The Strange New (Old) World of Discouraging Emotions

 There is a strange “new” trend happening in some Christian circles.

It’s this idea that having feelings and emotions is wrong–sinful, even.

I could argue that men have always been pretty uncomfortable with women’s feelings.

Maybe it’s biology or maybe it’s societal expectations. Who knows? Many (not all) men seem to have quite the hang up with emotions, especially, for some odd reason, a lot of men who claim Christ as King.

Read the following quotes from salon.com. These are quotes from our earliest Church leaders, many whom, unbeknownst to the lay Christian, we get our belief-systems from (such as Augustine):

Church Doctors and Fathers [For women] the very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame. —Saint Clement of Alexandria, Christian theologian (c150-215) 

Pedagogues II, 33, 2
In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die… Woman, you are the gate to hell. —Tertullian, the “father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225)

Woman is a temple built over a sewer. —also Tertullian

Woman was merely man’s helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God. —Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius (354-430)

Woman does not possess the image of God in herself but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, then she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one. —Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius (354-430)

Many of us were taught in childhood not to express our feelings. If something in our home was bothering us and we let our parents know, some of us were told “this is how all families are” or “you’re too sensitive.”

When a person isn’t allowed to have genuine emotions, he or she is left feeling confused, alone and bitter.

Thank God I eventually began to soak up the actual words and actions of Gospel Jesus, as opposed to only trusting what those around me said about him.

Take, for example, his encounter with the woman who washed his feet with her tears. It’s a beautiful picture of a woman displaying every ounce of genuine emotion and being met with compassion and understanding:

Jesus Anointed by a Sinful Woman

36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. 37 When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. 38 Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.

39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”

40 Then Jesus answered his thoughts. “Simon,” he said to the Pharisee, “I have something to say to you.”

“Go ahead, Teacher,” Simon replied.

41 Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people—500 pieces of silver to one and 50 pieces to the other. 42 But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?”

43 Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt.”

“That’s right,” Jesus said. 44 Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.

47 “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” 48 Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”

49 The men at the table said among themselves, “Who is this man, that he goes around forgiving sins?”

50 And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Luke 7, NLT

Here’s the cool thing about this story: Jesus does NOT say Simon is a terrible person. He knows Simon’s story and knows that Simon can only operate from what he knows.

Jesus also doesn’t tell the woman what a terrible person she is. He tells her she has a lot of sins, yes, but he also tells her that her faith–in other words, believing that she could come to Jesus and express love to him with no fear–is what saved her.

[SIDE NOTE: Does it ever, anywhere in the Bible, say the woman with the alabaster jar stopped sinning? Does it ever anywhere in the Bible say ANYONE ever stopped sinning? No!]

But back to the story. This woman clearly had strong emotions. She was broken. Most likely she was a lady of the night. We know this because that was about the only way for an unmarried woman to make a lick of cash back then.

She needed Jesus…and Jesus came through.

There isn’t a single place in the Bible where we are told not to feel our feelings.

But I suspect there are reasons why we are being told not to now.

I think our new world of easily accessible information about the past and how bad things really were for a lot of people groups and genders makes powerful people very afraid. 

When we are forced to walk in the shoes of another, that walking makes us more like Jesus.

But does that come at a price?

Yes, if you believe that someone gaining power means you lose something.

Yes, if you think that you should have freedoms that someone else shouldn’t be allowed to have.

And yes, if you believe that keeping your “safety and certainty” is more important than someone else having the freedom to choose his own path.

Return to the story of Jesus washing the woman’s feet. There's not a smidgen of evidence that Jesus lost any power at all by feeling compassion, or empathy, for this woman.

Because power wasn't what Jesus was after in the first place.