If I Don't Feel Any Feelings of Love for My Newborn Child Am I a Monster? If I Don't Feel Conviction or God's Presence Does That Mean I'm a Lost Soul?

What Conclusions Do You Draw From Your Emotional State?
How would you feel if you gave birth to a child, and felt no emotions of love and attachment for the baby? What if you felt no emotions of guilt if you were to steal something, tell a lie, or yell hateful words at someone during an argument – you were just stone cold in your emotions the entire time? What if you were to feel a feeling of intense delight after hearing your friend passed away?

How about opposite feelings and emotions…what if you were sitting in church and a flood of holy feelings came over you. Would you conclude that you must have a very holy character to be feeling such emotions? Or perhaps you might conclude that the Presence of God was with you or that you were filled with the Holy Spirit.

What conclusions would you draw? What role do emotions play in determining the state of our character, and the state of our relationship with God, if any at all?

Is it a Sin to Feel Angry, Anxious, or Depressed?
Is it a sin to feel the emotions of anger, or depression, or as in the case of the mother, apathy and indifference?

Isaiah 41:10 tells us "Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will surely help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand."

Philippians 4:6-7 tells us "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Many have concluded from these passage and others like them that it is a sin to experience anxiety, and that if they aren't experiencing feelings of peace that they must not be right with God.

When Feelings Turn Dark or Distressing Many Believe They've Lost Their Relationship With God
I can’t tell you how frequently it happens that I come in contact with Christians who sadly conclude they’ve lost their relationship with God because they feel angry or jealous or depressed much or all of the time, or because they can’t feel His Presence or His peace. They also may find it difficult to focus long enough to study their Bible, and may experience very low levels of motivation to engage in the spiritual activities they once loved. Low motivation and distressing or absent feelings often go hand-in-hand.

Their conclusion is often that they really don’t love God after all, or that He has left them. Some even fear they have committed the unpardonable sin. Some of the feelings they describe are very weighty and strong, and they experience a high level of psychological suffering.

Conversely, if they go through a period of time where they feel great joy and peace, and a feeling they determine to be the Presence of God when they are worshipping in church, they conclude God is with them, and if they feel feelings of love or holiness they conclude that they have a good heart with right desires put there by God. If these feelings come after a long "night of the soul" where they haven't felt them for months or years, the conclusion is often that the Holy Spirit is back in their life, and that they are now right with God.

Why did they jump from feeling a sense of holiness to the conclusion that their heart is in the right place?

Are feelings of holiness actual holiness?

Am I a Monster?
Do feelings indicate our spiritual state? When a woman has a baby, and feels no emotions of bonding and love for that baby, and instead she feels complete emotional numbness and zero feelings of attachment, it’s common that women in such a condition conclude they are a monster, and make a character judgment about themselves. Regardless of her religious beliefs or lack of them, the woman tends to come to the same conclusion on the matter, due to the shocking reality of not having maternal emotions that should be there.

But, are feelings (or the lack of them) character?

The Four Main Angles in Which to Address This Topic:
It’s necessary to tackle this subject from four main angles:

1. We need to examine from the Scriptures, in a general sense, what feelings are.

2. We need to understand the role feelings play in determining spiritual reality—such as whether feelings can be used to gauge our character, our standing with God, and whether the Holy Spirit is communing with us—in order to give them proper weight within their intended sphere and prevent them from seeping into areas where they don’t belong.

3. We need to explore how a person commits the unpardonable sin according to the Bible; however, this will be addressed in a separate chapter.

4. We need to understand how feelings and emotions function biochemically in the physical brain, what can go wrong at the physical level, and the physicality of emotional experience.

The Bible Gives Answers to These Troubling and Pressing Questions
As Christians we really do have answers to these important and pertinent questions in God’s Word! Answers that are satisfying and give real clarity. We don’t need to be living as the atheist or humanist lives, and coming to their same conclusions. But unfortunately one of the biggest temptations people face and one of our strongest fallen desires, is to live for feelings, and to place an inordinate focus on emotions. This temptation can keep us from finding the truth! In order to find truth we can't have idea idols that we really want to be true to the point where we aren't willing to consider contradictory evidence from the scriptures. Our love and desire for happy feelings above everything else, can lead to ears that can't hear the truth, and minds which can't understand it. This ideology that feelings are the highest good and the purpose of life has crept into Christian churches – not just the world – and gained traction in a big way, and is exerting a destructive influence, leading people away from a genuine faith and a solid relationship with God built on His Word. Secular hedonists look to things like promiscuity and alcohol or drugs to feel good, and Christians often look to deeply spiritual feelings and experiences to feel happy, and as the indicators of our spiritual state. We may discard feelings that we would consider to be more superficial and rudimentary, like a high from drugs or sexual pleasure, but we’re still measuring our spiritual state by feelings, and we’re still centering our faith around feelings when we expect to feel strong elation or feelings of holiness at church.

Can a Christian be a Hedonist?

Can someone be a hedonist if they pursue feelings of holiness?

I believe so. What many do not know is that hedonism simply means that feelings become the focus of your life. They become the thing you value most or which you pursue the most, what philosophers call the thing you consider to be the "highest good." Any kind of feelings or emotions, if they are the focus and aim of one’s life, makes someone a hedonist. It’s not wrong to feel good feelings or emotions. It is wrong to make those feelings an end in and of themselves. And this is what hedonism is.

However, I'd like to point out that the feelings people most often pursue when they value feelings above all else are usually things like feelings of rapturous joy, spiritual pride and power (like what the Pharisees had and which the Word of Faith movement promotes when it says God will give you whatever you ask for in prayer if you have enough faith). It isn't usually things like feelings of deep gratitude or respect for God that people get "addicted" to.

However, it is possible to seek out an overly emotional experience with God, even if those feelings are by nature good and right. Some Christians may gravitate towards the Hallmark movie Christian experience, where they desire feelings that are the natural ones we feel when we're sitting around a fire with our family, and they aren't the unnatural feelings of elation from believing your prayers control God and make Him perform your will.

In the case where it's natural feelings the person pursues we can think of this like the person who eats healthy food, they just eat too much of it. This form pf overeating is far less common than the form where a person overeats junk food, because junk food has an addictive quality to it, and healthy food doesn't. But some people do still struggle with overeating healthy food and this is still unhealthy to do.

In this same way, we don't want to make even holy emotions the aim and purpose of our lives. God wants us to care about His truth, and live it out in our lives to the glory of God and the benefit of mankind. This should be our aim and our focus, not how we feel.

Hedonism is basically synonymous by living without principle. If a person doesn’t value principles or make them their aim, they end up living an unprincipled life, and all that’s left is feelings and inclinations and passions. Just going with what feels natural or good to you. What Paul describes in the Bible as being dead even while being alive.”

“But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.”

1 Timothy 5:6

It is exactly this state, that Christ desires to free people of. Such a person is devoid of meaning, living nihilistically.

While it may feel wonderful to have feelings of strong holiness and love for God and others while worshipping at church, there is no actual relationship with God unless one is living by principle.

True Principles are What Separate Christianity From False Religions and Ideologies
And really this is what separates Christianity from false religions. Christianity is the true religion, because it’s the one built around the true principles of love, goodness, justice, mercy, and truth in all its forms. The others are founded on false principles of selfishness, inclination, passion, possessing no real truth and no real virtue.

And the whole point to what our lives in this world are for, is that this world is a training ground where God transforms our character and teaches us to live according to His truth and for His glory. We learn how to have a faith and relationship with God that is based on principle. Because in heaven, while we will see our Father face-to-face, we will be living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, in a state of perfect faith, obedience, and trust in God. Yes even with powerful holy emotions and feelings, we won’t be living by those feelings. We will have formed a relationship built on the principles and truths found in God’s Word.

Only such a relationship is a true relationship with God.

Why is it Seen as Wrong For Christians to Say "I Feel Bad and I Want to Feel Good!"
Some Christians have the idea that feelings always have to be tied directly into communion with God in order for them to hold value, or some just believe they always are tied into God and this is their nature. There really isn't such a thing as having feelings because your body is in a healthy state in this view. In other words, if you wake up in the morning feeling on top of the world, that's not just neurotransmitters, it's the direct Presence of God. If you feel elated at church, it can't be the worship music, it's the actual direct Presence of the Holy Spirit working on your physical body to give you feelings of elation. Unfortunately it is all too common for many modern Christians to conflate feeling good with the Presence of God. The Word of Faith movement and other false movements have influenced the church in a big way, and the result is an over spiritualization of feelings that in many minds becomes indistinguishable from God Himself. It is almost somehow wrong or off-base in this theology to just want feelings for health's sake, to feel strong and happy and at peace in their emotions so they aren't suffering emotionally or experience less than optimal health. Feelings always have to be connected with God in order to be sanctified and holy desires, otherwise they are guilty pleasures, or in many cases, feelings are just so linked with God that the idea of having good feelings without His direct influence does not make sense and is not really considered to be possible in this theology.

This is compounded when the person develops a mental illness, and feels terrible. Due to the over spiritualization of feelings, the person finds it hard to say "I feel bad, and I want to feel good!" without linking that desire to wanting to feel God. So instead they say things like "I used to feel so close to God, and now I don't."

When such a person develops depression, or anhedonia, which is a loss of all positive feelings and you just feel very emotionally numb, they often conclude they aren't right with God or that God has left them. They've come to see happy emotions, and even neurotransmitters as being synonymous with being in God's direct presence, so when these feelings leave and depression or numbness take their place, the conclusion is that God is no longer there with them.

