A Christian Approach to Emotions

Untangling Emotions by J. Alasdair Groves and Winston T. Smith 

Kymberli Cook: 

Welcome to The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook, and I'm the assistant director at the Hendricks Center here at DTS. Today, we are going to be discussing a Christian approach to emotions. I am joined by the wonderful, and I was going to say dashing, but am I allowed to say dashing? 

Milyce Pipkin: 

I love you. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I think you're wonderful. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Oh, dash. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Dashing, Milyce Pipkin, who's the associate of communications at the Hendricks Center with me. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Yay. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And we just absolutely adore her. Milyce has a story past with broadcast journalism, and you've served as a co-host on several of the podcast, so it's lovely to have you back. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Glad to be back, Kym. 

Kymberli Cook: 

We're thrilled to be joined by Alasdair Groves, who is the executive director of CCEF, which is the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation. Alasdair, we're just thrilled to have you here with us today too. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Well, thank you so much for having me on. I'm really looking forward to this. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Wonderful. We're really, really excited to have you, because you know a lot more about emotions than we do. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

We feel them, but we're not the experts. 

Alasdair Groves: 

We'll see. We'll see. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So we're thrilled to have you walking us through. You've done a lot of thought in this area. I've heard you speak and I've read some of your work, and I know that you have thought deeply in this area, so how did you end up digging into all of this and saying, "You know what? I think I'm really going to think through emotions"? How did you land there? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Well, I'm tempted to give you the long story that starts with, "Well, I was born into a family where…" But the short version is I did grow up in a home where there was a lot of value placed on thinking about what somebody else would be thinking or feeling, and there was a lot of value placed on politeness and consideration. That had its faults at times, when you weren't supposed to say what you wanted, you had to figure out what the other person wanted, and say what they wanted is what you wanted, so it could get complicated and unhelpful at times. But yeah, I was raised to think about, "What's somebody else thinking here?" and ended up as a counselor, I think partly because of that. 

In counseling, I just began to realize, particularly around the emotion of anger, people struggle and come to counseling a lot because of their emotions and their struggles with their emotions, or the emotions of people around them or the emotions I feel about your emotions that I can't control or whatever. In particular, I started to realize that anger, it felt like our culture didn't have a good beat on what was actually happening with anger. The idea was you have to express anger in order to get rid of it, but then it seems like the more you express it, actually the more you reinforce it. 

So, it just got me thinking about it, so I wrote a little paper that never got published anywhere, and I wisely, through the love of some friends, was able to throw it away. But one of my colleagues knew that I'd written this and said, "Hey, I've been thinking about this too, we should think about a book project." So from there, spent about four years writing a book together, and that really made us think more holistically about emotions in general, so I've been thinking about it forever, but that's the more focused project. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So I'm curious, what were your conclusions about anger that were never aired? 

Milyce Pipkin: 

We're going straight in there for the good stuff. 

Alasdair Groves: 

That's right. That's right. Now you're making me feel frustrated. No. The actual conclusions have come out in the book, so it was more that the initial attempt to articulate it was pretty ugly. The conclusion would run something like this, our culture talks about blowing off steam, getting it off your chest, airing your grievances. It's like everyone is like a tea kettle with emotions inside, especially anger. The idea is, let out the steam, and things will kind of settle back and take the pressure off, and you'll be okay. I began to realize, what I was seeing in counseling was much more like your emotions are like muscles, and the more you exercise and the stronger they get. 

So you might go to the gym and do a hard workout, and come out feeling spent, deescalated, and down like, "Oh, okay. It felt good to just talk about that," but everything that was going on inside you that was making you angry, the next time the thing comes up, now you're actually all the more amped up about it. The conclusion about anger is really a conclusion more broadly about emotions, which is the things we love, care about, value, and treasure drive what we feel. So, we feel things because we love things, actually, if you're not able to deal with what you love and what's good and bad going on there, at the worship level, you're not going to get a healthy set of emotions. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

I love that, because typically you do become more angry at the people you love the most, and so that's a good explanation of why we're doing that. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Absolutely. 

Kymberli Cook: 

It's that cycle, huh? 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Yeah. 

Alasdair Groves: 

You care about them. You're right. The closer an injustice is to you, the more you get angry. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Good stuff. I also love that you said you were reared that way, so you're wired to love other people well, and that's very biblical, because we're supposed to love one another and love God, love one another, and that's what you were raised with, so how fitting that you would come and do this kind of work as a counselor and then write a book like this? 

