Real But Not Reliable

There's a line I heard from the stage for years at the church we used to attend: your feelings are real, but they're not reliable. I said it plenty myself. Somebody would be sitting across from me going through something hard, and at some point I'd hand it to them like I was doing them a favor.

I want to be fair to it. The instinct behind that sentence isn't wrong. Feelings can lie to you, and plenty of people have wrecked their lives following one. Nobody who said it to me was trying to shut me down. They were trying to keep me from getting swept away, which is a kind thing to want for someone.

But somewhere along the way that sentence taught me to treat my own heart like a witness who couldn't be trusted. Sad showed up and I cross-examined it. Angry showed up and I asked it to leave. Fear I mostly just didn't bring up. Give that enough years and you get pretty good at not feeling much of anything, and in the church culture I was in, that looked a lot like maturity.

The first crack in that came a couple years ago when I started meeting weekly with a few guys, doing this crazy thing we call triad (I wrote about it here). My friend Chase had been at this longer than I had and had done the slow, uncomfortable work of learning to name what was actually going on inside him, and at some point he brought up Chip Dodd's eight core emotions.

1. Hurt

2. Lonely

3. Sad

4. Anger

5. Fear

6. Shame

7. Guilt

8. Glad

Eight of them, all put there by God on purpose. I remember sitting there realizing I'd spent most of my adult life trying to get rid of seven of them.

So when a few of our close family friends started talking about starting a church this year, and the conversation moved from what we wanted it to be to actually designing it, those eight emotions were the obvious place to start. We named it Rafa House, taken from Exodus 15:26. If you look at the logo, there are eight small marks inside the doorway—a doorway towards healing.

•••

Here's what I think happens when a church tells you your feelings can't be trusted. You don't stop having them, you just get real good at not admitting to them.

The sadness doesn't leave, it goes underground. The anger doesn't dissolve, it turns into something quieter and meaner. The loneliness gets renamed as "just tired." And after a while you've got a room full of people who all say they're "fine", and a good number of them are quietly falling apart in ways nobody has language for. I know this because I was one of them, and I was one of the people telling everyone else to be fine.

The strange part is that the Bible doesn't share our discomfort. Half the psalms would fail the reliability test. David is furious, terrified, lonely, and accusing God of forgetting him, and God put it in the songbook.

“How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?”

— Psalm 13:1-2

When I read that, I don't see a guy keeping his feelings in check. I see a guy bringing all of them to God at full volume, and Scripture calls him a man after God's own heart.

And then there's Jesus. Yeah, that guy. He wept at Lazarus's tomb, even though he knew exactly what he was about to do. He was angry enough in the temple to flip furniture. In Gethsemane he told his friends his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, and then he asked them to stay close (Matthew 26:38). Hebrews says he was tempted in every way we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15), which means the sorrow and the anger and the fear weren't the sin. They were just the being human part.

Paul, for what it's worth, doesn't say don't be angry. He says be angry and don't sin (Ephesians 4:26). He assumes the feeling is coming and he's more concerned with where you take it.

If Jesus is what a whole human being looks like, then a Christian with all his emotions switched off isn't more holy. He might actually just be less alive. I don't think that's the kind of person God was trying to make.

•••

This is where Chip's chart has been helpful to me, so I'll put it here.

Click here for the larger version

The eight feelings run down the middle. To the right of each one is the need it's pointing to, and past that is the gift you get when that need is met.

Sad is pointing at a need for comfort and permission to grieve, and when it gets that, it turns into acceptance.

Anger is pointing at something you care about that's being blocked, and when it's met with support, it becomes passion.

Lonely is asking to belong and to matter, and when it's answered, you end up known.

To the left is what happens when you don't listen. Sad that never gets comforted curdles into self-pity, and self-pity eventually makes you manipulative. Anger you swallow becomes depression or pride, and given enough years, it runs your whole life. Lonely you ignore goes numb, and numb people can be cruel without meaning to.

This little 5 column chart reframed a decade plus of "real but not reliable" which tended to treat the feeling as the problem. Chip treats it as a signal. The feeling is trying to get you somewhere, and it's actually trying to get you somewhere good. You can follow it right toward the need, or you can stuff it and drift left. Either way, it doesn't go away. It just picks a direction.

Rafa (רָפָא) is the Hebrew word for heal. The middle column of that chart is the doorway, where the healing has to start, because you can't get to a need you refuse to name.

•••

So here's what I'd offer, and I want to be clear that I'm offering it as a guy who is still very much in the middle of figuring this out.

The next time something rises up in you, try not to argue with it right away. Name it first, and try to use one of the eight instead of "fine" or "stressed" or "off." Those aren't feelings, they're what you say when you're not sure what's happening under the surface.

Then, as weird as it may sound, try asking what it might need. If it's sad, it probably needs comfort, not a pep talk. If it's angry, something you care about is getting stepped on, and it's worth finding out what. If it's lonely, you might need a person, not a podcast or even just "more scripture". If it's glad, let yourself have it. Actually, that one can be harder than it sounds for some of us.

Like I said, I'm not good at this yet. I still catch myself telling people I'm fine when I'm not, mainly my wife. I still feel anger and immediately start looking for a reason I'm not allowed to. Some weeks at triad I can name what I'm feeling in about four seconds, and other weeks I sit there for a while with nothing but "I don't know." I'm just grateful to at least be asking the question now, which is more than I was doing before.

Your feelings are real, the old line got that part right. Where I think it went wrong is the second half. My feelings have turned out to be pretty reliable, actually. Just not at the job we were asking them to do.

Anger I react to sends me looking for someone to blame.
Anger I name tells me something I care about is being stepped on, and now I know what to go protect.
Fear I react to makes me control everything within reach.
Fear I name tells me where I don't feel secure, and now I know what to ask for.
Same feeling, two very different outcomes, and the only difference is whether I stopped long enough to call it by its name.

So I'd say it a little differently now. Your feelings are real, and they're actually pretty reliable. They just aren't reliable when I react to them but when I stop and listen. And the God who made all eight of them apparently thought that was worth knowing.