EMOTIONS
Living life in colour
By Graham Beynon. IVP. 179 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978 1 844 745 890
There are plenty of books about when things go wrong with our emotions — books on depression, etc. But I can’t think of another book which addresses what part emotions should play in the normal Christian life as this one does.
The book is divided into two parts: understanding emotions biblically and emotions in practice. Emotions are notoriously difficult things to pin down, but Beynon brings a lot of clarity to a rather fuzzy subject. I found myself thinking, ‘Of course! Why haven't I ever thought of it as clearly as that before?!’ After looking at the perfect emotional life of Christ as our example, we are taken beneath the surface to look at what is happening in our hearts, finding that it is the things we value most that influence the way we feel. The challenge: to recalibrate our hearts by Scripture so that we value things rightly, and therefore feel appropriately about them.
Part 2 applies this understanding to various areas of life, beginning with an excellent chapter on the way the Bible is written to promote healthy emotions and challenge wrong emotional responses. There is a sane chapter on the contentious issue of 'Emotions and God's praise', followed by encouragement to live out this full-colour emotional life in the church community, and a practical, biblical chapter on facing times when we feel down.
The life that Beynon paints for us is an exciting, refreshing vision of 'living life in colour' — solidly rooted in Scripture and realistic about life in our fallen world — opening up new vistas, both to those swept along with the shallowness of our feelings-driven culture and to those prone to look down on emotion as something dangerous to be kept under tight control. John 10.10 comes to mind: ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’.
Peter Newton,
minister, Shepherd Drive Baptist Church, Ipswich