This is dangerous theology! The person may conclude they are not right with God, and try to make changes to be right with God. Everyone is different in how they go about this. Christians with a background in the Word of Faith movement may try to claim promises to get their feelings back to where they need to be, and this can get very compulsive. Others with a background more in Bible truth may part with actual sins in their lives, ask others for forgiveness from past wrongs, and try to get their lives ordered right in order to get back in right standing with God. When these changes don't produce changes in their feelings, they determine they still aren't right with God, even if they are doing the kinds of things that make a person right with God according to the scriptures, because feelings are used as the barometer.

Eventually when this doesn't work to change feelings, the person may determine they have committed the unpardonable sin, and enter a state where they feel hopelessly lost for all time, a crushing weight to bear that is not at all good for one's mental health.

What is needed? Feelings need to be seen for what they are and valued for what they are. Not made out to be the all-important thing, not diminished to be unimportant or insignificant, and also not used interchangeably with God Himself or the Presence of God. We need to talk more in church about feelings and what they are. About how they are tied into health, and how if one's immune system is down you will feel depressed in mood and this is a form of suffering that we want to avoid if possible. If toxins are high in the body or if someone has been through something traumatic, a common response is for the body to lose all emotions and feelings and experience numbness. The person needs to eat enough amino acids (protein) in order to rebuild neurotransmitters, and they need to take agents that can get toxins out of the body, like fulvic acid or alpha lipoic acid.

We need a stronger emphasis on health. It is certainly not wrong to want to feel healthy and happy and balanced, with zest and motivation to engage in life. Health is important, health matters. And good feelings are an important part of health.

But if everything becomes over spiritualized the person will not focus on bad feelings as a health issue, and won't engage in the treatments and lifestyle practices that can bring back good feelings and good health. Thus they can get stuck in this state of feeling terrible and concluding they are hopeless and cut off from God. They go down a road of praying compulsively, seeking highs at church, and other purely spiritual practices to balance their emotional health, when for many the root of the health issue is things like toxic black mold exposure, Lyme disease, heavy metals, pollutants, and nutrient deficiencies from a poor diet.

What Is the Barometer of Character?

I encourage you to read the article "What is Sin, and What Implications Does a Right Knowledge of the Term Have in Understanding Mental Health Conditions?"

In that article we determined that there is only one definition for sin. Sin is the transgression of the moral law. A transgression is a chosen, willful act -- either a thought or an outward action -- done with knowledge of right and wrong present (1 John 3:4).

There is no other definition, and there is a reason for that. It would be unjust for God to call anything else sin which is not sin. And you will find that whenever people adopt a different standard of right and wrong than God's, injustice occurs. Those who hold themselves guilty for having feelings of depression or anxiety, for instance, become more depressed and anxious, as this false view of God has an unhealthy, unbalancing effect on the mind.

Notice that when the Bible mentions how the Word of God helps us find sin in our hearts and surrender it to God, it tells us the Word judges the "thoughts and attitudes of the heart."

"For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."
Hebrews 4:12

The Greek Word there is ennoiōn. This word means "intentions" of the heart. "Intentions" is a reference to motives. "Heart" in this passage does not mean emotions; it means the mind. This is clear from the fact that the verse references the attitudes and thoughts. Our emotions don't think and they don't have attitudes or intentions; all of these processes are cognitive and they occur in the part of the brain where our character resides, the prefrontal cortex and associated regions.

When the Bible speaks of the consciences of the Gentiles , notice the language used. It describes their thoughts! The Bible doesn't say their feelings are the barometer to determine the rightness or wrongness of their attitudes. In fact it doesn't mention emotions at all, and there's a definite reason for that. It's because emotions are not the barometer to use.

"(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.

They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)"
Romans 2:14-15

Here we see congruence between the verses in the scriptures. Hebrews 4:12 told us the Bible judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart when determining our attitudes and the state of our heart with God. And of course the Holy Spirit works together with the scriptures to accomplish this, illuminating our understanding so we can compare our thoughts with the Bible accurately. And Romans 2:14-15 tells us the Holy Spirit uses the thoughts of the person to evaluate their attitudes.

In both cases it's the thoughts and attitudes which tell us the state of the heart and the character. It's never the emotions.

Our Emotions Can Never be Sin
What this means is emotions of depression, anxiety, or even feelings that feel like jealousy or hate, cannot be sins.

The only thing that could be sin is our attitudes, thoughts, and actions.

There are attitudes surrounding the subject of emotions that can be sins. As we talked about above, placing in ordinate focus on emotions and idolizing them.

Or neglecting our health and allowing our body to enter a state where our emotions are dysregulated and painful. When it's in our power to prevent this, it becomes a sin if we don't do our part to prevent it. This too is a sin because it's an immoral attitude and an action.

So attitudes and actions surrounding emotions can be sins, but the emotions themselves can never be a sin. When sin occurs, it always happens in the attitudes and/or actions. An emotion can never be a sin by the Bible's true and right definition.

It's possible to feel persistent feelings we associate with hate every day due to inflammation and a dysregulated immune response, and yet not harbor an attitude of hatred in your heart, and be right with God through it all.

A common symptom of major depressive disorder is persistent feelings of worthlessness. And the research also shows persistent feelings of jealousy and hate can occur as well, especially if histamine is involved. People with conditions involving high histamine like CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome) often report feeling intense feelings of rage or hate. Histamine is an irritant to the immune system; in toxic amounts it sends the body into a combative fight-or-flight response.

People are physical, biochemical beings and due to the fall we can have malfunction the same way the animals do, and we are also moral beings. Dysregulated or absent emotions can occur purely as a result of physical problems, and altered physical biochemistry and can have nothing to do with character.

Emotions and Feelings Can Increase Our Temptations
It is what we do with the emotions that determines whether we have sinned or not. Physical conditions can increase our temptations greatly. Before developing major depression, a woman may rarely struggle with temptations to conclude she is worthless. After developing the condition, she may struggle multiple times every day with the temptation to adopt the belief that she is worthless and berate herself and speak cruel words to herself, or refuse help and resources she needs because she doesn't believe she is valuable enough to be worthy of them.

I will go over more about this topic towards the end of this article.

What Those Verses About Not Being Anxious Mean
When God says "Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. In Isaiah 41:10, and when He says ""Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." in Philippians 4:6-7, God is talking about your attitudes.

He's saying don't harbor an attitude of fear or doubt, instead have courage and faith in God in your attitude.

It is a sin to doubt God, which is where this type of fear is coming from in these verses.

These verses are not referring to biochemical anxiety. How do we know this? Well the verses give as the solution a change in attitude. Their admonition is to change an attitude of fear into one of thanksgiving and trust in God. Doubting God was present, and they are saying turn from this doubt, to believe God is who He says He is and that He can care for you. Thank Him for the ways He's currently taking care of you and the ways He's done so in the past. Remember those times and choose faith instead of doubt. These verses re address fear that is under a person's conscious control. A spontaneous panic attack a person experiences in the middle of the night when they weren't consciously choosing to doubt God, is not something under a person's control, and is not the kind of fear these verses are referring to.

A constant state of panic, and involuntary racing thoughts from black mold exposure or from Lyme disease, is not what these verses are referring to. This is biochemical anxiety, and it's basically synonymous with inflammation, especially inflammation in the brain. It's not a sin to have brain inflammation.

Don't Character and Emotions Share a Relationship?

You’re probably asking at this point “But don’t character and emotions share a relationship?” For instance, it’s very common for someone who doesn’t want to repent to have lack of emotions towards God, or even hostile emotions towards him. The atheist may delight in sinful things like self-worship and mocking God, and aren’t emotions involved when we delight in something?

The answer is yes! In a healthy brain emotions flow from and mirror chosen attitudes and the character of the person.

Let’s first look at how feelings and emotions work in a healthy body, according to the Bible, and then we will explore how they can become dysregulated as happens in mental illnesses and conditions.

Emotions are Reactionary Things

The Bible presents emotions as reactionary things, not cognitive mechanisms. They don't think and they are not under our conscious control. They react to the knowledge we take in. For instance, in 2 Samuel 1 David becomes sorrowful and weighed down with sadness at the news that Saul and Jonathan were slain in battle.

"Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel.

I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.

How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!"
1 Samuel 1:24, 26-27

You can hear the distress in his words.

Emotions are not something we are supposed to directly try to work up. We aren't to seek out highly emotional states. Rather we are to focus on truth -- the joy or sadness of situations around us -- and make sure to align our attitudes with faith and trust in God. We need to make sure we have the right attitudes to the events that happen to us and that we see happening around us, attitudes that glorify God.

This is our responsibility as Christians.

Emotions are never painted as being under our direct, voluntary control.

The Right Place for Emotions in Worship
You will see many texts in the scriptures that say to worship God because He is good, because of his benevolent acts in history culminating on the cross. (1 Chronicles 16:34, Psalm 117:1-2). First the mind grasps the significance and love of the cross, then the emotions well up within the person, and then they give shouts of praise. This is the order God created our mind to work in. He didn’t create us to feel appreciation without understanding and blindly offer praise and then only later intellectually grasp the significance of God’s love. This would be out of order.

You will see this order in Jesus Himself and how His emotions work.

“Then God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”

Genesis 6:5-6

Notice how God grasps logically what is happening and then His emotions respond to the tragic truth He is seeing before Him. His emotions respond to truths and reality in the world around Him. His emotions are not something He seeks to stir up apart from the external world and the truth about the situations He is seeing there. He doesn’t lead with emotion and work Himself up into an emotional state, with logic and truth following second.

Responding to the rebellion of His people, and knowing if they do not repent that they will be lost forever, God responds with emotional language in the following verse. You can hear the pathos in the words.

“O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!”

Deuteronomy 32:29

In a similar verse addressing a similar situation God cries these words:

“How can I give thee up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboam (people groups God had to destroy due to their wickedness)? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.”