Alasdair Groves: 

It is such a gift. I had just the most wonderful parents you could ever want, and both of them, in different ways, just gave me such a picture of, "Yeah. We're here to love each other, and that's at the center of what we're called to do." So yeah, I can't take any credit for being pointed in the right direction, regularly and for years. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So, I have to ask though, going back to what you said about worship and worship being linked with emotion, to a degree, and how you're presenting it, what does that have to do or how do you address that? We'll get into, for a Christian. We talked about, the title of the podcast is a Christian approach to emotions, so we'll get to that distinctive in a second. But for the un-believer, for someone who doesn't have that, how do you work that out? How do you present that to them? Is it just a value, or how do you present that? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah, sure. It's a great question. So let me start by saying emotions work in exactly the same way fundamentally for Christians and non-Christian. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Of course, yeah. 

Alasdair Groves: 

What you believe is it irrelevant, and it really is a matter of love, value, treasure, care about. When I use the word worship, using it in the Bob Dylan Sense. Everybody worships something, and you've got to worship. You can't help but worship. When you stand and look at your favorite piece of art, you hear your favorite piece of music, or you see a beautiful sunset, or you're really into this guy or a girl, or you have a successful project at work, your immediate instinct, and CS Lewis says this brilliantly in one of his pieces, I can't remember which, is to praise it, is to speak of its good. You want to show somebody else and say, "Isn't this good? Isn't this cool? Isn't this exciting?" 

You want to share the joy. You want to praise and speak the glories of what it is that you have seen, cared about, and felt. So that instinct, that worship is the orientation of your being, your soul, your heart, your life, your care and concern towards some object that you think is worthy, is worthwhile. As Christians, we believe that the only true objects appropriately of worship is God, but we also believe that every good thing in the world is intended to lead to worship of him. So when you see a great painting, you say, "Oh wow. They did such a great job making that. When someone gives you an amazing gift, you say, "Oh. Thank you so much," so worship is a way of saying thank you. It's a way of saying, "This is amazing." It's a way of saying, "I care about this, and this is well done." 

Milyce Pipkin: 

So Kym and I were talking yesterday when we were just kind of briefing and going over what we wanted to make sure we covered with you, because there's so many different areas that we can go into when we talk about emotions, and I love something. 

Alasdair Groves: 

I'm glad we have three hours. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Yeah. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Hang with us, those of you who are listening. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

So I love something that Kym came up with. She said, in this conversation, we're going to be looking at the spectrum of from one side, where it's super, super good to have these emotions, and then the other side where it's really not good. And so I guess that's where we land now, and how do you see that? What do we consider good emotions, and how do we consider it bad? I guess that would have to be based on what the say if the Lord, the Bible itself, the word of God. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, just to clarify, I think I was trying to think of a spectrum on what it would look like to handle emotion in an improper way. On one side of the spectrum would be, "Emotions are bad, and they're always bad, and we should never engage them," and then the other side of the spectrum, which is just as unhealthy, would be, "Emotions are wonderful and good, and we should always just be beholden to their whims." Then, presumably we should be somewhere- 

Milyce Pipkin: 

In the middle. 

Kymberli Cook: 

In the middle. But that was something we came up with. What are your thoughts on that? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Well, I've got a couple thoughts. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I figured you might. 

Alasdair Groves: 

And the two of you together, you're really putting a number of issues on the table, so I'll try to be as brief as I can, and then you can follow up in whatever pieces are most interesting to you to take further. So the first thing I would say is to say, I think you're absolutely right to identify, there's two ends of the spectrum. One is a sort of smushed down emotions side. The other is a sort of glorify and even maybe worship at the altar of emotions side, but even there, there's some complexity. I would say, typically what I find is, in a more conservative, certainly more Christian setting, you're going to get more of the, "Emotions are dangerous, bad. We don't want to be led by them. We need to be in control of our emotions. We need to smush the bad emotions," and often there's sort of a good list, bad list of emotions, right? So you're supposed to feel peace, contentment, joy, et cetera. 

You're not supposed to feel sorrow, anger, fear, discouragement, et cetera. That has to do with, "Well, if you believe that God is good and he's in control, then of course, why would you ever feel discouraged if he's in control and he is bringing good things?" which there's a pretty strong case to be made there, right? So let me respond to that side first, and then I'll speak to the other side in a moment. What I would fundamentally say is the main issue with that A-list, good list, bad list, B-list of emotions, and so you want to squash all the bad ones and live only with the good ones is it just doesn't line up with scripture. That's actually not what you see scripture doing. You have to throw out enormous amounts of the book of Psalms. You have to throw out the whole book of lamentations. You have to throw out Job. You have to throw out many different prayers and chunks throughout the Old Testament, Moses, David. You've got to get rid of significant chunks of Paul. You've got Peter to deal with. You've got Jesus, himself. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. I was going to say, and emotions ascribed to God in the scripture. Yes. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Garden of Gethsemane. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Right. God is the most angry character in the Bible. He's also the most compassionate character. See? So you've just got emotion all over the place in the scriptures, and the only way I know of to say is to say there are good emotions. Bear with me on that term. Good emotions are emotions that reflect God's emotions. So if God loves something, we should love it. If God hates something, we should hate it. If God says, "This is right and good and brings joy to my heart," then we want to have it bring joy to our hearts as well. If God says, "This is destructive and terrible, and I grieve that it exists," then we should think it's destructive and terrible and grieve that it exists. What's actually important about emotions is not squashing bad ones. 

