TLP 32: Emotions and Parenting, Part 1

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When our families buy into this misinformation like this, it makes the Bible seem ludicrous when it commands counted -all joy when you fall into diverse temptations.

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How is poor little joy supposed to overcome the anger, disgust, fear, and sadness all the time?

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Welcome to Truth. Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. Alright, let's start with an obvious observation. Our society, and I would include

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Christian subcultures, have no idea how emotions really work. We're like a child with a gun.

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We know nothing about what it is, how it works, or what it does, but we don't care because we really want to play with it.

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And it will likely kill us. Now we also need to make a less than obvious observation, and that is

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I love Pixar. I do. Seriously. They are seemingly the only massive movie company dedicated to producing genuinely wholesome, family -friendly content.

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And they do a really good job of it, too. Much of their work even conforms to God's revealed truth.

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But this doesn't stop me from having some serious issues with one of their recent movies.

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It's called Inside Out. If you haven't already seen the movie, I might encourage you to watch the trailer I've linked in the description just so that some of what's to come will make a little bit more sense.

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The one scene that you see in the trailer just beautifully illustrates many of the most deadly misconceptions about emotions, all tied up with this tragic bow of sex stereotypes and served with some death -of -a -family fruitcake.

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I mean, overall, I really did enjoy the movie. In fact, my kids, I think, were watching it again yesterday?

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I don't know. But the main theme is the stuff of failure, and we cannot hope to glorify God in our parenting if our emotions are inside out.

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Now, please understand that this is not a review of the movie. Yes, I liked it, and as I said, my family has probably watched it more than five times.

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But we do so with a firm understanding that we cannot believe the failure philosophy the movie teaches.

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Almost every time we watch it, we're pointing out, in fact, my kids have gotten to the point that they are rehearsing what is wrong with the main idea in the movie.

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And that's great. I love for them to interact with truth that way. But more on that in a minute.

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I'm honored again to share with you a recent review of our podcast. Matt Stephen wrote this.

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He said, quote, I've been looking for a resource like this for years, and I finally found it. I'm a pastor and cannot wait to share this phenomenal resource with the parents of our church.

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I'm so thankful that this podcast is not moralistic, but instead gospel -centered. Thank you.

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Unquote. Well, all I can say is, praise the Lord. Without his word to guide us, I would just be another talking head cluttering the internet.

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But God's word gives us purpose and the power to accomplish his will in our parenting.

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And I would ask you, if TLP has blessed you, will you consider searching for our show on iTunes and rating us as well?

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Rating and reviewing helps more people find us, and I'd also like to encourage you to subscribe, of course, and share each episode with your friends.

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We also hope that our episode PDFs may be a beneficial resource. Sometimes we cover a lot of information, and it can all be summed up pretty well on a one or two -page

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PDF, and that can be found at evermindministries .com. Okay, now, let's get emotional.

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I acknowledge right off the bat that the trailer I linked is designed to interest us in the movie.

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Okay? It doesn't have all of the loose ends all tied up. It's a piece of conflict designed to pull us into some of the funny elements and some of the plot elements of the story.

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And it follows the pattern you'd expect from a secular family comedy. And again, like all good storytellers,

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Pixar is able to eventually resolve to the best of their ability the conflict that we see in the trailer. They're able to resolve that in the movie.

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But is that good enough? Does that make the message of the movie biblical? Listen, our society cannot bear the weight of more emotional misinformation.

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What we really need is just the opposite, or we'll just continue destroying our families with popcorn -stained fingers.

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So I'd like to start our discussion with the observation that God is the one who's given our families the gift of emotions.

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I say this first to defuse any potential criticisms that might creep up that, you're just an unemotional robot

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Vulcan rock, or you hate emotions. Well, that's patently untrue.

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I am not a robot or a Vulcan or a rock. And I actually am an incredibly emotional guy.

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This has been proven many times dramatically by the fact that Pixar hasn't made a movie yet that doesn't make me cry.

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I love emotions just like I love cars. However, I try my best to understand the purpose and place of emotions in life, lest I hurt myself or the people

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I love, just like cars. If I don't understand how a car is supposed to work and how to drive it safely,

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I can like it all I want, but there has to be some wisdom that goes into using the vehicle.