Hosea 11:8

Jesus is an emotional God, but not in a way that is arbitrary and disconnected from truth and reality. Indeed emotions get their value from truth. There is no value in feeling joy if no significant thing has occurred, but if say a friend of yours has accepted Christ as their Savior and turned from a life of sin the joy is significant and has meaning because of the event and truth that caused the joy.

Jesus tells us there is joy and rejoicing in heaven over a sinner who repents. (Luke 15:7, Luke 15:10)

Emotions do not have value apart from truth and the world around us. They weren’t created to be disconnected things that we work up in order to get an emotional high. In fact it’s Satan who stirs up emotions devoid of reason and works our emotions according to ungodly and evil principles.

“They are the kind who worm their way into households and captivate vulnerable women who are weighed down with sins and lead astray by various passions”

2 Timothy 3:6

We are not to live for emotional pleasure (or any other kind of pleasure), or use emotions against their correct design.

“She who lives for pleasure is dead even while she is still alive.”

1 Timothy 5:6

There are many passages in the scriptures about pleasure being used for pleasure’s sake rather than being attached to truth that is meaningful and used in its proper sphere and its intended purpose

“For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, mislead, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.”

Titus 3:3.

Sinful Attitudes DO Have Emotions That React to Them and Which Follow Them
You will notice in the scriptures that God describes sinful attitudes as having emotions connected with them.

This aligns with the way attitudes and emotions work according to the verses we read above. We first grasp what’s happening outwardly with the logical part of our mind, and then our emotions respond to that reality and we experience feelings that go with that knowledge.

If we choose to harbor attitudes of jealousy, hatred, and anger, there are emptions that go with those attitudes.

If we choose to harbor attitudes of profound appreciation and gratefulness to God for the gift of His Son and His daily companionship and love, there will be holy emotions that follow those right attitudes.

This is how something like “fits of rage” can be described as one of the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:20.

It’s not the emotion of rage that is the sin. It’s the chosen attitude of unforgiveness, jealousy, or hatred, which results in the fit of rage and has accompanying emotions.

I repeat, it is not the emotion that is the sin, but the chosen attitude.

"Holy" Emotions Do Follow Holy Attitudes, But This Doesn't Mean They are Barometers We Can Use to Tell if We are Holy and Right With God
So if one feels a holy emotion, does this mean the person is holy?

No. Emotions cannot be used to gauge the state of one’s heart. That is not their purpose. While in a healthy person feelings of holiness will often accompany holy choices and actions, it’s those choices and actions that make you holy, not the feelings.

If you’re worshipping in church and the rock music is lifting you higher and higher with an elated feeling, and all of a sudden emotions of love for others sweep over you, this is not an indication you have actually become more loving.

However, let's say you've been harboring an attitude of jealousy towards someone at church who has a happy marriage and loving kids and you are single with a health condition. You hear a sermon about the faithful providence of God for the Israelites in the Old Testament. How God brought water out of a rock for them when they had nothing to drink, and parted the read sea so they could pass through. You become convicted of the wrongness of your jealousy towards the woman with the happy family, and of your distrust of God for not giving you the same blessings she has. You pray a silent prayer to God asking Him to take away your jealousy and distrust, telling Him you want a heart like His heart. As you surrender this attitude God replaces it with an attitude of thankfulness and deep appreciation for giving you Jesus, the gift of gifts, and a trust that God is ordering your life with His infinite wisdom in exactly the way it should go. Along with this new attitude of gratitude come deep emotions we associate with appreciation, a deeply touching, significant emotion that may leave you misty-eyed. You are touched by the love of God for you personally.

This experience has made you more holy. But it's not because you're feeling emotions. It isn't the emotions that are making you holy. It's the choice to surrender the jealousy of others and distrust for God that caused a change in your character and gave you holy attitudes.

It's the new attitude that makes you holy. Holiness is always a character thing.

What is it that makes a person more loving? It’s when we make choices to surrender unloving attitudes to God, and when we resist temptations to do unloving actions, and say "yes" to the Holy Spirit's convictions to do loving actions.

There will be a complete change in the life from a heart that is truly surrendered to Christ. There will not be just feelings of holiness and only tiny changes or no changes in the life; there will be a transformation and a daily process of sanctification.

The longer you know the person, the more like Jesus they will be. Or if this person is you, the longer you walk with God the more like Him you will be and there will be obvious, measurable growth from year to year.

If you are having feelings of holiness but no actual change in heart and in life -- or let's say you have tiny little changes that are more subjective and hard to really pinpoint in an objective way as "fruit" -- then you aren’t holy no matter how holy you feel while worshipping.

Facial Expressions

It is very common for family members of loved ones diagnosed with a psychotic disorder to experience times when their loved one looked at them with an expression that looked like hate in their eyes. Other times the psychotic person looks at them with an expression that looks like pride, arrogance, or disgust.

They will often say things like "I knew he was proud and selfish because I could see it in his eyes." Or even "I knew he was demon-possessed because the expression on his face was demonic."

The psychotic person themselves will often say things like "I know I'm evil because I looked in the mirror and saw my expression and it was one of pure hate." Or..."I had a feeling of pride or hate sweep over me when I was in psychosis; does this mean I'm evil?"

It's worth noting that we've all seen a dog or a cat act sheepish when it did something wrong. How can an animal which has no knowledge of right or wrong have a look of guilt or shame on its expression? It's because the animal is a physical being and feelings of shame and guilt are biochemical things. The animal's body is experiencing a raise in histamines when it hears your voice scolding it. And these histamines as they hit the brain bring about the facial expressions of shame and guilt. But the animal doesn't possess understanding. It doesn't know what makes the act it did morally wrong. It just knows it wasn't supposed to do that act; it doesn't know why it wasn't supposed to do that act.

In the same way a loved one in full psychosis has all the biochemistry to bring about feelings of shame, hate, guilt, but without the understanding. Surges in histamine can cause the person to look hateful, even though they've lost moral knowledge of what hate actually is.

People are biochemical beings with biochemical reactions, and this doesn't cease being true even if they have lost moral understanding from their fully psychotic state.

What is the truth about our facial reactions and expressions? Are the eyes a perfect window into the soul that works like a barometer, telling us the character of the person, or are the eyes and face a faulty way of knowing what is inside the heart? What about other types of responses, such as someone laughing when they hear a friend has died...does this indicate they are harboring hatred in their heart?

What The Bible Says
The Bible does say the expressions of the face can reflect the character and the chosen attitudes. The Bible tells us the wicked have proud looks on their faces.

“The look on their faces testifies against them;

they parade their sin like Sodom;

they do not hide it.

Woe to them!

They have brought disaster upon themselves.”

Isaiah 3:9

The Bible also tells us the righteous have holy looks of confidence and faith in God on their faces, knowing they are forgiven of their sins. The fact their shame and guilt has been washed away is reflected in their faces.

“Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.”

Psalm 34:5

“As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man.”

Proverbs 27:19

The Bible speaks of haughty looks in those who are proud.

‘You save the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty.”

Psalm 18:27

Indeed the Bible even says God hates haughty, proud eyes, grouping this expression of the face in with sinful things like a lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood.

“There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him:

haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,

a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil,

a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.”

Proverbs 6:16-19

It Takes Divine Power to Read the Heart; We Can't Read the Heart From the Face
But while the face does to an extent reflect the character and responds to the evil in the heart, the Bible is also clear that outward expressions are not a way to gauge character. Only God who reads the heart can distinguish truly proud eyes, from someone who may appear proud due high dopamine in the brain during a manic episode but not have pride in the heart. Only God can read who is having a stress-induced involuntary laugh response from hearing the shocking news that their friend passed away suddenly, and who truly has hatred in their heart for their friend. Only God can determine who truly has hatred in their eyes from a heart filled with hatred, and who is in psychosis in a revved up state with rapidly-changing emotions and feelings occurring in their brain and body, the inflammation stirring up parts of the brain where emotions of hate reside, and not having an attitude of hate.

So while our character does influence our facial expression, it does so imperfectly and there are many other things that influence our expression also. Someone can’t look at you and know your character – the face is not a measuring tool of the soul.

Also, I want to point out that it’s not righteous judgment to judge someone as proud who is psychotic and doesn’t understand the difference between pride and humility. Pride is a choice to harbor an attitude of self-righteousness and violence against God or others. It’s not pride if it’s not chosen. A facial expression that comes over someone due to dopamine surging too high in their brain – even if it looks exactly like a proud sneer – is not actually a proud sneer unless they know the difference between pride and humility and make the conscious choice to be proud. It’s not sin for them unless they can tell the difference, and it’s wrong to charge a psychotic person with the sin of pride when they are out of their mind. Perhaps if you know them better and have evaluated them, or they have had a thorough evaluation with a psychiatrist, one could narrow down whether that individual is capable of understanding the difference between pride and humility, and that if it’s determined they are, then a sneer is likely to be chosen pride in their case. But it’s wrong to jump to that conclusion with a psychotic person, based on outward facial expressions and demeanor alone.

The Core Problem With All of This

What's the core problem -- the common denominator -- with all these methods of determining the state of the heart? It's that the person is looking to the outward appearance in order to determine what is going on in the secret places of the heart.

All of these methods are superficial, shallow, and demeaning and disrespectful of others. Not only this but using these methods disrespects God and His system of righteous judgment.

As we talked about above the Bible does say the emotions and facial expression react to and mirror the character to a certain extent, but what it does not say is that we should use these things to draw conclusions about people. To judge a person using the appearance is to use unrighteous, unjust judgment.

Let's make sure we don't engage in this kind of thing. Unfortunately it is becoming all too popular in our modern society -- especially online -- to come to character judgments about people using everything but the fruit of the life and the actual facts of the situation.

