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?

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 be angry, or to feel depressed, or as in the case of the mother, to not feel emotions of love for her new baby? Can anger or depression or lack of love sometimes just be biochemical reactions and involve no guilt on the part of the person?

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.

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 suffering.

And the opposite is also true. 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. 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?

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?

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 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 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. 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.

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.

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!"
It is unfortunately all too common for 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 feeling's sake. 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 has 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.

While feelings should not be one's highest goal, there is certainly nothing wrong with wanting 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 stop focusing 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. 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.

Part About How We are Physical or Natural and We are Moral or Spiritual

As explained earlier people are physical beings and 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.

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 I believe is that 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.

How Our Emotions Were Created to Work

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.

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.

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 all of a sudden emotions of love for others sweep over you, this is not indication you have actually become more loving.

What is it that makes a person more loving? It’s when we surrender jealousy and selfish ambition to God. It’s when we stop fighting His conviction to stop being selfish and we agree to live for the good of others and not just ourselves. Such a surrender will not just manifest as a feeling in church. It will manifest in the life of the person. You will see the person join a Christian ministry and give of their time, energy, and resources to others. You will see them abandon selfish projects and dreams to spread the gospel instead.

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, then you aren’t holy no matter how holy you feel while worshipping.

Facial Expressions

What about our facial reactions, our expressions? Don’t these reveal the chosen attitude of the heart? If someone laughs when they hear someone they know has died, doesn’t this indicate they are harboring hatred in their heart?

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

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 to say high dopamine in the brain or some other condition or situation, but not have pride in the heart. 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, 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.

Not Being Able to Read the Attitudes of a Person With 100% Accuracy From Their Facial Expressions is an Issue of Privacy, a God-Given Right 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. Jesus says to judge with righteous judgment. While the Bible is clear that our feelings and our facial expressions do reflect the state of our heart to an extent, it also tells us these things are not fool-proof and they are incomplete. The Bible is clear that the thoughts of the heart don’t show up perfectly on the expression and that only God can know the thoughts of the heart. God did create our expression and our demeanor and mannerisms to convey the godly love that exists in our heart, 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. This is an issue of individuality and privacy. Only God is allowed to know the inner thoughts and read them with perfect accuracy.

And the Bible says fruit is the way we are to measure and judge others, but that even this is imperfect so we shouldn’t claim to know the heart. When it comes to measuring and judging ourselves, once again facial expression and reactions, do respond to character but not in a perfect way and thus we can’t use them to fully know our heart.

But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

1 Samuel 16:7

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:

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.

“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

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.

“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 behaviors, 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

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

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

Proverbs 27:19

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?

So what are we to use to gauge character then, when it comes to ourselves?

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 answer according to the Bible is our motives and attitudes gauge character. In this verse we see that 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.

As explained above, emotions naturally follow motives and desires, and our character has desires which we then act out in the form of thoughts and actions. Once again we’re looking at moral desires – whether we desire righteous things or selfish, unrighteous ones – we’re not looking at our lower-level feelings that aren’t based in morality such one’s sex drive or inflammation from their autoimmune condition giving them feelings of anger. The answer to an imperfect character that desires wrong things, is to develop a new character through Christ. A converted person rejoices in the truth. An unconverted person rejoices and delights in wickedness. Their fallen character results in them having evil desires and motives, and their emotions respond to and flow out of these evil desires, reflecting them.

But while this is true, this doesn’t mean we can use emotions as a way to gauge what kind of character we possess and our standing with God. Rather it’s the motives and desires that the emotions are flowing from that reveal our character and that we are to use to gauge the state of our heart.

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. Not stealing and respecting other people’s property 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.

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 fullfill 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.

Inclinations and Tendencies

Just to reiterate and make this very clear, when I say ‘desires’ I do not mean physical inclinations, like having a physical inclination to cheat on one’s spouse, or a physical desire to engage in a homosexual encounter or a physical desire to eat unhealthy food, or a physical desire to be famous and worship self and feel a thrill from it. 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 and are either immoral or moral. Not the basic, rudimentary drives we all have within us and which have nothing to do with the character, and which are subject to dysfunction, such as someone having same-sex attraction from mercury toxicity disrupting their hormones and their mental perception.

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

Proverbs 24:2

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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

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. What we’re searching for is whether we are harboring a desire for fornication or sin that makes it an idol in the heart. 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, then we’ve made it an idol, even if we aren’t actually engaging in it.

"Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

v. 13

How do we determine whether our heart is right with God? 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 realize our dependency on God and ask Him to send His Spirit to teach us and reveal the true state of our heart. To see the true state of our heart will require humility. Those who are too proud will miss defects in their characters and evil desires in their hearts because they are too proud to be open to seeing the truth.

It’s necessary to magnify Christ and look to Him as the solution. It won’t be any benefit to us to get weighed down by the sins we see and there’s no reason for this because Jesus is the remedy. 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

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 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.

Coming to Grips With This
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.