I want to start this off by saying up front. I am not a theologian , I did not graduate from seminary. So the contents of this blog, as are most blogs, stem from perception, interpretation and personal experience. That being said: I hope you find encouragement if you are one whose mind goes back and forth between scripture and the feelings and emotions you are experiencing. 

First, upon writing, we must first consider that there are multiple translations of bibles. And we must take into consideration that each one of us sees the world through our own bias’ and life experience, which influences our interpretation of scripture.

If you look at the back of your bible, there is a concordance, a dictionary if you will, of specific topics and the scripture that correlates and speaks to the topic.

Ok, enough disclaimers. Here we go.

I grew up in the church. Specifically the Christian Faith, one that for a very long time taught me that feeling and emoting are for the birds, and if you are a real, good, christian, you have your emotions and feelings in check, and no one sees them. I grew up in west texas, which has a reputation of the “pull yourself up by your boot straps and get on with it.”

So, in knowing  all of this. My life experience, by no fault of anyone, taught me that these feelings and emotions I have in me are from satan and are not to be felt or expressed.

 

Let me ask you this, What do you think this is a recipe for?

aggression and anger. 

It left me feeling trapped, unworthy and not enough. Because, despite how hard I tried, I couldn’t make my feelings and emotions go away. So, I learned to fake it. And when that didn’t work, I reverted back to explosions and inappropriate  timing.

SO , what does scripture say?

Here are some references.

Psalm 103:8New International Version (NIV)

⁸ The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.

 

James 1: 19-21 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, ²⁰ because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.²¹ Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

These references are two that we hear often. And yes I get they are just two of them. But here is my point.

For a long time, all the instruction I saw in this was that The Lord was compassionate and gracious and not easily angered and loved much. And that because we are to be like Christ, We are to also be slow to anger, and that if we did become angry we were full of moral filth and not righteous.

There’s a lot of big words. But the bottom line is here was my perception and interpretation: Don’t get angry, don’t express your feelings because if you did , you would sin and sining is bad, and so don’t emote. Don’t feel.

 

This belief I had did not do anything healthy for me, and in fact, pushed me away from spirituality, christianity in a huge way. If God created me with feelings and emotions , but I was not to feel them or express them, then what the hell is the point. Thais manipulative and stupid. 

But here is the thing,

I will never be jesus. I will never be God. Does that give me license to be a complete asshole ? Not at all. But for me, this puts a lot of burden and pressure on me that is unnecessary.

What if we looked at it like this?

God is full of compassion and slow to anger. Full of love. And I, as a human have only been tasked with the objective to love . I cannot love well if the following happens: 

I cannot love well if everyone around me sees me fly off the handle at every injustice.

I cannot love well if I do not show grace and mercy to fellow flawed humans.

I cannot love well if I do not show grace and mercy to myself as a fellow flawed human.

 

We cannot control others, we cannot make them respond differently. We cannot anger them into submission to how we think things should be.

We’re all living this life the best we know how. Its hard.

So, I will choose to love. To be mindful of my own reactions. and that will be it.

Tomorrow, I want to look at how this relates to injustice.

Be encouraged,

Rachael