There's actually a godly way to be angry. There's a godly way to be sad. There's a godly way even to be discouraged and afraid. Paul talks about having anxiety for the churches, because he knows what's up against them. 2 Corinthians 11:28 was a revolutionary verse for me about good, healthy, godly anxiety that comes from loving Jesus, loving his church, and recognizing the persecution, temptation, et cetera that hits them. So that's my attempt to say, if you're on the side that says, "Oh, yeah. There's a bunch of bad emotions you should never feel, and you should repent your way out of them as fast as possible," I would say slow down. Scripture paints a different picture. I can talk about the other side in a moment, but do you want to follow up on anything there before I move to the other? 

Milyce Pipkin: 

No, that's good. You're right spot on. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah, no. I really like what you have to say there, and I think it would be helpful before we dig in even further for you to talk to the other side, those who would revel in emotion, unhindered. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah, so the complexity on that side, and so I would say in the more churchy world, at least the church world that I swim in, the tendency, the dominant tendency tends to be the side I just talked about. In the more secular world that I live in and swim in, outside the church, it's the opposite. The tendency is, your emotions are the most important thing about you, how you feel is the most important thing about you, what you feel ought to define you and the world around you. There is no quest more important than feeling good about yourself, in particular. Make of yourself something that you feel good about. That that would be the modern quest or the post postmodern quest if you want to be technical or whatever. 

It's not quite as simple as saying, "Embrace all emotions," right? There's lots of times where the world we live in would say, "Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry you feel that way. That's terrible. You shouldn't have to feel that way. The most important thing in your life is that you stop feeling that way, so do whatever you have to do. Change whatever you have to change. Push whatever you've got to push in order to feel the way you want to feel." So you having the feelings you want, that is the central aspect of life, and so the good grain of truth in that is what we feel really does tell us something about who we are, right? I'm saying what we love flows into what we feel, so therefore what we feel tells us something about what we love and what we care about and value. Well, that's really important. 

So I'm happy for us to accept that emotion and identity are strongly connected. The problem is it's utterly backwards, and it sets emotion as the slave driver, the God over you demanding things, and the only satisfying life is a life full constantly of satisfying, authentic feelings, and everything else is secondary to that. It's radically opposed to scripture. It also just doesn't work. Most of us have tried at different times to do that. It breaks down, always. It always breaks down. A, you can't live feeling deep satisfaction at all times, especially not if your life is not founded in a God who made you and gave you an identity. But secondly, it's just not going to work. You're going to always want to feel a certain way, and life circumstances that are bigger than you, out of your control, are not going to allow you those feelings. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, and I'm going to speak to my current life circumstance, because here comes a cartoon reference, but I have two small children. But it's kind of like what you're saying, in support of what you're saying, even I guess from the "secular," though we're not like the secular side of the world. Sort of. I think it's Pete doctor behind it, so maybe not, but is inside out, where that's the message there, is you can't always have joy. It's like there's sadness, and you have to recognize the real situations where sadness is appropriate and is healthy. 

Like you're saying, it's actually impossible to live a life like that. So I do have a follow-up question to that whole conversation, which is what would your response be to somebody who would say that emotions are neutral, and is that what you're saying, and/or are you saying that they're more like a litmus test for our soul, as far as what we love, or can they be neutral and bad? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Sure. 

Kymberli Cook: 

What do you say about, especially people who talk about the neutrality of emotions, "They can be good or bad"? Is that kind of what you're saying as well? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Sure. Yeah, that's a great question, Kym. I guess I have a principled answer, and I have a pragmatic answer to that. The principled answer is, emotions are literally never neutral. They are always either good or bad. They're always either right or wrong, so I actually would speak about right and wrong emotions, but it would always be fundamentally dictated by, "Is your love pointed in the right direction?" 

So to the extent that you are loving the way you ought to be loving, worshiping, valuing, treasuring, caring about the right things, the way that God does, then the emotions that flow out of that are going to be right and good. Whether that's utter tragic, weeping, like Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, or whether that's rejoicing in ecstasy, it's good and godly insofar as you are weeping about or rejoicing over what God weeps about or rejoices over. So in principle, pointing the same direction as God is the answer, and emotions are always therefore morally freighted on some level. My practical answer is 99 times out of 100, if I hear somebody say, "Emotions are neutral," I'm thrilled. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Because of the stifling stuff? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Well, exactly. Usually the problem is someone saying, "Fear is always bad, and contentment is always good." I mean, look at in Jeremiah. When Jeremiah says, "Here are your leaders preaching to you, "Peace, peace, peace," when there is no peace, right? You're feeling peaceful, and the leaders are feeling peaceful. They shouldn't be. They should be ashamed. They should be deeply upset by what's going on here. I've not done heroin, I'm happy to say, but I hear that heroin is an incredibly contentment producing experience. You should not be content if you're doing heroin. You should not be content if you're getting away with having an affair. That's not a good contentment. 