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But even as I say that emotions are a gift from God, I need to point out, firstly, that the Bible doesn't use the word emotions or feelings like we do.

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It often refers to emotions using pictures that ancient cultures would understand. For example, the heart and the bowels are two examples.

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However, not every use of these organs refers to our emotions. Still, one of the best examples for me that emotions are from God is that he makes time for them.

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In Ecclesiastes 3, 4, it says there's a time to weep and a time to laugh. Both of these actions, by the way, neither which of our emotions, are purely motivated by what we feel.

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Though they aren't emotions themselves, when we weep and when we laugh, we're doing that because of what we're feeling. And God has scheduled those times of high emotion into our lives.

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But we must observe, secondly, that most of the direct commands concerning specific emotions in the

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Bible are in the negative. Let me give you just a few. Philippians 4, 6, be anxious for nothing.

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Proverbs 15, 18, a hot -tempered man stirs up strife. Joshua 1, 9, do not be frightened.

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Well, what do we take from this? Well, just like a gun safety class, most of the information you learn is what not to do with the gun.

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Followed, secondly, by how to carefully do the right thing with the gun. Why is that? Because guns are dangerous.

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Warnings never accompany innocuous things. Well, that is unless, of course, you're an American businessman who doesn't want to be sued.

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Then you have warnings on everything. But generally speaking, warnings only associate those things that are dangerous.

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And in the same way, emotions can be so destructive to us personally and in our relationships that God spends more time talking about their dangers than He does their merits.

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So I wanted to see, first of all, that God is the one who gives us emotions. But secondly, I want to look at God's design for the emotions.

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Did you know that feelings are not desires? They are not thoughts. They're not beliefs.

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They're not behaviors. They're not decisions. Feelings may play into any and all of those things, but they're a unique creature.

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Most psychologists agree that an emotional response requires three things. One, an external experience.

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Two, an internal physiological response. And three, an external behavior. But at their basic core, emotions are simply chemical reactions to stimuli.

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They're an internal physiological response. They're chemicals, hormones. They don't even necessarily require an external behavior to be considered a feeling or an emotion.

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There's an external experience. We have an internal physiological response. That's the emotion. Now, the two things that are similar with all emotional responses are that they are powerful, but they're also equally subjective.

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The first one, powerful, I don't believe any evidence concerning the strength of emotions is needed. They've been blamed for everything from passionate love to wholesale murder.

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But the second idea of them being subjective requires a little bit more discussion. This point is harder to make because we only know our own reactions to emotions.

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Still, I believe the research is there. Let me illustrate it this way. A boy in your son's class has been called on to present his oral report.

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Immediately, his body becomes tingly and his appendages start shaking. His voice wavers and his sweat glands burst forth.

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He's a wreck. Everyone can see it. Now, sometime after the speech, he divulges to your son that he was petrified.

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However, your son, who signed up for speech class that semester, was also asked to give his report in the same class.

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Immediately, he feels the same rush pour over his body. However, he learned in speech class that what he was feeling was a

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God -given adrenaline response to high -stress situations. He knew that he could allow it to control him or that he could use the tool

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God gave him to deliver a better speech. So instead of freaking out, your son focuses on using the extra energy to make his gestures more powerful, his voice more authoritative, and his inflections more interesting.

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When he gets home, he tells you that giving the speech was a rush and that he really enjoyed it. Same situation.

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Same chemical response. Two very different feelings. So why was there a difference in the two boys' perceived emotional response?

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Well, what they knew and believed about the chemical reaction dictated how they responded to it.

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What's interesting is that other students would likely have no intense chemical response to this situation at all.

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You see, people are fond of saying, you can't control your emotions. But that's a lie.

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And right now, you might be going, what? Come on, Aaron. Seriously, you can't say that you can control your emotions.

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Well, listen, if I placed two pieces of cake in front of you, one was a dried up piece of boxed white cake with a famine of crusty frosting, and the other was a moist, delicious slice of chocolate perfection made from scratch, you would likely be very happy about eating the chocolate cake.

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You'd be excited. You'd start to drool almost just thinking about it. Until I told you that I poisoned it.

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Now, what just happened to your emotions? That depends. Do you believe me that I poisoned it?

