Sermon Tone Analysis

# EMOTIONAL GROWTH

I} SYMPTOMS OF EMOTIONALLY UNHEALTHY

++The Top Ten Symptoms of Emotionally Unhealthy Spirituality

The pathway for your spiritual life I describe later in this book is radical.

That is, it very likely cuts to the root of your entire approach to following Jesus.

Trimming a few branches by, for example, attending a prayer retreat or adding two new spiritual disciplines to an already-crowded life will not be enough.

The enormousness of the problem is such that only a revolution in our following of Jesus will bring about the lasting, profound change we long for in our lives.

Before I prescribe this pathway, it is essential for us to clearly identify the primary symptoms of emotionally unhealthy spirituality that continue to wreak havoc in our personal lives and our churches.

The following are the top ten symptoms indicating if someone is suffering from a bad case of emotionally unhealthy spirituality:

1.

Using God to run from God

2. Ignoring the emotions of anger, sadness, and fear

3. Dying to the wrong things

4. Denying the past’s impact on the present

5. Dividing our lives into “secular” and “sacred” compartments

6. Doing for God instead of being with God

7. Spiritualizing away conflict

8. Covering over brokenness, weakness, and failure

9. Living without limits

10.

Judging other people’s spiritual journey

1.

Using God to Run from God Few killer viruses are more difficult to discern than this one.

On the surface all appears to be healthy and working, but it’s not.

All those hours and hours spent lost in one Christian book after another . . .

all those many Christian responsibilities outside the home or going from one seminar to another. . .

all that extra time in prayer and Bible study. . . .

At times we use these Christian activities as an unconscious attempt to escape from pain.

In my case, using God to run from God is when I create a great deal of “God-activity” and ignore difficult areas in my life God wants to change.

Some examples:

• When I do God’s work to satisfy me, not him

• When I do things in his name he never asked me to do

• When my prayers are really about God doing my will, not my surrendering to his

• When I demonstrate “Christian behaviors” so significant people think well of me

• When I focus on certain theological points (“ Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way” [1 Corinthians 14: 40]) that are more about my own fears and unresolved issues than concern for God’s truth

• When I use his truth to judge and devalue others

• When I exaggerate my accomplishments for God to subtly compete with others

• When I pronounce, “The Lord told me I should do this” when the truth is,

“I think the Lord told me to do this”

• When I use Scripture to justify the sinful parts of my family, culture, and nation instead of evaluating them under his Lordship

• When I hide behind God talk, deflecting any spotlight on my inner cracks and becoming defensive about my failures

• When I apply biblical truths selectively when it suits my purposes but avoid situations that would require me to make significant life changes

How about an example?

John uses God to validate his strong opinions on issues ranging from the appropriate length of women’s skirts in church to political candidates to gender roles to his inability to negotiate issues with fellow non-Christian managers at work.

He does not listen to or check out the innumerable assumptions he makes about others.

He quickly jumps to conclusions.

His friends, family, and coworkers find him unsafe and condescending.

John then goes on to convince himself he is doing God’s work by misapplying selected verses of Scripture.

“Of course that person hates me,” he says to himself.

“All those who desire to be godly will suffer persecution.”

Ultimately, however, he is using God to run from God.

2. Ignoring the Emotions of Anger, Sadness, and Fear Many of us Christians

believe wholeheartedly that anger, sadness, and fear are sins to be avoided, indicating something is wrong with our spiritual life.

Anger is dangerous and unloving toward others.

Sadness indicates a lack of faith in the promises of God; depression surely reveals a life outside the will of God!

And fear?

The Bible is filled with commands to “not be anxious about anything” and “do not fear” (Philippians 4: 6 and Isaiah 41: 10).

So what do we do?

We try to inflate ourselves with a false confidence to make those feelings go away.

We quote Scripture, pray Scripture, and memorize

Scripture— anything to keep ourselves from being overwhelmed by those feelings!

Like most Christians, I was taught that almost all feelings are unreliable and not to be trusted.

They go up and down and are the last thing we should be attending to in our spiritual lives.

It is true that some Christians live in the extreme of following their feelings in an unhealthy, unbiblical way.

It is more common, however, to encounter Christians who do not believe they have permission to admit their feelings or express them openly.

This applies especially to the more “difficult” feelings of fear, sadness, shame, anger, hurt, and pain.

Yet how can I listen to what God is saying to me and evaluate what is going on inside of me when I am so imprisoned?

To feel is to be human.

To minimize or deny what we feel is a distortion of what it means to be image bearers of our personal God.

To the degree that we are unable to express our emotions, we remain impaired in our ability to love God, others, and ourselves well.

Yet, as we saw in the previous chapter, our feelings are also a component of what it means to be made in the image of God.

To cut them out of our spirituality is to slice off a part of our humanity.

To support what I mistakenly believed about God and my feelings I misapplied the famous illustration below1:

The way I thought my spiritual life should head down the tracks began with the engine, engine, where the driver of the train was fact— what God said in Scripture.

If I felt angry, for example, I needed to start with fact: “What are you angry about, Pete?

So this person lied to you and cheated you.

God is on the throne.

Jesus was lied to and cheated too.

So stop the anger.”

After considering the fact of God’s truth, I considered my faith— the issue of my will.

Did I choose to place my faith in the fact of God’s Word?

Or did I follow my feelings and “fleshly” inclinations, which were not to be trusted?

At the end of the train was the caboose and what was to be trusted least— my feelings.

“Under no circumstances, Pete, rely on your feelings.

The heart is sinful and desperately wicked.

Who can understand it [see Jeremiah 17: 9]?

This will only lead you astray into sin.”

When taken in its entirety the practical implications of such an imbalanced, narrow, biblical belief system are, as we shall see later, enormous.

It leads to a devaluing and repression of the emotional aspect of our humanity that is also made in the image

of God.

Sadly, some of our Christian beliefs and expectations today have, as Thomas Merton wrote, “merely deadened our humanity, instead of setting it free to develop richly, in all its capacities, under the influence of grace.”

3. Dying to the Wrong Things As Iraneus said many centuries ago,

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

True, Jesus did say, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9: 23).

But when we apply this verse rigidly, without qualification from the rest of Scripture, it leads to the very opposite of what God intends.

It results in a narrow, faulty theology that says, “The more miserable you are, the more you suffer, the more God loves you.

Disregard your unique personhood; it has no place in God’s kingdom.”

We are to die to the sinful parts of who we are— such as defensiveness, detachment from others, arrogance, stubbornness, hypocrisy, judgmentalism, a lack of vulnerability— as well as the more obvious sins described for us in Scripture: Do not murder.

Do not steal.

Do not bear false witness.

Speak the truth (Exodus 20: 13– 16 and Ephesians 4: 25).

We are not called by God to die to the “good” parts of who we are.

God never asked us to die to the healthy desires and pleasures of life— to friendships, joy, art,music, beauty, recreation, laughter, and nature.