Aunty, are we supposed to suppress our emotions?
10 June 2024 |
Dear Aunt Sevvy,
I was brought up in the church being told that you should never trust your feelings. Ellen White appears to say that it is bad—sinful, even—to experience emotions, especially anger, and that emotions can be used by Satan to control me. Is she right?
Signed, Stifled Believer
Dear Stifled,
Even though Ellen White started her spiritual life as a very emotional believer—the Methodists of her day were known as “shouting Methodists,” and she herself was known to be very emotional when she felt under the influence of the Holy Spirit—as she aged she seemed to discourage people from expressing or trusting feelings. A typical example:
“Do not exalt your feelings and be swayed by them, whether they be good, bad, sad, or joyful…. It is the Word of God that is to be your assurance.”
Perhaps this is why we Adventists still tend to be suspicious of feelings, both in worship as well as in personal decisions, and instead focus on ideas, truths, duties, and discipline.
One way to think of emotions is as a shortcut between our subconscious and conscious minds: our subconscious minds are loaded with vast amounts of information, too much for the conscious mind to process, and our emotions inspire action based on that information. That’s why you get an uneasy feeling sometimes and you’re not sure why. It’s why people say things like “Trust your gut,” or ask, “What is your heart telling you?”
Emotions are not in themselves bad or good: it is how we manage them and how we respond to them that matters. Anger is a natural reaction to having your boundaries violated. It is sometimes expressed as a substitute for other emotions, such as fear or pain.
But natural or not, I needn’t tell you that anger not managed properly can destroy relationships and hurt people. Perhaps you’ve known people who are always on a hair-trigger, ready to lash out at any provocation. They aren’t managing their anger, but indulging it. Ellen White wasn’t wrong when she wrote, “How Satan exults when he is enabled to set the soul into a white heat of anger!”
Aunty has heard people justify a violent temper by saying, “Jesus got angry, when he overturned the tables in the temple courtyard.” Yes, but that is hardly the most characteristic of Jesus’ emotions, compared to all the other times that he showed compassion and “turned the other cheek.”
Aunty thinks that we would be emotionally healthier if we could identify and work through our emotions instead of suppressing them or fearing them. We need to listen to what our anger is trying to tell us about ourselves, and allow it to pass without harming ourselves or others.
Aunt Sevvy
Aunt Sevvy has collected her answers into a book! You can get it from Amazon by clicking here.
You can write to Aunt Sevvy at DearAuntSevvy@gmail.com. Your real identity will never be revealed.
