Cereal or toast? Walk to work or drive? Home-educate or mainstream school? And yes Conservative, Labour, or Lib Dem? From the moment we wake, our days are filled with endless choices. Some we make with barely a passing thought, while others can leave us wrestling with self-doubt and fear over failure and regret.
Life is a composition of these individual, every-day, every-moment decisions. Choice is powerful. It can give control, a sense of autonomy and it can handover responsibility, burden and consequence. We seek to be people who both give and make wise, right choices. So how do we do so?
Choosing with your brain
Typically, we envision this to be a cerebral process. A wise consideration or thoughtful discernment. Even as we pray about a decision to make, and search Scripture, I wonder whether more of us associate this with our mental faculties? Of course we do. It would be foolish and impossible not to exercise our minds in making or giving decisions. However, to be people who choose rightly and wisely, we must do so as whole selves, with our whole selves.
Purely cognitive-led choice renders us no higher in worth or dignity that an AI making conclusion based on data analysis. It leaves us living life as stoics rather than saints, assessing the situation and choosing the way that only accepts personal safety and satisfaction. What separates us as people created in the image of God? How we choose to live is never purely cognitive, but requires the engagement of our complete selves, including our emotions.
Choosing with your emotion
Consider all the feelings that rise through the decision-making process. Anticipation, worry, excitement, desire, sorrow, even dread as we imagine future consequence and effect. This is because the choices we make not only bring up emotions, but are also led by them. And if emotions lead choice, the question then arises: what leads the emotions? Here we turn to the wisdom of Augustine of Hippo and his work, ‘City of God’.
Raising the role of emotions can leave us rather uneasy as evangelicals. We are mindful our hearts are deceitful, and rightfully seek to avoid relying on our emotions as leaders. We are mindful of the language around good and bad emotions in the world, of engaging with emotions, of emotional intelligence. Our children are being taught this in school and on the screen. The conversation is continuous, often conflicting and we need wisdom in how we listen and hear God rightly in this noisy world. However, if we are so cautious in the ordering of our emotions, we may be at risk of undermining their rightful place in how we live for God in this world.
'If we are so cautious in the ordering of our emotions, we may be at risk of undermining their rightful place in how we live for God.'
For Augustine, our emotions reveal the state of our wills, the inclination of our hearts. Emotions are acts of the will that confront us with our true selves and so to engage with our emotions is to be confronted with the true direction of our hearts. They show us not only the direction we are facing but the way we should be. Augustine shows that right choice is a matter of right direction and order:
‘If the will is wrongly directed, the emotions will be wrong; if the will is right, the emotions will be not only blameless but praiseworthy.’
There is only one way, one direction towards which we aim and that is the life of the Lord Jesus. We look to His will, His emotions and how they are perfectly ordered and inclined toward the glory of His Heavenly Father. The question then is not about right or wrong emotions, ‘not whether the devout soul is angry but why' says Augustine, ‘not whether it is afraid, but what is the object of its fear.’
Not what you feel, but what makes you feel
Hearts and wills in line with the heart and will of God are hearts that are in their rightfully ordered place under Scripture. As we open God’s Word, we are exercising true emotional engagement, allowing Scripture to subject our minds to God for His direction and assistance, allowing our emotions to be subjected to the leading of the transformed mind, so they may be turned into rightful instruments of justice. Joy then comes with the fulfilment of God’s will and all that brings Him joy. Sadness arises when we face the grief, sin and evil of this world.
The pursuit of the righteous life is the pursuit of moment-by-moment righteous choices and decisions. It is the pursuit of the order and peace of God’s kingdom amid the chaos and disorder of our sinful suffering world. Situationally, there may be disorder and chaos, but God’s City and Kingdom are reigning when emotions are experienced and exhibited in the proper situation. Anger arises alongside Christ’s at the disparaging of God’s name; frustration arises when those who should know better continue in wilful disobedience; grief comes with death and joy arises in fellowship; as compassion rises in the soul of Christ so too it arises in ours.
Let us choose wisely then, and not fear engaging our emotions.