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If you believe me to be like Captain Hook, so detestable as to endanger a person's life with a slice of rich, moist cake, then you are no longer excited about eating it.

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You're no longer happy about putting that in your mouth. In fact, you're disgusted and potentially afraid of the cake.

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However, if you believe I'm kidding because I'm just that kind of guy, you'll dig in because hey, you know, free cake.

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The point is, you had direct control over how you felt about the cake.

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From the moment the cake was offered, your mind decided which cake it would be excited about and whether or not to abate that excitement because of something stupid

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I said. Your belief about the cake, me, and the situation dictated how you felt, not the other way around.

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Your emotions did not dictate what you believed about the situation unless, of course, you let them.

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A spider walks into the room, same external response, same internal adrenaline response, and yet the two different people respond very differently.

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One freaks out, completely loses all control. They allow their emotions to dictate their behavior, dictate what they believe about the reality of the fact that that tiny little spider can't hurt them.

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And the other person controls their emotions because they understand what this spider represents and what needs to be done to take care of the problem.

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All right, so first of all, we got our emotions from God. Second of all, God has a design for them. Third thing is this,

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God has a specific job, He has specific responsibilities for our emotions and we need to understand the specific jobs

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He's designed them to do, otherwise we won't understand them at all. So God gave us emotions for three main reasons.

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The first job God tasked our emotions with is, of course, the most enjoyable. Emotions make our lives more meaningful.

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This one's easy. We praise God for genuine happiness, passion, excitement, and exhilaration. We also thank

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Him for the guilt and the sadness that causes us to, drives us to Him. But the second and third responsibilities are the most overlooked and I would say that many people don't even know that this is one of the jobs of emotions.

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Number two, emotions make it easier to accomplish tasks. Like in the example of the oral report, adrenaline is often inappropriately interpreted as fear.

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It's also labeled anger, passion, and a panoply of other feelings because it appears in so many high stress situations and is interpreted so many different ways.

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But in reality, it's just a tool, just a tool to help us deal with the situation at hand. You may interpret it as fear or delight as you careen down a roller coaster.

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But the reason God gave it to you was to help you handle the experience, whether to fly or fight, as it were.

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And what you believe about the feeling will dictate how you use it. Now the third issue,

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I'm not sorry, that's the third issue, but the third responsibility that God has tasked emotions with is probably the most important.

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Emotions warn us when we have a spiritual problem. Let's say that I'm doing something and I feel a rush of adrenaline that leaves me feeling excited and exhilarated.

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But let's say the stimulus is that I'm having an inappropriate interaction with a girl.

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Because our world puts so much stock in their emotions, whatever they feel becomes right.

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If they feel good doing it, it must be okay. But the fact that I'm happy doing something

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God condemns reveals a much deeper heart problem. The same is true for you and your kids. It's just like feeling sad when

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God wants me feeling glad. If sin makes us happy, we need to notice the fact that our emotional response is not lining up with God's word, and that should concern us enough to at least seek some change.

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This is so important, I want to go back to the illustration with the boy and the girl. Here's what the boy's emotional response during the inappropriate physical encounter tells me about his relationship with God.

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Let's say that the boy feels only exhilaration and euphoria because he's getting physical pleasure with absolutely no regard to God and his plan.

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The boy's relationship with the Lord is obviously very weak. There's no twinge of guilt or conscience or concern about offending his

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Lord. This person may either have no relationship with God or be so entrenched in his sin that he's basically an addict in need of significant intervention.

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And I can tell that simply by the emotional response he has to the situation.

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If, however, he's exhilarated at the potential pleasure of his sin, but he's also feeling guilty for his actions against God, then at least his conscience is working.

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Thankfully, his conscience and perhaps the Holy Spirit is trying to remind him that this behavior displeases the

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Lord and is therefore, he's struggling with mixed emotions. However, the best case scenario, obviously, the same boy is approached by the girl who's instigating some wrong physical interaction, and the boy feels sorry for the girl and her poor choices and disgust for the suggestion that he find pleasure in a behavior which displeases his

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Lord because, like Joseph, he thinks, how can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? In each of these scenarios, the boy's emotional response was guided by what he believed to be true in the situation, not the other way around.