So there's bad contentment. There's good discouragement. There's good anger. There's good fear. So if someone says, "Well, actually, emotions are neutral," and means essentially, "There can be good and bad in any kind of emotion," I feel like that's a win at 99 times out of 100. I'm not going to even push back, and I'm going to say, "Yeah. Absolutely. That's right." If we're sitting across a theology book or we have six hours, or I'm on a podcast, we're going to put direct questions to me, that's my one time out of 100 where I'll pull something else out and say, "Well, technically, it's actually the opposite of that," but functionally, if people can get in the neutral mindset, that is going to tend to carry them good places rather than bad places," unless they really get deep in the weeds. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

I heard everything you said, and it's good. The thing that comes to mind for me is motivation. Maybe check your motivation. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Perfect. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

That can help you out a lot when it comes to whether you're in the middle of that thing or whether you're on either side of the pendulum, good or bad. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Well said. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Another interesting thing, Kym, I don't want to go for it, but I was just thinking too, something that came to mind was reading in your book, Untangling Emotions, was where these emotions are coming from, the mind or the heart, the brain or the heart or the body, I think you said. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

So can you explain to that? I mean, how do you know whether it's coming from your mind or whether it's coming from the body? Can you kind of- 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah, yeah. Sure. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

… Let us know how that- 

Kymberli Cook: 

Explore your spirit. Because you're talking about your soul's affections kind of thing. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Yeah. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Well, I was kidding earlier when I said three hours, but now I kind of do want three hours. Can we do five more episode? 

Kymberli Cook: 

Sure. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

We can answer that question in one minute. No, I'm just kidding. 

Kymberli Cook: 

We can do each emotion for 45 minutes. 

Alasdair Groves: 

That's right. That's right. I actually will answer it in a minute, and then you can follow up in any way you'd like. There's so much here. So starting my minute now here, here's my thought, basically. People are made up, biblically speaking, you hear about the soul slash the heart slash whatever, but all the spiritual aspect of who you are, I would say that all gets one big lump, and the other lump is the body. So you get body and soul, body and heart. I use heart. And so I'd say your emotions always, always, always come from your heart, but your body can break down, and you can feel physically. So your emotions happen. They come from your heart, but you always feel them in your body. You can also have feelings in your body, no connection to your heart, that are the same kind of feeling as what your heart produces on an emotion. 

So if anxiety is an experience that tends to be the clenching of the stomach, the tensing of the shoulders, breaking out in a sweat, feeling maybe mildly nauseous, and your heart rate increasing, et cetera, et cetera, there are all kinds of other things that can cause that. You have thyroid issues, you're going to feel depression completely regardless of if it's your birthday and you just won a million dollars. So there's absolutely a physiological thing that can happen, where it can affect your feelings in ways that you're like, "I feel anxious," and that's a totally fair way to talk. What I am talking about, at the emotional level, is emotion itself, I'm saying, is best understood as a heart, spirit, soul thing that has meaning to it, that sometimes the body goes crazy about or doesn't do well with. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

That was good for a minute response. 

Alasdair Groves: 

I think like a minute, 15. 

Kymberli Cook: 

It was technically a minute and a half. Yeah, I did time it. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Oh. Shoot, shoot. 

Kymberli Cook: 

No, that's interesting. Do you have anything to follow up on that? I'm actually just processing. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Well, and it's a good thing to process when you think about the spectrum. We're commanded in the Bible to love, to have peace, to have all these things, but yet because we live in a fallen world, and we've got some of the opposite going on here as well. In your book, you talk about a few things that are of particular interest to me. Being someone who somewhat deals with anxiety and sometimes depression, in my world, oftentimes you hear people say, "Well, God doesn't give us a spirit of fear." You hear them say that, "It's not good. He doesn't want you to be anxious. Jesus cares for you. Don't have anxiety," but you can't just tell somebody, "Don't have these things. Don't have these emotions." I think you kind of scratched some of that surface here in your book. Can you just help us, I know we've done podcasts on anxiety, fear, and things like that. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Sure. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

But, because we're here with you, just can you just tell us a little bit about some of the things that you try to share with people about these emotions, these particular emotions? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah, sure. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Like, the difficult ones? Is that, yeah. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Exactly. The very difficult ones of anxiety, depression, fear, and those sort things. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Sure. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Yes. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah. In a moment, I'll zoom in on anxiety, just because that's one of the most common, if not the most common emotions, that are hard for us that are out there. Let me start by stating the obvious, which is it different for every person. It is different, and also, if I'm saying what you love leads to what you feel, what you care about leads to what you feel, then there's always going to be something in anxiety that actually tells you something really important about who you are and what you care about. And so I think the first thing I always want to say is, whatever the problem may be and whatever the change needed may be, you don't want to lose the opportunity. 

