Which emotions are good and which are bad? How do you decide which ones go into which category? Is it because some are fun to feel and some, not so much? Or is it because of how people respond to you when you’re feeling them? Regardless of how your lists were developed, most likely, you have lists. And what I often find is that there seems to be a moral aspect to it. We tell ourselves we should or shouldn’t feel certain things.
What if this isn’t actually a thing? And what if it’s getting in the way? Our emotions are important. They matter. They tell us important things about ourselves and about our stories. Most often they are telling us that something matters to us, that it’s important to us in some way. And if something is important to us, it is more helpful to work to understand why than to work to talk ourselves out of it.
Emotions are amoral. Across the board. All of them. Even anger, jealousy, hurt, [insert your least favorite feeling here.] If someone told you otherwise, that’s probably because that’s what they learned somewhere along the way and they were taught wrong, too. The reason these emotions tend to get a bad rap is that the behavior that can sometimes come out of them can be hurtful, disruptive, and messy. Emotions do not justify behavior, but they can help us make sense of it. That’s a post for another day, though.
If we look at this from a faith perspective, Scripture does not create moral codes for emotions. I believe that our emotions are a way that we are image bearers. I believe we are created in God’s image and what we see from the Father, and from Jesus, the image of the invisible God, is a full gamut of emotions. Jealousy, fear, anger, it’s all there. Often, in the Psalms, we see those emotions directed at God. Why do the wicked prosper? Have you abandoned me? Where are you? And those words were preserved across centuries for us.
How would life look different if you gave yourself permission to feel what you feel without judging it or trying to change it? Remember that this is not intended to give you license to rip someone’s head off because they hurt you or offended you. This is about your own work and self-care. Let’s start there.