Facial expressions, suppositions, elaborate theories, the color of the clothes the person wore, the tone of their voice, their mannerisms -- all these are taken as a sort of evidence that condemns or liberates someone.

But the Bible says none of this can be used as any kind of conclusive evidence. God alone knows the heart so none of us can make conclusive evidence. The closest thing we can come to this though is evaluating a person based on the fruit of their lives. So if someone is giving money to charity, is keeping God's commandments outwardly, even if they have a sour expression on their face, or their tone of voice doesn't seem quite right to you, or whatever these subjective traits might be, there is no reason to assume they aren't a Christian in good standing with God.

Some people just have a face that looks like it's scowling all the time. There are so many different reasons a person's "tone" might have sounded that way, from fatigue, to extreme stress, to low dopamine from seasonal affect disorder in the winter.

Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
John 7:24

Thought Privacy is a God-Given Right That God's Government Protects
In court rooms it is unfortunately all too common for the jury to give the guilty sentence to people based on superficial things like the way the person acted in the court room, whether they showed the appropriate facial expressions, etc. They are taking a half-truth and turning it into a full truth, fool-proof way to indict someone. God did create our expression and our demeanor and mannerisms to convey the godly love that exists in our heart. The purpose of these things is to express love. But He made sure that they do this incompletely and imperfectly, so that the thoughts of the mind cannot be fully discerned on the face. It was intentional on God's part that the character cannot be read by the face or mannerisms. This is an issue of individuality and privacy. Only God is allowed to know the inner thoughts and read them with perfect accuracy.

In the same way, we aren't even supposed to measure or judge ourselves by our mannerisms and expressions. The person after coming out of psychosis who asks "Am I evil because my expression looked demonic when I was in psychosis?" should not endeavor to determine their guilt based on their face. Instead they need to ask themselves the following questions:

"When I was in psychosis could I understand the difference between right and wrong; did I know what evil was?" If the answer is "No, I was so far in delusion I don't really think I knew the difference between keeping the commandments and breaking them" then the person couldn't have had an evil attitude while in psychosis, even if their expression looked evil.

If the answer is "Yes, actually I had some delusions while psychotic but because I was on medication I didn't slip into full psychosis this time, and I could still understand basic right and wrong, with some delusional thinking about specific subjects, but the delusions didn't cross over into all subjects", then ask yourself "Were you harboring an immoral attitude during the time you were looking at yourself in the mirror and you had the evil look?" If the answer is "no", then the person does not have evil in their heart even if the expression appeared evil. If the answer is "Actually yes, I was terribly angry with God for allowing me to slip into psychosis again and not preventing it", then what you do is surrender that immoral attitude to God. Tell Him "Lord, I'm sorry I chose to hate on You for allowing me to slip into psychosis. That wasn't right on my part. You are on my side. It's Satan who is my enemy and who is against me. He's the one who brought illnesses like psychosis into this world. Please forgive me for my selfish anger towards You. Please take that wrong attitude out of my heart and give me one of love and trust. Forgive me for sinning in this way. And thank you so much for living a perfect life on my behalf and dying in my place so you could give me a new heart that can resist these temptations in the future and be true to You. In Jesus' Name I pray, Amen."

This is what you do if you find yourself in that situation.

If you aren't sure whether you could understand right or wrong while in your psychosis, or whether or not you had an immoral attitude at the time you had the evil look, you can say something like "Lord I don't even remember that time, or I can even make sense of that time now that I'm out of psychosis. My brain was so scrambled I can't piece together what actually happened. If I sinned during that time, I'm willing to repent of it. I need You to help me remember that experience, if you want me to repent of some of the things I did at that time. I will leave this in Your hands. If I do remember something I did that was immoral, I will repent of it at that time."

Only God can see what’s in our hearts. To claim that we can gauge what is in someone’s heart by looking at them, or even speaking with them, is to commit 2 big sins:

Giving Ourselves Divine Traits
It means we’re giving ourselves divine traits. We think we have perfect judgment like God does. We aren’t leaving room for God to be the Judge of the heart, acknowledging even with our best judgment we will miss things that only God knows and sees. We’re usurping His position.

Those Who Believe the Heart Shows Perfectly on the Face Don't Believe in Right to Privacy
When it comes to evaluating others, if we think we can know the state of their heart by looking at their face or reactions

It means we don’t respect or believe in right to personal privacy. We are actually charging God with being a God who doesn’t give people personal privacy in their thoughts and airs out all their inner thoughts via their face. This would be a horrible dystopia if it were true. Privacy is a fundamental right. The privacy of our own thoughts is the most important privacy of all, isn't it? The reason we can’t see inside someone’s mind or judge their thoughts and character with perfect accuracy is because everyone has a right to privacy in God’s government. They have a right to answer to God alone for their secret thoughts and secret sins, and if they are thinking good things and holding good desires, it is God in the secret part of their mind that inspires them and communes with them. No other person can be involved in this communion. Just God and the individual.

Let's make sure to align our beliefs on this with the truth.

Reading Thoughts by the Face Would Destroy God's Relationship With Us
If it were true that we could read the thoughts by looking at the face, this would destroy the exclusionary relationship people can have with God. It would make the relationship we have with God the same virtually as the relationship we have with other people.

In reality, because God alone communes with us in our thoughts, the relationship we have with Him is much more deep and intimate than it could ever be with any other person.

Look at the language of Psalm 139. Look at the intimacy and communion that is possible with God because He can read our thoughts.

O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is high, I cannot attain it.
Psalm 139:1-6

There is no way God would be ok other people being able to read our thoughts or attitudes by looking at externals like our face or mannerisms. God jealously guards this communion that He holds with us, referring to it in the scriptures like a marriage, only even more intimate. He would see a breach in this intimacy that allows other people into this communion, as spiritual adultery, and would certainly never write spiritual adultery into our design or make a way for it to be the natural thing that happens in the world.

If everyone could read our thoughts and attitudes on our face, we'd live in a world where other people were sharing an intimate relationship with us reserved for God alone. God would never design a world to work that way.

“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”
Jeremiah 17:10

The jury that thinks they can see the guilt on a person's face and sentences him as guilty, may not realize this but they are claiming to have the power to search the heart and mind through the facial expression or mannerisms, and they are claiming the right to administer a fair reward or judgment based on that secret knowledge.

This is something only God can do, and they are greatly overstepping their place as human beings to make decisions in this way!

Furthermore, those of us who judge people based on their facial expression are similarly being unjust and overstepping our place.

The Bible doesn't say we can ever know with absolute certainty a person's standing with God, but it does say we can and should make a gestimate. What criteria does the Bible say to use to do that?

“Ye shall know them by their fruits.”

Matthew 7:16

“Even a young man is known by his actions–whether his conduct is pure and upright.”

Proverbs 20:11

Only God can see into the heart. The rest of us can see only your actions. Actions aren’t a perfect gauge of character, but they are the best we have access to, until the judgment when all the secret things of the heart will be revealed. The things only God knows will be revealed on that day and this is why we are to judge nothing before the time, until those things are revealed.

“Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.”

1 Corinthians 4:5

Hypocrisy Can't Always be Spotted by Outward Actions Alone
It is possible for someone to seem to have fruit, to seem to be walking with God, and to be harboring a spirit of rejecting Him in their heart, a spirit of doubt and accusation against God. So even actions aren’t a perfect way to gauge character or the status of whether someone is walking with God or rejecting Him.

There is no way for a person to know for sure who is walking with God and who isn’t. Only God knows with absolute certainty. At the same time, we can know in a general sense how to live a Christian life and be right with God. We know what kinds of fruit (actions) come from being a converted believer.

"Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous."

1 John 3:7-8

When people keep on sinning - what is meant by this is that they live a lifestyle of unrepentant sin where they gradually go deeper and deeper into sin rather than overcoming it - it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning.
Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

"The one who practices sin is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the very start. This is why the Son of God was revealed, to destroy the works of the devil.

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.

By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother."

1 John 3:8-10

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions

and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.

Galatians 5:19-21

What Do We Use Then?

How do we determine whether our heart is right with God? As mentioned earlier, by the Word, not by human reasoning. By searching our motives and intents of the hearts through lining our motives up with God’s Word and measuring them.

However, we cannot do this in our own power. Notice how the verse says the Word is alive and active. What it means by this is that the Spirit works through the Word both to teach us from God’s Word and to reveal the state of our hearts. Only the Spirit can open our understanding and make the Word clear to us. Only God truly knows our hearts. We don’t even know ourselves with 100% accuracy even when lining ourselves up with His Word, but He knows us with perfect knowledge.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Jeremiah 17:9

Here we see a perplexing problem. Since the heart is deceptive, how can we search our own heart to accurately assess the state of our heart and our motives, if we’re so deceitful that we won’t be completely honest, even when we’re trying to be?

The answer is given in the text that follows:

“I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”

verse 10

Praise the Lord, God knows our heart through and through; He can both assess and cure our sinful condition.

We must engage in this process with much prayer and dependence on God. We will need Him every step of the way.

The purpose of revealing the evil in our hearts is for a redemptive purpose, to bring us to conversion, and also God periodically does this process with us through life as part of the sanctification process. He shows us our sins and our defects of character for the purpose of us working with Him on these specific weak points to overcome them. The goal is always redemptive, the end result is always victory. Through Christ we can overcome every one of our weak points and character defects.

“All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the LORD.”

Proverbs 16:2

God's Word not only facilitates the change of our hearts through the spirit from ones of stone to heart of flesh, but it also defines ideas and concepts so perfectly, that it serves as the measuring tool to figure out if our attitudes and thoughts are right ones or wrong ones.