Your anxieties paint the most accurate map of what you care about of anything in your life. So you may think, "Oh, yeah, I value this more than that." Your anxieties will tell a truer test of, "What do I really value? What do I really care about?" So listening to your emotions, engaging them for even, "what is this telling me about what I value?" is really, really helpful and important, even if the answer is, "And I need to do something very different in how I respond to them." So having said that, your anxiety is saying, "Something I care about is under threat." It could be my physical health and comfort. It could be my child's future. It could be, "Is our church really going to keep growing, or are we going to dwindle?" 

It could be, "There's conflict I have with a friend." It could be, "My mother and I have become more distant, and I don't understand why." It could be. It could be. It could be. There's things we care about, and the more you care, the more anxious you will feel when the threat is present, or the stronger the threat, the more anxious you will feel. Strength of threat, strength of love are going to come together. The kinds of things I would want to say to somebody in anxiety are all the things that scripture emphasizes. The overwhelming emphasis of scripture is, you can run with your anxieties to God. Cast your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. We tend to hear the command, "Cast your anxieties on God." 

Philippians 4, "Be anxious for nothing," and we tend to downplay, "He cares for you," and we downplay the verse that comes right before Philippians 4:6, which is, "The Lord is near," or "The Lord is at hand; therefore, be anxious for nothing." So even the way we hear the command throughout scripture, "Do not fear," it's the most common command in scripture. It's similar, when a five-year-old skins their knee and is running to their mom, crying and saying, "Oh, no. It's never going to get better," and the mommy says, "Don't cry," she's not giving a harsh, cold command. That's a word of comfort, "Oh. Don't cry, baby. It's okay." 

The Lord's speaking the words, "Don't fear," to us. There's really good reason not to fear. "Oh. Don't fear my children. Don't fear, for I am with you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. I am at hand. I am near. I care for you. I care about you. I will uphold you," so that language of trying to help, where is somebody's fear spinning endlessly in their own mind, amping up, their body's getting more and more worked up. And they're trying to control the situation, versus where the anxiety's actually becoming highways to their father's throne room, well beaten paths to jump up in their father's lap yet again, and say, "God, it's scaring the heck out of me again. I don't know what to do. I need help." 

Milyce Pipkin: 

That's good. I try to think sometimes that, this is what comes to me to help me, and maybe it'll help somebody else listening, is I try to think of myself being in the boat. Jesus is in the boat, and he's asleep, and the storm is just going and they're so worried, and I just want to be that person who's asleep on the pillow through the storm. I know we're human and things like that, but it just brings a little solace and a little peace for me sometimes in some of those angst moments. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Amen. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I think it might be helpful just to demonstrate what you're saying, with regard to the different emotions, so if anxiety is what we love being under threat, what is anger as it relates to what we love? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah. Anger is something I love. It has been unjustly treated. Anger is the fundamentally most basically moral emotion that says, "Something wrong has happened, and I care about the fact that it was wrong. I care about the object of the wrong." Joy is, "Something I love and care about has succeeded, grown, been blessed, or is going well and great." Contentment is, "The things that I care about, it is it well with them." Contentment is probably a flavor of joy. 

Sadness is, "Something that I love or care about has been broken or lost, and I no longer am going to be able to enjoy the way I used to. I had an experience, and now it's no longer there. I had a dream even, of what things could be, and now the death of that dream, and the way things could be, there was a joy I felt prospectively looking forward." So I mean, you can literally take any emotion you want, and it's actually helpful to think through what is that. What you'll find is there's probably five, six, seven main bigger categories, and then the English language has 100s and 100s of smaller trails that you can go down. Bitterness is a form of anger, and so on, and so forth. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So I'm curious, in your practice, just because you do encounter this as you're counseling, when you walk people through their emotions, is it that Kymberly would end up having three or four things that it seems usually end up being the things that I love and are threatened or unjustly treated, or does it change throughout time? Does that make sense? Where it's like- 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah, yeah. 

Kymberli Cook: 

… Many of. I'm just using me, so that I'm not throwing anybody else under the bus. I've got my own issues. The issues that I face are largely because of these things that I love. Is that kind of how you walk them through it in a counseling way, as far as how, again, really, like a Christian approach to emotions, like this is a really distinct way, especially when we're talking about trying to orient that love toward God. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah. Well, I'll start by saying my experience is overwhelmingly in the counseling room with Christians, not exclusively but vastly. People who show up to Christian counseling usually are doing so because they have some sort of value for Christian whatever, or their mom dragged them there. That's usually why I end up seeing atheists. The short answer is, I speak from a lopsided experience, but I would bet that what I'm about to say applies even outside of a church context. Most people come in, and however much they bluster and put on a good front outside the counseling room, people tend to feel quite guilty about their emotions. They feel like they are at fault. They feel like they are the problem. I think that's a pretty true, secular or Christian. They might have different flavors and different reasons that are even driving it. 

