scale for all objects to which God has assigned value. The love of God requires the love of one’s neighbor, and the love of one’s neighbor requires as a benchmark the love of one’s self. The love of one’s body is a benchmark for the love of one’s wife (Eph. 5:28–29). The implications are vast. Until a man loves God supremely, he cannot love his wife and children as he should. He cannot care about his acquaintances and other fellow human beings as fully and truly as he should. He cannot rightly love even himself.

This two-sided truth—that the exclusive love for God ("with all thine heart") is not exclusive—lies at the heart of our understanding the love of ourselves. Satan would have us think we must love either God or ourselves, persuading some to choose love of self over God, and others from sincere love of God to reject natural personal desires from a false sense of spiritual duty. Heaven smiles on passionate human love in the Song of Songs. There is warmth in the description of Jacob’s long service for Rachel—seven years which "seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her" (Gen. 29:20). One of earth’s wonders for Solomon was "the way of a man with a maid" (Prov. 30:19).

Satan also tries to convince us that love of others must compete with love of self, when the deep truth is that putting others’ good ahead of one’s own in no way threatens one’s own good. We have noted that when a husband in sacrificial, affectionate love seeks his wife’s good, he is also, without intending so, gaining his own. His love will be returned with interest. A surpassing concern for the good of others and beyond that for the good of God is the condition for one’s own good and the means of enlarging it. It is an inescapable universal truth that all good flows from subordination within the will of God.

This subordination distributes value without diminishing it. Explaining subordination in the family structure, Paul finds an example in the executive order of the Godhead, in which the Son accepts the headship of the Father not just from duty but voluntarily from mutual love. So should the husband be subject to Christ, his Head, and the wife to her head, the husband—an order elaborated in Ephesians 5. In fact, all should "be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility," wrote Peter (1 Pet. 5:5). Peter was quick to add that the way of submission is not the way of personal loss. "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time" (1 Pet. 5:6; see also Luke 14:11; 18:14). "All things are yours," said Paul, whether "things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s" (1 Cor. 3:21–23).

Even small enjoyments may be considered "ours." The prophet speaks of happier times to come in Israel when "the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof" (Zech. 8:5). May we not suppose that just as God values the delights of children, He is pleased to grant us our delights as we keep our loves in their proper order? The delicate touches of His artistry in a beautiful sunset need not be beneath our notice. Nor need we ignore the beauty of a flower or in the song of a bird. The works of gifted musicians and painters and craftsman in joyous imitation of His own creative skill have their rightful place in our estimation. If He cares enough about what we might consider trifles of His creation to shower attention upon them, beautifying them beyond necessity, dressing them in fragile splendor, He must care about the small objects of our interests and desires as well.

When we put the love of God foremost, we embrace an entire universe of values in which each love is rightly directed and enhanced. All that is false and perverse in self-love—the lusts of eyes and flesh, the pride of life; competitive self-serving and self-honoring—is excluded. All loves are rectified and adjusted to one another in due downward honor—harmonized, enriched, and enhanced. We may love ourselves truly when, and only when, we truly and more greatly love our God.