So what we do is we compare our attitudes with the Word of God, to see if they measure up with immoral ones or moral ones. And if they are immoral, we surrender them to God and ask for a new attitude to replace the selfish one.

What makes something right is when the motive is giving, self-sacrificial love, this is the desire, and when the actions or thoughts focus on or carry out the good desire. Respecting other people’s property by not stealing or using what is theirs is love, for instance. Being faithful to one’s spouse is love. Desiring to cheat on one’s spouse would be an unloving or an evil desire. Coveting someone’s things is an unloving or evil desire.

Motive Present in the 10 Commandments
As always what defines right is the 10 commandments. Taking a deeper look at the 10 Commandments reveals they aren’t just actions, but principles. In other words there is a motive actuating each of them. If your dog grabs a stranger’s bag and runs off with it, we don’t say the dog is stealing. Because we know the dog does not possess moral agency and therefore there is no immoral motive involved when a dog takes something that belongs to someone. But if a person does the same thing it’s stealing. Motive is present in all 10. Lying isn’t lying without a motive to deceive. Simply being incorrect about a fact and unknowingly giving someone false information isn’t lying. Lying is when the intent to deceive for personal gain at the expense of others is present in one’s actions and will. Same thing with all the other 10. If a person learning a new language intends to use a swear word to curse at their parents, but uses the wrong word and ends up saying something loving instead, this is still a violation of the 5th commandment. They intended to curse at their parents so they are disrespecting their parents. Likewise if someone intends to say something kind to their parent as they are learning a new language and they say a swear word by accident, this isn’t a violation of the 5th Commandment as the swearing was an accident. One could go on for some time with such examples about how motive is inherent within the concept of sin and of righteousness.

When we desire to fulfill these commandments and the inherent principles within them actuate us, then the desires and thoughts and motives that go in the direction or way of the commandments are holy and right desires and reveal a good character. If our thoughts and desires and motives (and actions) go in the way of breaking the commandments, then we are having sinful desires and motives and if fostered and not surrendered to God, these will make for a fallen, unconverted character.

“Do not envy the wicked, do not desire their company; for their hearts devise violence, and their lips declare trouble.”

Proverbs 24:2

It's About Motive, Not Whether Their Body is Revved Up
This text above shows motive. The wicked devise violence. They plan out how to harm others. Their goal is destruction and violence of that person, often due to envy or hatred. A person can be in a revved up state where they feel aggressive and have temptations to attack others or start fights with them, and yet not have the motive to do so, not have the underlying sinful desire to do so.

Many mental conditions involve the body and brain being in the fight or flight response. Everything from anxiety disorders to psychotic disorders. This is a state the body is in, there's no motive to harm present.

Read the following text and note how motive is written into this entire text, in fact it’s spelled out clearly. You can see how what makes something an evil act and what makes someone a wicked, unrepentant person is when the intent and the motive is to harm another person or God in order to selfishly promote oneself above others and at their expense.

“If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:

Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:

We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil:

cast lots with us; we will all share the loot”—

my son, do not go along with them, do not set foot on their paths;”

Proverbs 1:11-15

In the above verse the wicked covet the material possessions of others and so they kill them and take their goods.

Notice in this verse how the wicked kill and steal from innocent people “without cause”. This doesn’t mean they don’t have a reason or a motive. Their motive is selfishness, and they may have a number of reasons and past history factoring into why they gave into the temptation to do this. But what they are doing is still without cause, because by this the Bible means it’s without just cause. There is no just reason for them to be killing and stealing. A just reason would be something like a group of men capturing Lot and Abraham going and fighting and killing some of those men in order to rescue Lot. Or stealing back from someone something they stole from you (which really isn’t stealing at all; it’s just protecting your property). But when someone does something for an unjust reason such as stealing in order to get that person’s goods, the Bible calls this stealing without cause, meaning without just cause.

“For among My people are wicked men; they watch like fowlers lying in wait; they set a trap to catch men.”

Jeremiah 5:26

Jeremiah 5:26 is another verse depicting that to be evil one must have evil motives and showing clear evil intent.

Holy Motives Shown by Christ
Notice also the clear motive shown by the sacrifice of Christ.

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

Philippians 2:1-8

“The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

John 10:17-18

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”

John 10:11

These are the good motives we want to have in us as His children. That same attitude or mind that Christ had. Anything that is not that attitude of love needs to be surrendered to God and parted with.

Of course even converted people will have some immoral and selfish motives. They will sometimes sin also. But the whole of their motives will be more like Christ than like Satan, and if unconverted it’s actually the other way around. If the Christian has selfish motives, they will surrender them to God, not foster and encourage or cherish them. They will hate the selfishness that still exists in their character and desire strongly for God to remove it from their character and mold them into His humble and pure character. They will make effort on their knees in prayer to gain the victory over self. They won’t celebrate the sin that still exists in their character or encourage it. The unconverted do the opposite.

Body Inclinations and Desires

When I say we must search our attitudes to see if we're actuated by right or wrong ‘desires’ I do not mean physical desires or inclinations that stem from unconscious processes of the body and which are not cognitive, like a man seeing a beautiful woman and having sexual attraction for her even though she is not his wife. This desire is not "adultery", it's just the raw sexual desire God created our bodies to have. A desire for adultery would be if he started looking for ways he could get this woman alone to flirt with her. If he finds himself thinking up strategies to initiate a flirtatious conversation, then he can know he is sinning in his thoughts and attitudes. Neither is it a sin for someone to experience same sex attraction because the attraction comes from unconscious processes in the brain and body. Our bodies can have all kinds of faulty physical desires that can be related to things like neurotoxins and histamine and other biochemical imbalances.

Rather I’m speaking of the kinds of desires which comes from the character.

Desires That Come From the Character
The book of James has some powerful key scriptures that illustrate this truth.

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?

You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.

When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

James 4:1-3

It’s the desires of the sinful character that produce active sins.

Jesus gives several key statements that really make this truth plain.

“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.

Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.

A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”

Luke 6:43-45

The Type of Desire That Causes Sin

Bodily desires do not lead to sin in and of themselves. Being a sexual being doesn't mean a person will commit fornication. If they were perfect in character like Adam in Eden, then even though they are a sexual being they would never think a lustful thought even though their body would have sexual desires and respond sexually to different situations such as a beautiful woman walking past them. None of this is sin.

So what kinds of desires cause sin to happen then?

Notice in this verse in James about temptation, how desire is not sin, but it leads to sin when it is conceived. And we're going to note the type of desire referenced here.

"but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death."

James 1:14-15

This verse is referencing character. If a person has a sinful character, this character has selfish desires. These sinful desires are not sins. The person is sinful in being, but they haven't actually sinned unless they carry out these desires, either by indulging in active fantasy through thoughts, or through actions. When a situation presents itself that entices the selfish desires, the person has a choice to make. If they allow desire to conceive, this is when sin happens.

What is conception? The Bible is using a great metaphor here to explain the process. A baby is formed when a sperm meets an egg, when the two merge together. This is conception. In the same way when the character of the person is sinful, no sin has occurred, but when temptation comes and entices that sinful character and the person gives in to that enticing idea, this is when sin has happened.

The idea must be received into the mind and accepted. The sperm must meet the egg. In order for sin to have occurred. If the temptation merely entices but the person never receives it into the mind and decides "Yes, I cherish this, yes I will do this" then no sin has occurred. Temptation itself is not sin.

This is not a reference to bodily desires, inclinations, or orientations.

It is the selfish character in us that makes temptation possible, not our bodies. Not even our distorted bodies. Let's present a hypothetical scenario...a perfect person with gay attraction may desire a gay relationship, but they will not be enticed in their character to engage in one, thus the bodily desire would never become active sin, even in the area of mental fantasy in such a person. These desires would remain in the body only.

What Then is the Solution?

Since it is the selfish character that will inevitably and always result in sin...then as long as we have any selfishness in us sin will manifest. The Bible puts it this way "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Heart here means character. Luke 6:45

The answer then is not to white knuckle ourselves into obedience and control the outward actions only. This will not eliminate sin from our lives. The answer is to surrender the character itself to God.

"No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God."

1 John 3:6,9

Notice the Bible teaches it is impossible for the one who lives in Christ to continue in sin. Because His seed remains in them -- His own righteous character is implanted in them -- and this causes a change of the heart or character. Once the character is changed, the thoughts and actions become holy and good.

There are sadly many Christians who believe a person can be justified before God and forgiven of their sin through Christ and yet their thoughts and actions won't change. This is a false belief. When one makes a true surrender to Christ their heart changes, and since it is from the heart where all thoughts and actions originate, there is a decided change in these things. They now have holy thoughts and right motives, which they could not generate on their own. It is the power of Christ at work in them.

As long as they stay surrendered to Christ (what Jesus calls "abiding in Him John 15:7) they will continue to have a heart of love and thoughts and actions of love will flow from this new heart.

Nothing Outside Can Defile
“There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”

And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.

And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him,

since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)

And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,

coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.”

Mark 7:15-23

Where “Within” Is

Notice how Jesus specifies where “within” is. “Within” is the heart or character of the person. The immoral desires of the character produce active sins.

The character is formed when we, knowing right from wrong, use our will to choose to do right. To surrender immoral attitudes to Him rather than cherish them. To give them up.

If we do choose to cherish jealous or evil attitudes in our heart, that choice grieves God’s Spirit and hardens our hearts, making our characters more selfish and evil.

Some Things That are Not the Heart

There are a lot of things that are not the ‘heart.’ If you sick with a strep infection that goes to your brain, and this causes you to have strong emotions of anger and rage, this is not your heart.

If you’re bitten by a tick and develop Lyme disease and it tanks your mood and you become severely depressed, this depression is not your heart.