So all to say, I would usually start not with, "Oh. Let's find these problematic loves in you so that we can reorient you to a better way to live." Usually where I'm starting is, "Actually, there is something legitimate happening in these emotions. Actually, the fact that you love your child, that's a good thing. We're glad that you care about your kid. Now, has that gotten ugly and out of whack? Do you love your child, and do you love that they would have a good reputation too much? Are you so worried about their future, and you'll be devastated if they end up poor, but deeply loving the Lord, because you have a vision for their future that only includes wealth, success in material ways and blah?" Sure, it goes ugly quickly with any emotions. We're sinners. We're broken people, but I will usually start with the good in most situations. 

So as a counselor speaking to other people, where I'm tending to come in is, "You actually are already feeling guilty and like you're the source of the problem in a way that's lost track of the fact that you were made to care about other people. You were made to want things to be right, successful, and flourish." Now, having said that, will it come down to, "Hey, there's probably a few things that I'm loving that are not in a great order here"? Yeah, that's very frequent. Usually it'll come in, not so much like, "Oh. You shouldn't be loving that," but it'll be coming down to, "Let's think about all the different values and loves that are all at play in this situation, and can we see where this one has just gotten really distorted? This one has taken over and way it shouldn't have." 

So usually it's going to be more a distortion, a mis-prioritizing of love and worship, rather than something, you're afraid for your kids. Well, you should love them. You should be concerned about things that are dangerous to them, but now it's leading you to this controllingness, and you are trusting yourself with them rather than the Lord with them. You are trying to fit them into this overly narrow view of what health and goods should be. I guess the last thing I'll say is I'm actually probably more attuned to the fact that, on any given minute of any given day, there are 1000 things you love and care about that are all factoring into how you feel. How did your sports team do last week? Do you even care about sports? How's your mom? What did you have for breakfast? Did you sleep well? How are you feeling about that meeting tomorrow? 

Those are more the backgroundy things. Forget like, "Okay. I have this conflict with my friend, and it's been really hard lately, but also it's been really sweet in my marriage recently, and I've been really thankful for that. Our church is really growing, although it's now coming with more responsibility, and I'm feeling stressed by that." So it's like, you care about all those things, and all of that is mixing itself in your paint bucket of swirling different colors. When we say, "Oh. I feel sad," we mean that the sad thing, the love and loss is the thing that's most prominent for me right now, but there's still a hundred other things pouring into the bucket, and on most days, you don't feel anything that's like, "This is the only one thing I'm feeling." There's this huge mixing bucket, and I say like, "Oh, yeah. I'm doing okay." That's usually what it means when you say, "I'm doing okay." 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. I really appreciate that, and I appreciate the distinction that you made between wrong loves, because I think, at least even when I'm hearing you, and presumably others who might listen and be familiar with the language of affection, affections in theology, and that kind of thing, I think we hear that and we think, "Oh. It's because our affections are poorly placed. Then, that's why we're having these bad emotions." 

But I appreciate the distinction that, I think, and correct me if I'm understanding, if I verbalize it wrong, but I think the distinction you're making is, "No. Actually, there are lots of good affections, because God has gifted us with lots of very good affection. There are many things that we love that are," because like you said, "Because God himself loves those things, and so it's not even right to beat up on ourselves for having the feelings or that kind of thing, because I'm not having peace because I don't fully love God enough." I think that those are really helpful distinctions. Is that a fair distinction? What's your take on the affections as it relates to emotion? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah. Two very short answers to that. Number one, yes, that's a good way to think about it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Okay, good. Passed that test. 

Alasdair Groves: 

And what you're saying is there's a right way to think about the object of my affection, and so there's no good affections that you should have towards pornography. Pornography, as an object, straight up, is bad, problematic, wrong, but the broader category of sexuality and sex, like God made sex, and that's a good thing, and I'm glad for that. There's a right way to feel. So if you take sex as the object, we should be excited and glad for the good of that in marriage, and we should be grieved by that happening outside of marriage, even if it's pleasurable. And so whether that's pornography, fornication of some other sort, or whatever. So the object matters, and it's just sort of, "Well, what do you mean by the object?" is often going to have to be the nuanced conversation? 

But the short answer is, yeah, you're thinking about it exactly right. God gave us affections, and we have some sort of right feeling. We have some sort of feeling towards everything around us, and that's right and good. We are feeling beings. We are meant to have an evaluation, a response to the world. If you see a beautiful sunrise, and you have no reaction to it whatsoever, that's terrible. That's sad. That's a loss. If you see somebody be shot and robbed, and you have no emotion toward that, that's a terrible thing. That's a loss. That's not how humans were made to function, and it's actually a problem. The second half of the answer, and this really could take us down a rabbit hole, so we probably shouldn't, but the language has evolved. So take, I don't know, Jonathan Edwards as your data point, if you want. 

