It seems emotions get short shrift an awful lot. They take a huge backseat typically to the mind and intellect as well as the will. I often see a discussion about things and typically someone will say they don’t want to just deal with it emotionally. Why is it emotions get this treatment?? I know for people like Mark Driscoll that showing emotions i s emasculating. I think his attitude is common all too often everywhere including the Church. As i look at Jesus I see someone who gave great expression to emotions as well as refraining from an alpha male response to the people He encountered. Just wanted to hear all your thoughts on this. Isn’t UR fueled by emotion alot?? Doesn;t the Spirit guide us emotionally?? I see a lot of complaints of how much anti-intellectualism has rooted itself throughout the culture in last deveral decades, but isn’t this a response to the lopsides focus on rationalism and empiricism as well as other post-enlightenment attitudes?? Look forward to your comments 
Hey Robert,
I think the Spirit often does guide if you have the right God. A lot of people try to love people by exercising their “free will”. The truth is that we all seek happiness. I like to love people from the heart and do good because it makes me happy when others are happy and it glorifies God. One of the things that helps me is trusting that God is in control. When I firmly have this I feel safe and secure. It opens me up to be myself. Reality is paradox. God is in control and we are responsible. With God in control I know He holds my future in His hands. This gives me hope. God’s hope and love motivate me. It’s like He has His wings circled around me protecting my spirit. I feel comforted and free to live in the present moment. It reminds me of that scripture:
I feel the Spirits presence around me and His protection. Not that I won’t ever suffer. But I know He will guide me and protect me through it. I don’t try to intellectualize anymore when it comes to God. I simply trust and rest in His presence. I like to go with the flow and be myself and love from the heart no my head.
Robert!
I entirely agree. Of course, rationality is also important and does not necessarily oppose emotion.
Michael- thanks very much for your thoughts. I think it becomes a bit tough to understand what is the Spirit and what is our own emotions, same with our thoughts. I had in mind all the diagrams I have seen over the years saying faith-fact-feeling. In Bible college and Seminary, I saw a lot of teachingas well as people personally shying away from emotions as reliable indicators. i think the problems from hyper charismatic/pentecostals contribute alot to that. Also, emotions do not get the outright treatment throughout the Bible like thinking does. I see emotions as being expressed but not much of actually discussing them, and they have a HUGE impact in our lives!!!
Paidion- thanks buddy!!! I totally agree rational/cognitive are integral to our life i just was pointing out it tends to get overdone. Thoughts are a tough meat whereas emotions are the rare bloody meat 
Hi Robert!
William Barclay, in his daily study bible says this about Mat 5:5 blessed are the meek:
The Bliss Of The God-controlled Life (Mat_5:5)
5:5 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
In our modern English idiom the word meek is hardly one of the honourable words of life. Nowadays it carries with it an idea of spinelessness, and subservience, and mean-spiritedness. It paints the picture of a submissive and ineffective creature. But it so happens that the word meek--in Greek praus (G4239)--was one of the great Greek ethical words.
Aristotle has a great deal to say about the quality of meekness (praotis = G4236). It was Aristotle's fixed method to define every virtue as the mean between two extremes. On the one hand there was the extreme of excess; on the other hand there was the extreme of defect; and in between there was the virtue itself, the happy medium. To take an example, on the one extreme there is the spendthrift; on the other extreme there is the miser; and in between there is the generous man.
Aristotle defines meekness, praotes (G4236), as the mean between orgilotes (see orge, G3709), which means excessive anger, and aorgesia, which means excessive angerlessness. Praotes (G4236), meekness, as Aristotle saw it, is the happy medium between too much and too little anger. And so the first possible translation of this beatitude is:
Blessed is the man who is always angry at the right time, and
never angry at the wrong time.
If we ask what the right time and the wrong time are, we may say as a general rule for life that it is never right to be angry for any insult or injury done to ourselves; that is something that no Christian must ever resent; but that it is often right to be angry at injuries done to other people. Selfish anger is always a sin; selfless anger can be one of the great moral dynamics of the world.
But the word praus (G4239) has a second standard Greek usage. It is the regular word for an animal which has been domesticated, which has been trained to obey the word of command, which has learned to answer to the reins. It is the word for an animal which has learned to accept control. So the second possible translation of this beatitude is:
Blessed is the man who has every instinct, every impulse, every
passion under control. Blessed is the man who is entirely'
self-controlled.
The moment we have stated that, we see that it needs a change. It is not so much the blessing of the man who is self-controlled, for such complete self-control is beyond human capacity; rather, it is the blessing of the man who is completely God-controlled. for only in his service do we find our perfect freedom, and in doing his will our peace.
But there is still a third possible side from which we may approach this beatitude. The Greeks always contrasted they quality which they called praotes (G4236), and which the King James Version translates meekness, with the quality which they called hupselokardia, which means lofty-heartedness. In praotes (G4236) there is the true humility which banishes all pride.
Without humility a man cannot learn, for the first step to learning is the realization of our own ignorance. Quintilian, the great Roman teacher of oratory, said of certain of his scholars, "They would no doubt be excellent students, if they were not already convinced of their own knowledge." No one can teach the man who knows it all already. Without humility there can be no such thing as love, for the very beginning of love is a sense of unworthiness. Without humility there can be no true religion. for all true religion begins with a realization of our own weakness and of our need for God. Man reaches only true manhood when he is always conscious that he is the creature and that God is the Creator, and that without God he can do nothing.
Praotes (G4236) describes humility, the acceptance of the necessity to learn and of the necessity to be forgiven. It describes man's only proper attitude to God. So then, the third possible translation of this beatitude is:
Blessed is the man who has the humility to know his own
ignorance, his own weakness, and his own need.