If you have sexual urges that are biologically based this doesn’t make you a fornicator for having a sexual body. This also is not the heart.

There are many different feelings and experiences that are not the heart or the character.

The character is in the frontal lobe; it’s the higher parts of the brain that make moral choices. It’s not the involuntary processes and unconscious processes of our brain and body, what might be called the lower or "animal" feelings and inclinations. If your leg involuntarily twitches that wasn’t a conscious jerk you chose with your will.

If you have the urgency to go to the bathroom, this wasn’t a conscious choice of your will.

If you feel very angry all of a sudden from histamine dumping in your brain, this also wasn’t an act of the will.

If you feel depressed because you have histamine toxicity and it’s chronic, your will and character also aren’t involved in that.

Notice that it is only the desires of the character that can corrupt a person, not the feelings of the person or their emotions.

Character Desires
Character desires are desires that stem from the moral state of a person’s heart. These are either righteous or sinful desires, they aren’t neutral like the lower urges, such as having a sex drive is neutral. If a person has a corrupt character they will have sinful, selfish desires. It’s these desires that are in the heart that defile a person, not the feelings or inclinations of the lower, animal nature of a person.

And even desires are not sin unless the person “conceives” them, choosing to actively fantasize about immoral things, or to do behaviors that are immoral.

However, until we have perfect characters, the desires of our flawed and selfish characters will result in us doing sins. We can begin to change character and put to death these desires through Christ, and so we will have less and less of them as we engage in the sanctification process and are transformed in character.

What Implications Do These Important Concepts Have With Mental Conditions?

What implications does this have with mental conditions? Well, it means we can have mental symptoms, mental malfunction and dysfunction, even while having new characters in Christ.

Mental symptoms can affect cognition as in the case of psychosis, where the person loses the ability to think logically and believes nonsensical things.

And they can affect emotions, as is seen in the case of emotional dysregulation which is often a very core component of mental illness.

So is a person a jealous person for feeling emotions that feel like jealousy?

The answer is no, a person is not a jealous person if they feel feelings of jealousy. They are a jealous person if they choose to think jealous thoughts and have a jealous attitude towards others. Usually feelings will accompany these chosen thoughts and attitudes, but the feelings are not what makes the person jealous.

Remember the definition of sin is an action, thought, or attitude, not a feeling.

Feelings will accompany chosen attitudes and thoughts in a healthy brain.

But in a mentally unwell brain or even for something as simple as insomnia or stress, feelings can be dysregulated and not match up with our chosen attitudes and thoughts. Or feelings can be entirely absent.

Mental conditions are on the rise like we've never seen them before. 1 in 3 women now gets postpartum depression, and a common symptom of this condition is anhedonia, an inability to feel positive emotions like the emotions we associate with love and bonding. It's actually not that rare anymore for a mother to not feel bonding emotions for her newborn baby.

She is not a monster for lacking a feeling.

Don't Search Biochemistry to Determine Character; This Won't Get You Anywhere
The person who biochemically desires a homosexual encounter hasn’t sinned. It only becomes sin if that person allows themselves to pine after and engage in fantasy over that desire, or if they actually go out and have a gay encounter with someone. A physical desire can be just a physical desire; it’s not sin. But if we let that physical desire become a cherished desire of the mind and heart and not just a feeling, then it’s a sin.

So when judging our heart to see if we’re right with God we’re not going to search our emotions or biochemistry to see if our body is oriented toward fornication or anger or any other sin. We aren't searching our body to see if we sexually desire someone we aren't married to. We aren't searching our emotions to see if we have a feeling of anger in our brain. We aren't searching to find if we have a feeling depression. What we’re searching for is our attitudes and character desires. Our body may desire wrong things. But our mind may be surrendered to God at the same time. But if our mind is angry at God for not letting us engage in fornication, if our mind is looking for a way to break this commandment and get away with it, if we are pining after it, lusting after it or engaging in active fantasy, then we’ve made it an idol, even if we aren’t actually engaging in it, and we're sinning in our mind.

Do You Have a Carnal Mind, or a Mind of the Spirit?

So what you are going to search your heart to find is whether you have a mind of the flesh, or a mind of the Spirit. Anything that is a fleshly desire, you will surrender to God, and anything that is a holy desire you will feed and nurture.

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.

For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

Romans 8:5-9

Notice that the carnal mind goes against God's law. This is what you are searching for. Is this particular desire or thought something that goes against the principles in God's law or is it a thought that aligns with the principals in God's law? This is the question.

Do I have the mental processing God's Word describes as jealousy, unjust anger, hatred? Does this particular attitude I'm evaluating match up with these things, or does it match up with love, gratitude, respect, desire to please God?

The Bible calls the unconverted person the "natural man". Is this attitude you have stemming from desires of the natural man, or desires which come from the Spirit?

"The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

1 Corinthians 2:14

The natural man has hostility towards God. He doesn't want to submit to God; he wants to make himself prominent. He wants to order his life; he doesn't want to listen to the counsel of others and weigh their input and take it to God in prayer. He wants to do his way. Submission and love are foolishness to him, and are seen as oppression and a denial of his autonomy and self-expression. He can't see the beauty or the soundness in the wisdom of God's law.

"So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh craves what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you want."

Galatians 5:16-17

The flesh craves what is contrary to the Spirit. So this is what you're looking for:
Is this attitude against God's law or aligned with it?
Is this an attitude that is hostile towards God or submissive to Him?
Am I having trouble seeing the wisdom and goodness in God's truth, or do I see things like respecting authority figures as oppression and a stifling of my autonomy and desire to self-rule? (it's a bad desire to self-rule by the way; it's a desire to be one's own god.)

The good news is that since Jesus died for our sins, we can now surrender any of these wrong attitudes we have to God and God can give us a new heart that can understand the goodness of His ways. We don't have to be left in foolishness and hopelessness!

"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

Romans 8:2-4

Praise the Lord for this wonderful gift! His own righteous character will be written on our hearts when we surrender to Him. He won the right to do this by His life of perfect obedience and His death on the cross.

What Are Emotions Good for Then?

Now that we’ve established that emotions are not a safe way to gauge character, I think it’s important that we ask the question “Well what are emotions good for then? What is their purpose?.” And also the accompanying question “What are emotions exactly?” If living by principle is what ultimately matters – living with the right motives of love and goodwill for God and man – and this choice is made by the will and the intellect, then why have emotions at all? Why would God create them?

Let’s look at what emotions are. As explained in the verses above where we looked at God’s mind and attitude and how He first intellectually grasps a subject or chain of events, and then responds emotionally, we can see the purpose of emotions.

Emotions allow us to feel in our humanity the deeply significant moral truths in the world around us.

Emotions Part of the Cause and Effect Relationship Between the Moral Law and the Natural World
Emotions are part of the cause and effect relationship in our world. "The wages of sin is death" means a person who sins and does a moral evil reaps a negative result in the natural world, physical death, and ill health, and everything involved in ill health now is possible in this malfunctioning world. Sad emotions are created when our immune system takes a dive in response to a tragic life event or from intentional dismal thinking. Sad emotions cause a depressed immune system. Depression isn't just mental; the body itself becomes depressed. So negative emotions are linked with health tanking, even if slightly.

So it could be said that emotions are the cause and effect relationship of sin and sadness upon our being. People react to the truths in the external world in our own feelings and our own immune system.

It can also be said that happy emotions are the reward of right thinking and right doing. While happy emotions can't always be guaranteed in this life, due to factors outside of our control like illness or tragedy, it is still the natural law in the universe that emotions balance and become happy and health -- as a general rule -- when we engage in right thinking and right doing. Thus happy emotions -- and health itself -- are one of the rewards of living a Christian life God approves of.

Emotions aren’t valuable in and of themselves. It is truth that is valuable.

To illustrate this point you can ask any parent which scenario they would rather have:

In the first scenario they develop crushing depression and feel terribly sad every day of their life, but their kids are alive and well.

In the second scenario they are somehow given a substance that makes them feel deeply significant peace and joy all of the time and life feels like a profoundly wonderful and significant experience, but their child dies in a tragic car accident and they never see them again.

Parents will always choose the scenario where they feel crushing sadness but their kid is alive and well. They won’t choose the scenario where their emotions feel happy and healthy but their kid is dead and they never see them again.

Why? I think the answer is obvious. Because they want life for their kid. They want good things for the child they love so much. And they value the relationship they have with their kid. The value of the relationship and the well-being of the child is what matters.

This is true of all valuable things. It’s the thing itself that matters. People are made in the image of God, thus what happens to them and how we treat them matters because they are profoundly valuable. If we happen to have anhedonia and feel nothing for the people closest to us, this lack of feelings hasn’t negated their value, neither has it negated our responsibility to love them with actions of kindness.

But people aren’t robots or computers. A computer will just generate information and come to accurate conclusions. A computer will give us the facts. A computer can just as easily tell you it’s 70 degrees outside as it can tally up that 11 million victims died in the Holocaust. Not only does a computer not really grasp the weight of that tragic reality mentally, but it also doesn’t emotionally respond.

It makes sense for people to emotionally respond to great good or to great evil and tragedy. And that’s what emotions are – they are these weighty and important truths reacting upon a human being, a person with heart and soul.

When people do not react with emotion to important things, it definitely feels off both to them and to the people around them. Not only does it feel off, but it creates very real problems. When I had severe anhedonia and could feel no emotion except anxiety, when people I knew experienced a personal tragedy, I still cared and knew how significant it was for them, I just didn’t have an emotional reaction. And I found it much harder to act in a human way with them. I had to put expressions of concern on my face, because they didn’t just naturally form. My arm movements were kind of mechanical. I had to do a lot of acting and even then it was difficult to conjure the human response they needed. Even though I cared deeply, I hadn’t realized how much of our human reactions to console and comfort happen spontaneously as a result of neurohormones and biochemistry in reaction to sad events, and how it’s very difficult to manually create this same outward expression when your biochemistry isn’t cooperating.