"Treat us on the religious affections". In the olden days, it was affections and passions, were two different words, describing territory that is now entirely covered by emotions. So we'll still talk about affections, but now when we use the word affections, it would actually be a subset underneath emotions, the way we tend to, in common usage, use the word emotions. And passions now is a purely good thing. Then, it was a purely bad thing, so the word passions has really gotten a great facelift for itself. Without getting into the distinction between passions and affections of old, I would say emotions now is a broader word in a way that I'm actually okay with, because I think it nicely captures, we have some kind of reaction to everything. The question is, are we loving it the way God loves it, hating it the way God hates it, or are we actually moving the opposite direction from the Lord? 

Milyce Pipkin: 

So I don't know if this takes us in a different direction or if it just keeps going, but I just want to bring in this, because you mentioned it in your book. How do we go about nourishing the good emotions and then starving not-so-good emotions? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah. Well, I think the first implication of everything I'm saying is I think we need to be slow to even think through what is a good or a bad deal here. I would say I really like the phrase "engaging emotions," rather than squashing, embracing, or even managing. I think engaging comes with more of an honest question. What am I going to find here? As image bearers of God and as broken, fallen sinners, we would expect to find a mixed bag. So in any emotion, we're probably going to find some things that are right, good, loves that are pointed in the right direction and some bad loves that are pointed the wrong direction. 

So I actually tend to think, in terms of nurturing and starving where emotions are concerned, I'm actually more oriented at this point towards nourishing good loves and starving bad loves, rather than nourishing good emotions and starving bad emotions. The implication for emotions is immediate. Well, I shouldn't say immediate. It happens over time, but in other words, you can't nourish a good love without that having some impact on your emotions. You can't starve a bad love without that having some impact on your emotions. But if you're feeling anxious about your child, probably you need to be nurturing a love for them that points you more towards praying for them and trusting them to the Lord, encouraging them, being less of a control freak with them, or running less quickly to Netflix to numb the fact that you're anxious about them. 

In terms of starving, it's going to have to be a, "Okay. I need to not let myself just cycle on this." When I'm talking to my friends and, for the 17th time, I've brought up this thing I'm feeling anxious about with my kids, maybe I should say, "Hey, guys. When you hear me do the thing that I always do when I get going about my daughter, will you just sort of hold up your hand and be like, 'You're doing it'? Because I need this checked. I need the help to be reminded, 'Okay, that's right. Yeah, thank you. My child is in the Lord's hands.'" So anxiety about your child, anger about your work situation, sadness about loss, it's going to give you all kinds of opportunity to actually nourish right loves and to starve bad loves. 

I give a bunch of examples in the book about different ways to think about that, and there's 1000 of them. Probably the single most common one that I find myself talking about, in terms of starving, is just stewing in your head, venting with your mouth, and recognizing those are bad things. Stewing is when I just take the problem to myself, and I don't cast my anxiety, my care, or my heart to the Lord. Venting is when I spew it at you, and I try to blow out the steam, and deal with it by just talking to you about it, which tends to just reinforce the bad loves in an unhelpful way. So the article did sort of make it into the book. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, and it gets too, I think, what you're saying, it even kind of brings it all the way back around to the muscle that you were talking about, and starving the muscle is like, "I refuse to work that out. I refuse to do curls in whatever this is. I know that stays, and I'm going to go nourish it this way." 

Alasdair Groves: 

Right. 

Kymberli Cook: 

That's fascinating. 

Alasdair Groves: 

I mean, just thinking about, the scripture is so full of tangible physiological taste, touch, see, smell, hear kinds of things to strengthen our faith. Baptism, communion, alters on which sacrifices are laid and burned, and you can hear the crackle of the fat as it burns, and you can smell the cooking of the meat, and you sprinkle the blood and you see it. I mean, it's vivid stuff, reminding you of the power of atonement, reminding you of the problem of sin, and the fact that your sin has been consumed. Jesus on the cross, "This is my body and my blood given for you." 

Every time we partake of the elements, we are tasting, seeing, and feeling that there is a hope that reaches to the very most core tangible depths of who we are. I'm all about, especially in hard situations, is there any sort of physiological, tangible, see it, taste it, hear it, feel it, do it kind of experience that I can intentionally participate in that helps me remember what is true, that reinforces to me what is true, whether that's nourishing, whether that's starving, especially if it's nourishing. Let's participate. Let's do it. Let's lean into the fact that we have bodies, and that's where our emotions happen, overflowing from our hearts. Let's let our bodies help us to know in a very physiological, tactile way what's true. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So this is going to have to be the last question, and I hope that it's just kind of a random one that you're like, "That's a ridiculous question, and it doesn't take us too long." 