It is this meekness, Jesus says, which will inherit the earth. It is the fact of history that it has always been the men with this gift of self-control, the men with their passions, and instincts, and impulses under discipline, who have been great. Numbers says of Moses, the greatest leader and the greatest law-giver the world has ever seen: "Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all men that were on the face of the earth" (Num_12:3). Moses was no milk and water character; he was no spineless creature; he could be blazingly angry; but he was a man whose anger was on the leash, only to be released when the time was right. The writer of Proverbs has it: "He that rules his spirit is better than he who takes a city" (Pro_16:32).
It was the lack of that very quality which ruined Alexander the Great, who, in a fit of uncontrolled temper in the middle of a drunken debauch, hurled a spear at his best friend and killed him. No man can lead others until he has mastered himself; no man can serve others until he has subjected himself; no man can be in control of others until he has learned to control himself. But the man who gives himself into the complete control of God will gain this meekness which will indeed enable him to inherit the earth.
It is clear that this word praus (G4239) means far more than the English word meek now means; it is, in fact, clear that there is no one English word which will translate it, although perhaps the word gentle comes nearest to it. The full translation of this third beatitude must read:
O the bliss of the man who is always angry at the right
time and never angry at the wrong time, who has every
instinct, and impulse, and passion under control because
he himself is God-controlled, who has the humility to
realise his own ignorance and his own weakness, for
such a man is a king among men!
I like how Barclay puts this and I thinks says a lot about emotion / Spirit.
Maintenanceman, Great post! Thanks! 
The Bible says when you get angry don’t sin. But we are not to let the sun go down on our wrath. We are to let it go and trust God. Indeed, the beautiful fruits of the Spirit are:
Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, goodness, and self-control. We love God because He first loved us. God opens up the eyes of our hearts to see and behold His beauty and be transformed by it. Not that we never mess up. But when we do God always convicts and restores the beauty of holy love to us. When I get angry I turn it over to God. But by the grace of God go I.
We need to try to put a positive spin on things emotionally. I always enjoy this song from Monty Python’s The life of Brian, which puts a positive spin, on a massive Roman crucifixion (although it is a bit of dark humor) :
Randy,
He he he he he : ***“Merely a flesh wound” *** 
(from Monty Python and the holy grail)
You are right, we need to become part of the solution and not part of the problem!
There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes. - C.S. Lewis
Hi MM- nicely done good sir. I think you excellently laid out the points of Barclay and they truly hit to the direct impact Jesus was making to our essence at the Sermon on the Mount. I think something to be careful of is to avoid a legalistic rendering and allow ourselves room to grow a we mature into self-controlled, Spirit led servants of God
Thanks for the reply to the pm very cool 
But then we miss out on what the Holy Fools’ tradition in Christianity teaches us.
Sholom Aleichem
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
Theodore Isaac Rubin
Bruce Lee
Sorry Randy but I’m not a fool. I’m happy and filled with joy. It’s a holy joy. I don’t make fun of the Holy passion or the holy blood of Christ.
the idea of emotions and self control…
As a father, and a husband, and as someone who at one time managed dozens of workers… The Idea of what the bible calls sobriety (self control) is paramount to being an overcomer in this world.
We are vessels to be used by our MASTER. He gave us anger, sorrow, excitement, love, etc and through our submission to Him we learn. We learn.
Hard lessons some times.
But we serve a merciful King.
Well, I’ve struggled with emotional problems my whole life. But I can say that I am at peace today. Anger is deadly for me. I don’t laugh at the holy blood and passion of Christ. Paul said He was sorrowful yet always rejoicing in His sufferings.
Hi Michael,
I would say for me, and not in any way speaking for the folks on this forum, that my understanding of Christ’s passion should be the ultimate focus of our relationship with Christ.
You and I are both talking about an event which changed our lives. So we do what we can to tell others about this event… In the way God would equip us to do.
He will allow us to do what we need to do in our own time.
Love will win.
Chad
Hi Michael:
It is because of the passion of Christ, that the Holy Fools’ tradition in Christianity lives. But they make fun of the world and of themselves.
And if you are referring to the life of Brian , it’s NOT necessarily making fun of the passion of Christ. It’s an historical comedy piece and Roman crucifixion was the common means of death (unless you fought other gladiators or lions, in the arena). In a similar vein, the Harry Potter series is literature and doesn’t glorify witchcraft, as some fundamentalists would claim.
Hey Maintenance,
I agree love will win. Seeing that God is love then His love must be coupled with hatred towards anybody that tries to harm the objects of His love. God loves His children and He is going to protect them from their enemies who blaspheme and try to attack them. We see this all the time. The love a woman has for her husband and children should be different in degree and extent then she has for someone else’s husband and children. For God to protect His family by destroying evil He is showing His tender love to His children. There is no split brain or schizophrenia going on here. To be a disciple of Christ one must put Him above all else.
We are to love Christ above all else.
Hey Randy,
Thanks for clarifying. If that works for you that’s great. I don’t like to make fun of people though. I’ve never seen Harry Potter. So I don’t know. I like to laugh. But I try to not fill my head with unclean things.
Yes, Michael. The Holy Fools’ tradition in Christianity is a valid historical tradition, having its roots in the Russian Orthodox Church. But you find the fool in other traditions. Like the Heyoka in the Lakota tradition. The biggest problem is avoiding folks like Mr. T.
youtube.com/watch?v=dISKvZetkQI
P.S. If you are a fool or the curious sort, click this YouTube video link - but don’t say I didn’t warn you!