When mental illness causes people to lose their emotions, you’ll see them act in a stoic way that makes it hard for them to communicate with one another and do the natural human behaviors that God programmed into our design. And if they are without emotions for too long and the people around them are without emotions also, they may even start to forget how to do these behaviors. This happen in the psychiatric hospital when people are there long-term and only interact with other mentally ill patients and do not interact with healthy individuals.

Of course many people in the psych hospital also have problems with cognition and mental perception, and their social cognition is impaired, so many of their odd behaviors and ways of interacting are stemming from cognitive issues and not from lack of emotion so that needs to be kept in mind, but definitely some of the patients have anhedonia as their only or prominent symptom and are in the hospital for that reason.

Another Reason Emotions Matter

A key reason emotions matter is because people matter. And if a person who matters is sad or troubled, both the situation that caused them to be troubled matters, and their own mental health matters.

The health of a person made in God’s image is significant and important. So the intense feelings of sadness, which cause a form of suffering, matter for that reason.

We should seek to alleviate suffering whenever we can. We shouldn’t try to do this in a vacuum, focusing only on the emotions. It’s unfortunately all too common for psychiatrists to prescribe medication to people who have had years of abuse, and then never offer any other form of help for them. There’s a psychological component when abuse has occurred, that needs to be addressed. The person also needs to be removed from the abusive home, not simply prescribed medication.

Even in cases of abuse, when the psychological element has been addressed, and the person has been removed from the abuse – even though the cause is physical or verbal abuse – supplements and health protocols can help and can be used alongside psychological interventions with great results. Abuse not only disturbs a person mentally, it actually breaks down the brain at a physical level. It causes inflammation, cell damage, dysregulated neurotransmitters, and a dysregulated immune response. Supplement protocols can rebalance these systems that have been thrown off by the abuse, and repair damaged cells. This will build the person back up at the physical level and make them feel stronger mentally and physically.

There are people who get depression and other troubling emotions from purely biochemical sources, such as Lyme disease, or mercury toxicity. Not everyone who experiences sadness is experiencing it from a psychological or situational source. It can be from pathogens in the environment or in the body. I had crushing depression starting at age 12 that felt like my whole family had died and was unrelenting for 8 years. This depression was actually greater than what people describe feeling from events, unless those events were especially tragic and severe.

I heard a testimony of a woman who had a hysterectomy at a young age, and when this surgery is done a woman goes very quickly from having normal hormone levels to having almost no estrogen or progesterone. Estrogen is involved in a happy mood, and if it plummets some women can become extremely depressed. The woman described a depression that was so severe she struggled not to commit suicide and battled constantly at an emotional level to stay alive.

Several years later she was finally put on estrogen hormones and her depression lifted and she was no longer depressed. Tragically her husband a child were killed in a car accident. She explained that the depression she feels now from the death of her husband and child, while obviously terribly painful, is not as severe as the depression she experienced from low estrogen.

That’s how much our biochemistry is involved in our feelings and emotions. And some people experiencing biochemical depression definitely do suffer terribly, and as Christians we ought to care about their mental health and inform them about treatments that can reduce or alleviate their suffering.

Our Emotions Do Not Just React to the External World; They Also React to the Internal "World" of Our Bodies
I remember that when I learned my depression and other very significant emotions of pain were basically purely biochemical in my case, there was a feeling of this being somehow wrong and unjust. That deep feelings were supposed to be connected with significant events. I think we are so used to emotions reacting to our environment that a common action people take when they first get severe depression or anxiety is to look for an outside source, and many of us do not realize the source can be one's own body. This was me at the beginning. I like so many others assumed outside influences were causing my depression. But it was not the case for me, and finally many years later I successfully treated my depression and anxiety, and became aware that those powerful and deep emotions were just from low vitamin D and mold exposure, it didn't seem right.

But if you really think about it it is right that malfunction - yes even the deep and personal dysregulation of psychological feelings like bonding, sadness, loneliness, longing, and desire to be appreciated and loved - can occur from purely biochemical sources in created beings.

God alone is the One who has all His functioning, including His deepest desires, from a brain and body that are immaterial and not dependent on any substance to function. Our brain and body are dependent on our physicality to function. Thus the fact that our deep emotions and feelings and thoughts and personality can malfunction due to purely physical causes is a feature of being human, of being a living designed being, rather than the Creator.

And if we expect our emotions to only ever be connected with the outside world and reactive to it, and never malfunction and react to inner disrupted physical processes, we are looking at ourselves like we are the Creator rather than the creation. So embracing this reality about our basic design is important in a spiritual sense. It affects our relationship with God, how we respond to this fact.

But in a brain hijacked by inflammation and suffering from illness, the natural emotions that follow a person’s delight or attitude, do not always exist. The person can be flat. Or they can have completely opposite emotions or feelings from their chosen attitude. For instance, you may really think it’s a tragedy that a friend passed away, and understand their value to you and to God, and yet find yourself smiling or laughing because you have a psychotic disorder and your brain gets flooded with dopamine when you’re under high levels of stress. A lot of emotions being dysregulated happens from involuntary protective measures and responses the body puts you into when it’s been under very high levels of stress for a very long time.

These protective measures actually protect your cells. It’s doing things at a cellular level that brace them against cell death, which can result from infections and stressors, and cell death is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to your body. You can handle some cells dying, but too many dying and you will break down and become severely disabled. For instance, late stage dementia involves lots of neuronal cell death, and people completely lose mental capacity and physical capacity also and have to have help even to do basic things like go to the bathroom. Thus your body must guard against cell death at all costs. Your body is trying to keep you alive at the cellular level; it’s not focused on whether you’re acting in socially appropriate ways. Involuntary processes and mechanisms don’t have that kind of intelligence.

Can Someone Lose the Convicting Voice of God?
What about those who believe they can no longer hear God's voice of conviction? They claim they used to hear Him but then His voice fell silent, and they were so used to hearing Him that the loss of His voice was a startling experience. This unsettling experience is usually accompanied by feelings of foreboding and doom and being shut out from God. There is a feeling of absolute hopelessness like one has committed the unpardonable sin and gone past the point of no return. It's a very surreal experience, dominated by powerful emotions; it's not usually simply a cognitive experience of concluding they can't hear Him.

Others claim they know they've lost God's convicting voice because they feel zero emotions when they lie, cheat, or steal. They are just completely emotionally numb and apathetic. It's wouldn't be hard for them to harm someone they say, because they would feel no troubling emotions. The only thing keeping them from harming others when they are angry with them is knowing it's the wrong thing to do. But they feel no emotion for others, and experience no feeling of remorse when they do wrong.

I've isolated this question down here at the bottom of the article because it is quite unique, and unlike the other questions, the answer can be a very serious one that can involve the eternal fate of the person, though not in the way they usually think it does.

Conviction Not a Feeling Though it Usually Has Accompanying Feelings With It
Conviction isn't really what we would call a feeling or an emotion at all. While feelings can accompany conviction, and the Bible mentions a convicted person experiencing "godly sorrow", conviction itself is a cognitive experience where the Holy Spirit speaks to our mind and convinces us of truth using reasoning from the scriptures. "Come and let us reason together" the Lord says in Isaiah 1:18 when calling on us to repent and believe in a Savior.

The "godly sorrow" is first and foremost an attitude of sorrow for sin, and this is why it leads to repentance, to a change in attitude and actions. Feelings of sorrow do not lead to real heart change. Feelings are too superficial to actuate an entire change in the life. Such a change is made from real conviction about truth, not from feeling a certain way, even if it's a deep feeling that feels very significant.

And even if a person were to repent of their sins due to an overwhelming feeling, it would not "count" in God's books as repentance. That's right, it really would not count. It would be what the Bible considers to be ungenuine repentance. It would be like the people in Isaiah 29:13 “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Just lip service.

Earlier in the article we talked about how what makes Christianity different from false religions is that it has true principles as its foundation, and the other religions operate via false principles. Making a choice to surrender your life to God, not because of actual sorrow for sin (ab attitude), but because of overwhelming distressing feelings, is operating via a false principle. God doesn't work that way and He can't accept that as actual repentance and be a truthful and loving God.

How did Paul Win people to Christ?

"Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures,
explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said."
Acts 17:2-3

When people were convicted that Jesus was the Messiah from Paul's message, they were convicted on the basis of the fact his reasoning lined up with the reasoning of the scriptures. This is how true conviction happens, and it doesn't happen any other way.

Feelings can accompany true repentance, but they can actually accompany unrepentant attitudes too. Think back to the story of Judas who showed clear emotional distress when he threw the money at the Pharisees and cried out "I have betrayed the innocent blood!" This was a very emotionally distressing experience for him. But he did not actually have true repentance. If he had been repentant he would have asked Jesus for forgiveness and returned to following Him, as Peter did.

So once again we don't want to look at emotions to determine whether someone is shut out from God and has grieved His Holy Spirit away. Feelings accompany all of our significant human experiences (for those who are healthy), but they are not a barometer to measure one's state with God.

What Do They Mean by "Feel"?
When someone tells me "I can no longer feel the Holy Spirit's conviction" the first question I ask them is to clarify what they mean by "feel". Some people use "feel" almost interchangeably with "know." Really every mental process we engage in or experience could be called a "feeling" if by feeling one does not mean emotions, but they mean a mental sensation. Even cognitive processes involve mental sensations as neurons fire and signal to one another. It's usually people who are very in tune with their bodies and their mental processes, and very oriented towards the sensory world, who will call cognitive processes like conviction a "feeling." They can actually feel the "wheels" of their cognition turning and changing, and their neurotransmitter levels shift when they engage in different mental activities, including being convicted of right and wrong when they hear a forceful sermon at church. What someone like this often means when they say they can no longer feel the Holy Spirit, is that the cognitive process of responding to conviction is no longer going on in their brain, and they've noticed its absence, and they are concerned.

