"Come now, let us reason together" was the beginning of the January entry this year. The Prophet Isaiah (1:18) is quoting God. Our focus has been to look at the intersection of healthy spirituality and the tenets of the school of psychology called "Rational Emotive Therapy/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy". This entry brings us almost half way through the areas of life where many people experience immature emotional reactions and illogical thought patterns. For each area, we look toward healthy, centered, spiritual responses rooted in sound scientific research that show love and bring peace to relationships.
Emotional Irresponsibility is often phrased in a form similar to: "My unhappiness in life is externally caused. It is the result of events and people hurting me. I have little or no ability to control my sorrow or my disturbance." Translations of this include: "It's not fair; You make me so angry; How do you expect me to feel with all that has happened to me?" The focus here is not on the upset, sadness, anger, or any of the emotional disturbances. Rather, the attention is to the causal statement that the feelings are generated from outside the person, that they come into the person and then "cause/create" the emotional upset.
Jesus' teaching is quite clear on this matter. There were as many folks disturbed by "externals" in Jesus' time as there are today. In the gospels of Mark (7:14) and Matthew (15:10), Jesus talks about inside and outside things. For centuries, people have limited the scope of this discussion to acceptable dietary standards, however with Jesus, we are always called to look for the underlying, foundational, expansive applications as well. "Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile." (NRSV)
Like our spiritual ancestors, we often look outside for the causes of sin (shortcoming) and sickness in ourselves and in others. In the Gospel of John, chapter 9, is the story of Jesus healing the blind man. In the externalizing, irrational, blaming worldview of the day, it was important to ascertain the blame for events and feelings. Jesus is asked "who sinned, this man or his parents?". Determining the external blame, the sin, establishes the responsibility for the condition. In a God-centered world, Jesus says neither is to blame; he then applies a therapeutic treatment resulting in a transformation from blindness to sight. We, too, are called by God to move from being blind to our irresponsible reactions to seeing where we are able to respond. Jesus invites us all to see the Kingdom of God by being born anew from above (John 3:3).
St. Augustine was influenced by the Letter of James' call to faith in good deeds and holy habits: "For when we ask how good a person is, we do not ask what they believe or what they hope for, but what they live." (Enchiridion) James reminds us that we are not drawn into irrationality and irresponsibility by fate or by evil but by our own desires and poor behavior (James 1:12ff). Like a card game, the emotional disturbances of life are dealt to us all. We are not at fault for the hand we are dealt. We are responsible for how we play the cards we are dealt, how we deal with the hand in our lives. Bemoaning and blaming our emotional condition will make our life, and the lives of those near to us, worse.
Being born again is when responsible, loving people see the Kingdom of God, not in doctrine or feelings, but in living the "Christ in me." (Galatians 2:20) We are called to be responsible citizens of the Kingdom and to act in loving, peaceful, caring ways toward all God's children.
Being born again, when experiencing emotional upset, we can "see a new way" by owning that the upset is coming from within ourselves. As with previous areas of irrational beliefs, there is a positive reframe that will physically create new neuron paths in our brain (a modern metaphor for "born anew") as we repeat God's reasoned response to disturbance: "Unhappiness largely comes from within and is created by the individual. I create my own negative emotions; instead, I will make up my mind to be happy and to set out to do things that make me happy." (Rx: repeat PRN)
St. Paul, an expert in conflicted feelings and actions, wrote to the Church at Corinth (II Corinthians 6:11ff) speaking of the clear boundary of emotional responsibility: "We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return - I speak as to children - open wide your hearts also." (NRSV)
[As always, comments, questions, disagreements and stories are welcome. Next article - Anxious Overconcern: if something is or may be dangerous, I must be terribly concerned and on guard in case it happens. RoB]