Feelings & reason

HIDDEN DYNAMICS OF FEELINGS - Many of the feelings that animate us are destructive to others and ourselves. James pointedly asked, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. . . . Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing” (4:1-2; 3:16). 

This explains what happens in many homes and churches. The need is not just to remove the conflict but also to address underlying feelings. The underlying feelings are settled conditions that lie beneath feelings. For example, one can live in the underlying condition of hatred, contempt, hurry, or discouragement but not always have the accompanying feelings. 

We’ve managed the feelings, but we still live in that condition. (Or on the positive side, one can live with the underlying condition of peace but may or may not always have feelings of peacefulness.) Those negative underlying conditions of our character must be addressed. 

Feelings can creep into other areas of our lives, changing the overall tone. They may take over our entire being and so determine the outcome of our lives as a whole. This explains why it is hard to reason with some people. Their mind has been taken over by certain feelings and serves those feelings at all costs. Some people never escape this fearful condition. 

Feelings can be successfully “reasoned with” and corrected by reality only in those who have the habit and are given the grace of listening to reason even when they are expressing violent feelings or are in the grip of them. Otherwise, strong feelings may blot out all else for those who have not been trained to identify, be critical of, and have some distance from their own feelings. A wise person will carefully keep the pathway open to the house of reason and go there regularly to listen.