No tears in heaven
"My readers will probably not suspect me of being an emotional person. For I am one of those cold fish called an Englishman, descended from hard Norsemen and blunt Anglo-Saxons, with no spark of Celtic or Latin fire in my blood. With that ancestry, I am supposed to be shy, reserved and even buttoned up. Moreover, I was brought up in an English public school on the philosophy of the "stiff upper lip". That is, since a trembling of the upper lip is the first visible sign of emotion, the tradition was to stiffen it. I was taught the manly virtues of courage, fortitude and self-discipline, and warned that, if I should ever feel any emotion, I was on no account to show it. Weeping was strictly for women and children only, not for men.
But then I was introduced to Jesus Christ. I learned to my astonishment that God, whose 'impassibility' I though meant that he was incapable of emotion, speaks (though in human terms) of his burning anger and vulnerable love. I discovered too that Jesus of Nazareth, the perfect human being, was no tight-lipped, unemotional ascetic. On the contrary, I read that he turned on hypocrites with anger, looked on a rich young ruler and loved him, could both rejoice in spirit and sweat drops of blood in spiritual agony, was constantly moved with compassion, and even burst into tears twice in public.
From all this evidence it is plain that our emotions are not to be suppressed, since they have an essential place in our humanness and therefore in our Christian discipleship."- John Stott, The Contemporary Christian at 121.
I asked one of my aunts this question on several occasions, "Is it normal to feel strong emotions for/against something like this?" This question accompanied occasions when I asked her opinion about the government, justice, our school system, certain family issues, relationships, oh, a myriad of things that have the tendency to arouse certain emotions in me which I sometimes have no idea how to deal with.
She answered, "Of course, Jean. It's just that we have learnt to suppress our emotions and now expressing them doesn't seem normal in society anymore." She went on to say something like nobody would pay attention to you if you become too emotional nowadays. I've come to learn how true this is. (: Are we suppressing our "humanness" when we suppress our emotions? And as Christians, are we missing out on one part of our discipleship?
Just an observation of the place that emotions has in our society today- they have become the stuff of Korean weepies, the lyrics of a pop song, the fodder of psychologists, a hobby (as we put them on hold) and episodes that people like to think that we indulge in when we lose control of our circumstances. In short, emotions have been relegated to a second-rate human experience. In the realm of relationships, we're taught to "grin and bear it", "get over it", "move on", "to 'stop' being so emotional". To speak emotionally, we are branded as irrational and illogical.
To function normally, no doubt, we cannot let our emotions reign over our reasoning mind. To fulfill responsibilities towards one another in a social setting, we must be conscious of our surroundings, not caught up in whirlwinds of feelings that render us hapless and helpless for ourselves. [As extracted in one of my previous posts, I definitely do not advocate 'thinking' with your feelings]
But I must speak out on the emotional starvation that some of us face. This starvation results too in the suppression of emotions, and there are knock-on effects on relationships and the maturity of our society.
Of course I am no psychology/sociology student, but I am allowed this space to muse, haha. (:
For one, physical provision can in no way quell emotional starvation. Just think of a parent who keeps buying a toddler his favourite chocolate fingers to express his love, when all the toddler wants is a hug and a comment from his dad that the stick-man figure of the portrait of daddy dearest is "beautiful" and that he has been a "good little boy". The reassurance that his dad loves him and approves of him is expressed in those plain words and this practice teaches him that his daddy is also open in expressing his emotions. So he grows up, hopefully not closing himself because of his acquired cynicism from the world, healthily reassuring others too that they are loved. Whereas the toddler who always got the chocolate grows up to wonder how he may express himself if his father never really talked to him and honestly expressed his feelings- of failure, of triumphs, of anxieties, of great joys. He might suppress his feelings to assume the role of being "stoic provider" after his father, sometimes too harsh for his own good. Correcting his children and wife nastily comes easy, and emotional damage on his loved ones result, because he has never learnt how to feel and express. Then the cycle repeats in his children, for emotional starvation begets emotional starvation.
A speculation? But true nonetheless, for some. Some of us really yearn for reassurance, seeking it in the wrong ways, through chasing grades, caking our faces with paint, having the "saviour" mentality, desperate for romantic love at the wrong times and in the wrong places, accumulating wealth, riding on trends, all in a bid for approval. Whose approval? Someone, anyone's. Maybe we never got this assurance from the home- we were emotionally starved even though we were physically provided for.
And the effects on society are tremendous.
The lack of compassion- this shapes our government policies. Financial provision for the needy may be prioritized highly, but flexible and caring measures to transition individuals 'in' and 'out' of being "helped" to "helping themselves" may be overlooked, resulting in ineffective policies, creating handout mentalities, the marginalized seeing the government only as a Fortune god and not someone coming alongside, that cares for their holistic well-being. I may sound idealistic (I'm starting to have a dislike for that word that demeans a lot of the noble things we actually believe and stand for in life) but in the pragmatic sense, caring for the well-being of the marginalized will greatly increase their productiveness in a society, although this will never be my main argument for it.
Becoming an unfeeling and uncompassionate society, we stop thinking of measures to improve the quality of lives of people who will not be valuable contributors of the economy. Some of these include the mentally ill and incompetent, the severely physically disabled people and bedridden elderly who lie tucked away somewhere on our island. Emotionally starved people do not try to empathize- this just wastes time, they think. Just do the bare minimum. Should this be, if we value life? On what basis do we make this subconscious judgment, that one life is valued over another? But we fail to see that, very often, an emotional problem (and its complexities) lies at the root of any widespread social problem. Why are there gambling addictions, drug abusers, people who use violence against their family, increased suicidal rates amongst the young? Even for poverty and inequalities, there is some invisible force holding us back from doing more, in the form of complacency and lack of empathy.
The lack of passion- We hardly have any William Wilberforces and Martin Luther King's today, fighting valiantly for causes and injustices they believed in. Maybe in places where hardship and harsh conditions exist, these men are around. But generally, emotional starvation gives us a false sense of what is realistic and what is not. We think that it is realistic not to concern ourselves too much about others suffering elsewhere. After all, if we've learnt to suppress our true emotions and competently (or so we think) handled our own problems, why do others need our assistance? Furthermore, there is no need for us to try, for rationality tells us that one person will not make much of a difference.
This past week my brain (and admittedly, my heart) has been going into overdrive pondering these things, among others. Above all, I wonder what my Saviour is thinking when He looks down. Would His heart break at our lovelessness, when God the Father has created us with this miraculous and inexplainable ability to feel? I know He has a heart, I know He has shed tears on this earth, had righteous anger, mercy on the lost, and felt rejection. And if He is part of the trinity, and we are made in God's image, might we make cold our hearts and close the door to a part of Him which should be a part of us?
Lord Jesus, melt our cold and loveless hearts, give us Your heart of love, in truth, purity, righteousness. Set our hearts aflame with compassion and passion. Give our emotionally starved selves a remedy of reassurance, that we may know how to teach others to be true to themselves too.