Alasdair Groves: 

I like it already. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So there might be a naysayer to what you just said, that would say- 

Alasdair Groves: 

Oh, impossible. Everyone's totally convinced by now, right? 

Kymberli Cook: 

I mean, you are very eloquent. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Oh, thanks. Yeah, yeah. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I mean, this is a hypothetical situation. 

Alasdair Groves: 

I've spent a lot of time with the naysayers. Go ahead. 

Kymberli Cook: 

What would you do with someone who says, "Well, that's just kind of brainwashing yourself"? 

Alasdair Groves: 

You mean, all the nourishing, starving stuff? 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. Mm-hmm, and like, "I'm only going to put myself in situations that help me physically taste and see it and keep myself there," that kind of thing. What would you say to that? 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yeah. I mean, I'd probably start by saying, "Yeah. That's a huge danger. That's absolutely a wise thing to be alert to, and it's very easy." In fact, we all do it all the time, so actually, my first instinct is to flip the tables and say, "If you're worried about brainwashing, you are alert to something important." Let me make it this blunt. Every time that you're just feeling antsy about something at work, at home, or a relationship, and you're starting to spin inside, and you turn on a show or you pull out your phone and start scrolling, or you even just try to go send one more email and get one more thing done in a way that just ignores the problem and shoves it aside. 

Rather than running with it to the Lord and saying, "Lord, this is where I'm hurting. This is what I'm worried about. Let me talk to you about my concern," you are brainwashing yourself. You are teaching yourself that what's most important is how I feel. It's more important than dealing with the issue. You're teaching yourself that Netflix is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. Pinterest makes me lie down in green pastures besides still waters. Facebook restores my soul. Instagram lays out a table for me, right? That is brainwashing, and it's really, really common, and we all are tempted by that. I'm picking on technological things, but it doesn't have to be technology. It can be anything. The things we turn to, rather than the good shepherd, when we should be turning with those things to the Good Shepherd, right? 

It's fine to enjoy Netflix, Facebook. And Instagram, and do so in a way that's worshipful, servant hearted, and thankful for the chance to be connected to people, and like, "Oh. That's a great recipe. I can do that for dinner in half the time. Wonderful, I'm glad for that." Worship. But yeah, brainwashing is happening constantly. You are doing it to yourself way, way, way more than you realize. What I'm talking about here, the answer is almost, "Where are the most dangerous places that I am already brainwashing myself? I'm already living as if something that is true isn't true, as if I don't have a good shepherd, as if the Lord can't be trusted to handle my problems, as if avoiding conflict in relationship is actually more loving than candidly moving with courage in for the good of the relationship." 

Every time I'm doing that, I'm brainwashing myself, Lord, will you help me courageously to lean in to what is actually true, to actually see where my emotions are pointing to things I love and care about, that I should be, and I should be moving toward them, and actually, I can trust you with what's hard about it? The anger is actually right, that this is unjust. Now I need to handle that in a godly, constructive, courageous, good-for-the-other-person way, rather than a selfish, fearful, attacking, controlling, blame shifting kind of way, et cetera. So I love that question. That's actually the right thing to be alert to. It presupposes that we're mostly just sort of neutrally walking around doing things in a logical fashion, and occasionally might be brainwashing ourselves by this avoid. I'm talking about the opposite in the end. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And that's why you emphasize the word engaging the emotion. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Yes. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Rather than running away. 

Alasdair Groves: 

To figure out, so we go through a whole four-step process of like, "You've got to identify. You've got to examine. Then, you've got to evaluate, and then you've got to act." By the time you're getting to action, "What do I actually do, nourish or starve?" you've really thought, "What am I feeling? What is going on in this? What am I loving? What am I caring about? Why is it happening in this circumstance? Let's evaluate. What about this is good. What about this is bad?" Now you're making a much more wise and discerning approach to, "Well, let's start attacking the bad stuff, and let's start really amplifying the volume on the good stuff. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I bet you can't just jump to the starve or the nourish, because you have to do the evaluation first. No, that's really helpful. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

There you go. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Which is what all of us do, instinctively. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Exactly. 

Alasdair Groves: 

I hate feeling anxious, so I'm going to stop. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. 

Alasdair Groves: 

I like feeling angry, because it's better than feeling helpless, but we instinctively just take the things we like, push them, and take the things we don't like and get rid of them. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, we are going to have to stop, because we are over time, but Alasdair. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

This was so good. 

Kymberli Cook: 

It's so wonderful. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Yes. 

Alasdair Groves: 

Thank you, guys. This is awesome. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Thank you so much for being here. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, good. Good. We hope you enjoyed it, and thank you, Milyce, for joining us and being a wonderful co-host. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Thanks. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And we also want to thank those of you who are listening. We never want to forget you all. We just would ask you that you would join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.