Last Sunday our pastor preached a sermon about the discipline of Honesty. For the most part I didn’t feel convicted and it was one of those “that’s for other people moments.” I felt like he’s preaching to the choir and I am the choir. But I didn’t tune out. I kept listening and absorbing the words about our words and actions being aligned with truth. And lo and behold later on that day a lightbulb came on. I lie all the time.
Earlier that week I started noticing that when I’m alone and I have nothing pressing to do there is a wave of emptiness and sadness that comes over me. Like a good evangelical the first person I blamed was the devil. Then I recalled it came like clockwork on a Thursday or Friday. So I put two and two together and I realized it’s all the negative emotions that I have stuffed down during the week! My dishonesty about my emotions was leading me to have these bouts of despair and sadness.
I realized that I am one of the worst liars of all. My wife asks me how I’m doing and I say “Fine” when deep down inside I am irritated with her or with something that happened at work or with our finances. I go around with a mask of fake joy on because “that’s the Christian thing to do” and underneath that mask my emotions are taking me down into the pit. I do this because I’m afraid of my emotions. When I was a kid I would go off into these fits of rage (I remember giving somebody a bloody nose in 2nd grade. Whoever you are please forgive me) or I would sink into these periods of depression and go to sleep on the couch. I didn’t know where my emotions would take me. When I fell in love I really really fell in love. I fell hard. So I decided emotions needed to get stuffed because they led you to do destructive things. But you are not supposed to suppress and stuff your emotions. You are supposed to express and redirect your emotions
What I want to tell followers of Christ is to look at the life of Jesus. He showed the full range of emotions and he used those emotions to give people life. He expressed them and directed them towards the rift people and the rift actions. He rejoiced with the disciples. He got angry at the Pharisees and the money changers in the temple. He weeped when Lazarus died. He did all this and didn’t sin. See when we stuff our emotions we end up doing destructive things like overeating or indulging in pornography. I believe the lack of emotional health keeps followers of Jesus in bondage and we bed up doing things we probably wouldn’t even do when we were not following Jesus. Why? Because of a false perception of Jesus as emotionless, nice, and sterilized. I got news for you: That ain’t Jesus. When we do not express our emotions and line ourselves up with the truth of how we feel we are doing the worst kind of lying. We are lying to ourselves.
