There is a strain of stoicism in American culture influencing our religious thinking which sees emotions, especially unpleasant ones, as signs of weakness or even as showing forth a lack of faith.
Some people fall into this mindset, which can be reinforced when one reads Scripture passages such as Psalm 42: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my help and my God.” Some are tempted to think from passages like this one that all negative emotions express a lack of faith and hope; at the same time some can be suspicious of positive emotions related to religion, perhaps as an over-correction to the excessive emphasis often given to them.
Yet this leads to problems. The Blessed Mother, paragon of faith that she was, felt anxiety at having lost track of Christ at age 12, yet she was without sin. Christ Himself felt and expressed emotions. He wept at the death of Lazarus and at the fate of Jerusalem. He felt sorrow and anger at the hardheartedness of the Pharisees. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers. He experienced joy in the Holy Spirit.
However, if this notion sometimes found in American Christian culture is correct, that would mean that Christ was doing something wrong, disordered, or even sinful. If this were true, Our Lord would not be a perfect man who is God incarnate. Yet God also says in Scripture: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Rom. 12:5). He inspired the Psalmist to proclaim and boast of the consequences of His action: “then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy” (Ps. 126).
So, how should we think of emotions? Catholic psychotherapist Conrad Baars, following St. Thomas Aquinas, said that emotions are good and necessary, and serve as “motors for the will,” the part of us that chooses. They must be affirmed, then guided by upbringing and continual practice, and elevated by grace to be in line with reason, the faculty that discovers and grasps truth. Reason and will both separate man from the animals—they are functions of our immortal rational soul made in the Image and Likeness of God. St. Thomas Aquinas himself says that emotions (or “passions” as he calls them) are common to both man and non-rational animals, but it is unique to humans that our emotions are guided by reason and thus participate in its acts (ST I-II Q. 24, Art 1, ad. 1-3).
So, if emotions are aligned with objective truth, they are good. They serve as a “motor” for the will, to move us and help us to make good choices. Yet if they are contrary to what is true, they are examples of disordered passion not aligned with truth. We can see a clear and unfortunately too common example of this in a woman who is in love with a controlling and possessive man, and who ignores or rejects the counsel of her relatives who can see the clear red flags, because she is blinded by emotions contrary to truth.
Emotions can convey vital information. For example, anger is a response to perceived injustice, designed to spur us to act against it. When we feel anger, we should evaluate it. Is there truly an injustice here? If so, is my anger directed towards the right object—this person or that? Is it felt in the right amount, or is my anger excessive for the situation? Am I feeling it at the right times, or is it dominating me when I am not experiencing the injustice? Is my response to the anger that I feel aligned with moral truth?
Baars directs us to plan rationally to address real instances of injustice—for instance, by speaking with an offender at an opportune time to resolve an issue—and thus affirms properly ordered actions of just and rightful anger. The capital sin of “anger” or “wrath” as it is sometimes translated, refers to anger that is directed towards the wrong person or thing, or is immoderate, or at the wrong time. One can sin both by giving free rein to excessive anger, or by too little anger when facing an evil that warrants it. The Holy Spirit says through St. Paul: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Eph. 4:26-27).
So, when Scripture speaks of emotions like anxiety or sorrow being a sign of a lack of faith, it is not disparaging emotions as such. Sometimes, it is speaking of a willful, deliberate distrust of God which can be the cause of these feelings, not the fleeting feelings themselves. Other times, it is speaking of emotions which are at odds with reason, at odds with truth which reason discovers and knows. This includes the Divine Reason of God transmitted by faith to us, by which, as the First Vatican Council teaches, we know both truths which could be known by human reason alone (such as God’s existence, the existence of an immortal soul, or the contents of the natural moral law) but by faith are known with greater Divine certainty in order that they may be easily grasped by all people with no doubt or error, as well as truths above human power which God has revealed to us (like God being a Trinity). As stated in Vatican I Chapter 3 of Session 3:
Faith, which is the beginning of human salvation, the Catholic Church professes to be a supernatural virtue, by means of which, with the grace of God inspiring and assisting us, we believe to be true what He has revealed, not because we perceive its intrinsic truth by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God himself, who makes the revelation and can neither deceive nor be deceived.
This Divine Revelation known by faith is confirmed to reason as Divine in origin by the presence of miracles (like Christ’s Resurrection) and the fulfillment of prophecy. In other words, the all-knowing and all-truthful God has told us things about Himself that we could not know ourselves, and so when Christ tells us not to be anxious about tomorrow, He is not forbidding all anxiety as such, but only that which is at odds with the truth about God and His Providence which has been told to us. On the basis of this truth, we trust.
The question for us, fallen and afflicted with the consequences of Original Sin is whether our emotions such as anger, sorrow, joy (for one can rejoice in evil as a false good), and so forth, which are in and of themselves good and given by God, are in line with objective truth as known by reason and faith, which is a higher knowledge. The answer is, as Christ Himself did, to let our emotions live and breathe but be guided by knowledge of the truth, for Our Lord, by taking on human emotions, has sanctified them.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
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