They are actually referring to the loss of the cognitive process involved in telling right from wrong when they use this definition of "feel."

To differentiate, I ask the person to define what they mean by "feel." "Are you saying there used to be a feeling of the Presence of God or an impression from God that is no longer there, or are you telling me you can no longer tell the difference between right and wrong?"

Their Answer Makes All the Difference
Their answer here makes all the difference in the world in ascertaining what has really happened to them. If they say "I've lost the feeling of a Presence, but I can still tell right from wrong", then the situation while a stressful one involving their health, is not a serious one. There is nothing in the Bible that indicates a Christian will feel the Presence of God. There are references in the scriptures to experiencing peace when we are forgiven of our sins. But this peace is more than a feeling; it's an actual treaty of peace between God and us made possible by Christ. Feelings of peace usually accompany the knowledge that we are at peace with God, and the way the Holy Spirit changes our character to be one of trust and rest in Christ, there are often feelings of rest and peace. But it's certainly possible for a person in an inflamed state from something like black mold exposure, to accept Christ, and have spiritual peace with God and yet not feel a feeling of peace due to the inflamed state dysregulating their mood and emotions. There are factors that can interfere with the biochemistry of a person and make the natural feeling of peace that usually follows conversion to not occur.

The person who answers that they can still tell right from wrong, is still hearing the Holy Spirit's convicting voice, even if it feels like God has left them. How do we know this? Because that ability to tell right from wrong is what the Holy Spirit works on when He convicts us. If it is in tact, He will convict us every day. He does not give up on anyone, unless they have committed the unpardonable sin and grieved Him away completely. (more on this in a minute). If the person can tell when they go to tell a lie or mistreat someone that this is wrong to do -- this is the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to them. They may have symptoms like anhedonia -- a loss of pleasurable or positive feelings -- that make them feel disconnected from themselves and from God, or they may have symptoms like dissociation that make them feel out of touch with their sense of self and with God, but they haven't actually lost God's voice.

But if they answer "I can't tell right from wrong anymore; it's all blurred together", or "right and wrong aren't real things; it's just a matter of opinion", or "I know society thinks lying is wrong, but I fail to see the harm in it", or "God has given me a unique ability to understand right from wrong and it's different than other Christians think it is; we've been on the wrong track this whole time", or "I used to think right and wrong were the 10 commandments but now I can see I was incorrect and the 10 Commandments are just cultural ideas" -- well if they give you any of these answers this is very concerning, as these answers indicate they may have actually lost their ability to understand right and wrong and they may actually not be hearing the Holy Spirit's convicting voice.

My Experience Losing the Holy Spirit's Voice During Psychosis
I lost the Holy Spirit's convicting voice when I slipped into psychosis. All that was left was my own voice, which I mistook to be God, due to the psychosis. Once I came out of psychosis and God's voice returned, I wondered how I could have ever "forgotten" what it sounded like, or confused it with the voice of psychosis. God's voice was logical, deep, and convicting. It was the Voice of Truth to the soul. The psychotic voice had been flashy and grandiose, but it wasn't based in truth, and it didn't use logical reasoning; it spoke nonsense.

The best way I can describe God's voice is it sounds like the Voice of Truth to the soul. It's more than an external voice. Every other voice in our lives from other people, to demons tempting us, communicates a way where they talk to us. Only God's Holy Spirit has the ability to enlighten our understanding itself, and open the "eyes" of our heart so we can see truths about God from His Word. So understanding is present with it, not just a "voice." And not only does the Holy Spirit have the power to open our understanding, but He can change our character too, something no one else can do. Satan can tempt us from without to choose sin, and when we sin our hearts harden towards God, but it's a process he does from outside of us. Only the Holy Spirit can mold our character within us.

After I came out of psychosis I realized how often the Holy Spirit speaks to us. It happens literally many times per day. Every time we go to do a righteous action or an immoral one, the Holy Spirit is there convicting us of the rightness or wrongness of the action we're thinking about doing. Anytime we need to make a moral choice, He is right there to convict. His voice is a constant one.

Losing His voice is awful! When it happens to a person they often notice it as it is a stark difference from life with His convicting voice present.

Some People Who Suspect They've Lost God's Voice Are Correct
So some of these people who are alarmed that they've lost the convicting voice of God are actually correct and they've slipped into psychosis. They often draw the conclusion that they've committed the unpardonable sin, but this is not correct.

It's really important not to jump from "something is very wrong" which is very true, to "it must be the unpardonable sin because I feel a strong feeling of being shut out from God." This kind of thing really throws a monkey wrench into the process of getting help. When something serious is wrong, it's important to assess as accurately as possible what is going on, so you can seek out the appropriate help. Conclusions of the unpardonable sin when the person is experiencing psychosis are completely unhelpful and delay the person getting the help they need to come out of psychosis.

It's also important we don't do from a spiritual perspective too. If Satan can get us to believe in points of faith that aren't true he can lead us into dangerous error which could cost us our souls in the end. He does have a plan to overthrow every child of God who doesn't make God their trust and God's Word their authority.

How the Unpardonable Sin is Different From Losing God's Voice Due to Psychosis
Let's talk about how the unpardonable sin is different from losing God's voice due to psychosis.

The unpardonable sin is a very specific thing. The unpardonable sin involves a person rejecting truth and going on in rebellion against God over and over again until they form a character completely like Satan's.

"If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that."

This verse references ongoing sin. ἁμαρτάνοντα (hamartanonta) describes someone in the process of ongoong sin. What John is saying here is that if a person goes on in sin to the point where they die in unrepentant sin, God cannot give life to

Few people have actually done this in this lifetime. The Bible mentions the Amorites and groups of Canaanites in the Old Testament as having committed the unpardonable sin. David was sent to enact God's judgments on them and put them to death. In the psalms again and again David describes such people.

“Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.”
Psalm 73:6-8

The person in psychosis is not someone who matches the description of the wicked who committed the unpardonable sin in the Psalms.

So...the unpardonable sin involves forming a character like the devil's. It takes time to form such a character. The person must go very deep into sin in order to commit this sin.

Just Hard Hearted, Not Delusional
At the center of the difference between the two conditions is the fact that a person who commits the unpardonable sin can still tell right from wrong. They are like a person before conversion who knows the right they ought to do, and yet can't do it, and has no desire or inclination to do it, due to the hardness of their heart. Unlike how we all were before conversion, the person who has committed the unpardonable sin does not pray to God to give them new desires and deliver them from the hardness of their heart. They've grieved the Holy Spirit away so they will never pray such a prayer.

Whereas the person with a mental condition where they lose God's voice due to mental dysfunction cannot understand right and wrong anymore. This is a key difference.

So what this means is if the person is having delusions about right and wrong, they have not committed the unpardonable sin by hardening their heart in continual sin. They have a mental condition, and they need immediate treatment.

They are temporarily "without law", an innocent but potentially dangerous state people in psychosis enter into where they can't tell right from wrong anymore. Whatever choice they made for our against God before slipping into this state is the one registered in God's books, and it will remain their final choice if they can't be brought out of psychosis. This is a serious matter indeed.

So while this is not the unpardonable sin from hardening one's heart repeatedly in sin, it could end up being the unpardonable sin the same way someone who dies in rebellion to God is lost, if the psychotic person was not a saved Christian when they slipped into psychosis and lost their moral perception.

The good news is antipsychotics help 2/3rds of cases recover basic perception of right and wrong. So most people who are treated with them will come back to reality enough to make a choice to follow Christ if they so choose to do so.

The door has closed on them, but it can be a temporary closing. It doesn't have to remain closed. I believe God wants to bring many such people back to reality to get right with Him and we need to aid this in happening.

Sometimes though the person has only blunted moral perception or gaps in their moral perception and their psychosis is not severe enough for it to be completely missing. This usually happens to people who are on medication, or people with milder forms of psychosis. These people can still respond to God's Holy Spirit and still have a conscience, but with gaps or blunting occurring. They can still be very distressed about their condition and fear they've committed the unpardonable sin, and they need to be reassured their moral perception is in tact, while given the appropriate medical attention.

The conditions that most commonly cause a loss of God's convicting voice are psychotic disorders and personality disorders, the latter if they are severe. In mild to moderate cases of personality disorders the person can still tell right from wrong. But this is not true of psychotic disorders. By the time someone gets diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, they've usually had delusions which are severe ways the brain breaks the laws of logic. If their brain is breaking the laws of logic in more mild ways, they usually will not get a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder and they will get diagnosed with something like schizotypal personality disorder, or depression, or an anxiety disorder, or something along those lines. So by the time they get the psychotic disorder diagnosis they often have slipped into a state where they can't tell right from wrong.

Brain injury and stroke can also cause a loss of perception of right and wrong. The majority of people with mental conditions still have some understanding of right and wrong. It would only be the severe cases that have lost this completely.

I've noticed that people with a background in charismatic churches will often conclude God has left them if feelings they associate with His Presence leave them. Many times these people have symptoms of mental conditions. If their overall condition improves and they begin having good feelings again, they conclude God is with them, and drop the idea they had committed the unpardonable sin. This is a common arc that frequently happens. In both cases -- when the negative feelings persist, and when they lift and positive ones return -- the person is relying on feelings to gauge whether they are right with God. This is building on sand and not the truth of God's Word and it will not steer them to truth.