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And whether you've seen the movie or not, this is where Inside Out is lying to us. This movie would have us believe that all of our reactions to life are motivated solely by various emotional responses, not by what we believe.

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This is akin to saying that an employer is managed by his employees. Now, it may work that way in some businesses on the brink of failure, but that's not how it's supposed to work.

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We get hurt and we hurt others when we allow our emotions to do a job God never created them to do.

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Emotions are a response to stimuli. They're a reaction. They may make it easier to enjoy or accomplish or interpret events, but not dictate them.

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You see, Inside Out is painting a world where emotions are responsible for making decisions. Those seemingly capricious chemical responses are given the reins of every word, thought, decision, desire, action, and belief.

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Talk about the cart before the horse. That's why the character of Riley in the movie ends up running away.

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And though it was her emotions that eventually escorted her back home, that's just a scary scenario.

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What if joy and sadness had been beaten down by fear and anger? What if disgust for her parents vetoed joy's pleas for the good old days?

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You see, when emotions are allowed to dictate the beliefs that are supposed to be influencing the emotions, we enter a spiraling vortex of death by emotion.

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This truth is actually lived out in some of our favorite TV oddballs, whether it's Sherlock or Monk or Lucy or House, what do you have?

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People who allow their chemical responses, or lack thereof, to determine what's right in the world. Monk, the 90s detective for hire who suffered from every imaginable disorder and phobia the medical community has ever invented, solved murders and complex crimes, but he couldn't put two and two together to see that milk wasn't going to kill him.

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He was afraid of milk. Why? Evidence? No. Emotion was allowed to make the decision.

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And emotion's not too smart, folks. This example isn't mere fantasy either. Real people struggle with similar emotional addictions all over the world.

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You and your children likely have your own favorite flavor of emotional addiction. Maybe it's an irrational fear of spiders.

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Perhaps you hate being told you're wrong, even when you are. All of us love our sinful pleasures so much that even though God says they'll destroy us, we foolishly roll around in the vomit of our sin.

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For me, I struggle with anger, but that anger is very often rooted in something that most people don't realize.

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It's rooted oftentimes in fear. When my kids disobey, the dictator parent in me isn't so much angry at being disobeyed,

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I'm generally more afraid of what this disobedience will breed in my children if left unchecked.

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And that fear tempts me to want to control the situation, and anger is a great tool to scare people back into the right behavioral track.

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But all of that was sin, obviously, because it denied so many truths about God and sin, the gospel, parenting, and love, and how it's all supposed to work together.

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In each of the above scenarios, the emotion was allowed to dictate the reality. Instead of relying on practical and biblical truth, we allow fear or anger to decide how we're going to respond to our family.

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And if Pixar is right about emotions at the helm of our decisions, we are in serious trouble.

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The five emotions in the movie are these, joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear.

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Are you kidding me? You're telling me that my life is ruled four -fifths of the time by emotions

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I don't even like? Now, this list was taken directly from Paul Ekman's research in the 1970s, minus his later edition of Surprise.

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Of course, years later, he expanded his list to include many other emotions, such as amusement, embarrassment, and pride.

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Needless to say, Ekman's model isn't the only one out there, though. But when our families buy into misinformation like this, it makes the

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Bible just seem ludicrous when it commands us, count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations.

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How is poor little joy supposed to overcome anger, disgust, fear, and sadness all of the time?

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Failure philosophies like this make it normal to see a family dissolve in a mere two minutes and ten seconds.

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Thank you for joining me today. Next time on part two of this discussion, we're going to take a scene from the movie, one which all too well portrays some of our family's daily conflicts, and we'll pick it apart to see how it lines up with the scripture.

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And then we're going to investigate how the foundation of the family is just being dynamited away by this failure philosophy and how to rectify it in our homes.

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As always, please join TLP on Facebook and me on Twitter at AM Brewster.

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Listen, the world wants us to believe that we should parent our children with our feelings, or that we should allow our children to express themselves emotionally however they want.

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But God offers us the divine hope that we can be ambassador parents, parenting out of love for Him and His power.

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And that's what I invite you to embrace this week in your home. Until next time, please be the fifth parent.

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Truth. Love. Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family, and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent.

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Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.