This lecture is going to be an exercise in pastoral theology. I want us to think about emotions as a positive feature of living as a Christian, particularly how we care for our and others' emotions, and place this is a broader theology of God.
Isaiah 51:11 - sad and mad may be today, but one day we can be sure that we will know gladness forever.
A Gift, a Given.
Part of our lives
'fearfully and wonderfully made' (Ps 139:14) - emotions are a part of who we are created to be. So it saddens me when so many people relegate the emotions to an added extra, a 'leisure pursuit'. A marginal feature of our Christian existence.
Pastors can easily avoid strong emotions, in themselves or in those for whom they are responsible. A pandora's box that we don't want to open lest it distract us from ministry and soak up our time. Or perhaps we think of them as stronger than God, and if we rouse them we may never be able to put them back in their place again.
Part of our ministries
People are scared of ground wars, where emotions may make things more complicated, we prefer to fire shots from afar. (the pulpit?)
Driscoll's model of leadership: prophet, king, priest
But my problem with this, though having some regard for gift mix stuff, is that by using the word priest we bias the sample. Ezra the priest made his audience cry, he didn't comfort.
Emotions: A Christian Gift
Emotions are noble endowments
God graciously granted the Philippians suffering.
Would suggest not a hierarchy of rationality, will and emotions, but that they are a complex mix that function together.
Edwards against the faculty psychology of his forbears. Instead held that our emotions and our thoughts together form this bundle that he called 'the affections'. And that these have a gravitational pull either towards or away from God.
Edwards fought on two fronts. The extreme rationalists and the extreme revivalists with their 'manifestations of the spirit'. This involved book burnings and nudie runs through New London, apparently.
Edwards argues that "the affections are that bundle of me that is either attracted towards God or repelled from him". 'The Religious Affections' is ambitious, trying to write philosophically, pastorally and theologically (and something else I missed) all at the same time.
Assertion that emotions should be ridden and felt in all their power. Recognition that emotions need to be retrained or unpacked. They are a gift from God, and so we do need to receive them, train them and unpack them in order that we honour that gift. In a number of ways, we don't leave emotions where we find them.
- With the help of a pastor or friend
- Through the structure of liturgy
- We can use it to take people through the highs of praise, the lows of confession, etc...
- despite physiological/biochemical contributions
- A new type of therapy being advocated, known as ACT.
The purpose of the gift is to enable us to engage better with the reality with which we face, the environment in which God has placed us. Even a depressive mood can flag for us something that needs to be owned or addressed.
An example of interpreting feeling: Bonhoeffer's letters and poems
Two angels from God. the first is pain. But because that one must be overcome afresh each time, there is a greater angel, joy in God.
Who am I? They often tell me that I am... ... Whoever I am, my God. Thou knowest me. I, lord, am thine.
We must relate all our gifts to the giver.
Emotions and the Glorious Giver
- Answerable to the Giver: Every perfect gift is from above (James 1:17)
- Renewing teleological framework for moral formation. We must realise that we don't have only duties, but an end to which we work towards.
- Emotions aid spiritual integrity: immune system and boundary-riders. We as pastors have the job to help people to know how to do their own work of handling their emotions.
- Godly expression: we need to be giving people examples of safe methods of dealing with emotion. An example of honesty in recognising and sharing our emotions. An example of skilled coaches, in knowing when to push, when to pull back, when to listen, etc...
- For evangelistic opportunities to connect the emotional life to God.
Pastoral care is a theological opportunity to prepare for the City of God.
Questions:
Q: Why don't people feel that our churches are safe places to share emotion.
A: Could be lots of things, many of them are subtle (even furniture arrangement). Do we feel that church is a schoolroom, not a hospital, etc... (I missed lots of a good answer)
Q: How do we deal with the average emotionally disengaged Australian male? Do we try to retrain them emotionally?
A: Yes, we do need to retrain our emotions a bit. The manner, of course, will be difficult and slow. Perhaps an extreme experience of someone else's strong emotion could actually be a good thing. The debrief from that experience then could be the most helpful part of the process then.
Q: Given that we often think we have to be shiny happy people, how do you think that the emotional state in the new heaven will be and how do we step towards that?
A: Avoid glib happiness, but we do want people to be moving towards a healthy emotional state. I do want to see movement, some emotional dynamism. Case by case this will look different. Be realistic about what's achievable.
Q: Thoughts or suggestions on the place of Scripture in pastoral care re emotions?
A: At one level the Scriptural story is a powerful antidote in itself, the movement to the new heavens and new earth. A place for actually using the texts. But don't just flip the Gideon's 'fear' section if someone says they're scared. Be careful how you use, make sure it applies to that particular situation.