Own It!

Deluded, they take shelter behind the wall of repression. It seems a safe place to hide from the cornucopia of feelings and emotions. Denying them, however, is a false security, which can never result in the desired peace.

How can there be anything wrong with having feelings and emotions? They were built into humankind by the Creator, who Himself possesses them. Take jealousy, for instance.

Jealousy is in God’s personality:  “You shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14 ESV). Holy God is to be the One and Only in the marriage covenant entered into with His people; and  He is emotional about preserving it:  “The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies” (Nahum 1:2 ESV). God gets worked up over spiritual adultery.

God also grieves:  “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:5-6 ESV). Yes, God knows how it feels to have heart-stabbing pain. 

Like Father, like Son. Encountering church leaders headstrong on discrediting Him, Jesus “looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart” (Mark 3:5 ESV). And that wasn’t the only time the Son of God showed anger:

In the Temple he discovered cattle and sheep dealers and pigeon-sellers, as well as money-changers sitting at their tables. So he made a rough whip out of rope and drove the whole lot of them, sheep and cattle as well, out of the Temple. He sent the coins of the money-changers flying and turned their tables upside down. Then he said to the pigeon-dealers, “Take those things out of here. Don’t you dare turn my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered the scripture—‘Zeal for your house has eaten me up’ (John 2:14-17 Phillips).

Jesus was also man enough to cry:

 When Jesus saw Mary weep and noticed the tears of the Jews who came with her, he was deeply moved and visibly distressed.

 “Where have you put him?” he asked.

“Lord, come and see,” they replied, and at this Jesus himself wept.

(John 11:33-35 Phillips)

Obviously, Jesus did not hide from His emotions. Why should we?

Feelings and emotions have no moral value in and of themselves. How one uses free will with the feelings and emotions makes those morally good or bad. The key to emotional health is emotional honesty. Accept the emotion or feeling, admit the emotion or feeling, and decide what action, if any, to give it. Free will enforces the judgment call to act or not to act.

Recently, I, who prided myself on having never told a lie (well, almost never), realized I deluded myself when I did not own up to a feeling. Convincing myself it was for the sake of peace in the relationship and out of kindness for the other person’s feelings, I “sucked up” what I felt was a personal offense time and again. Each time I locked it inside me, and the relationship I had thought would become beautiful corroded bit by bit.

Suppose I had been honest with the other person from the get-go and admitted my feelings were hurt. If I had truthfully said after the first occurrence “That makes me sad” instead of repressing the feeling, perhaps the relationship would not have eroded.

Behind the wall of repression is not a safety zone. Rather, it is a place of delusion. We have the free will not to go there or not to stay there, for “by my God I can leap over a wall” (Psalm 18:29 ESV).