Worshipping at the Alter of Emotionalism

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

You are not Andrew. You're a liar. But you're not Andrew either.

I'm offended. Well, you know, I'm offended that you're offended. Oh, I see. So if you want to play this game, two can play at that game. That's it. I'm out. Welcome, everybody, to Apologetics Live. Andrew Rappaport is not here.

It is myself, Drew, from Matter of Theology, and A .M. Brewster, one of Striving for Eternity's podcasters and speakers. So here's the thing. If you would like Aaron to come to your church and speak, all you have to do is, what's the email?

Send an email to info at strivingforeternity .com and request him to come speak. And he can speak on anything. Look, he can speak on dinosaurs. He can speak on eschatology. He can speak on all forms of science.

You're going to get me in trouble, man.

I was padding your resume. Yeah, I appreciate that. I got to live up to it.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I don't have to since I'm not a Striving for Eternity speaker.

Also, just go to Striving for Eternity and there's a form there as well. That's something they can do. That's right. Yes, that's true.

You can do that. But where would the fun in that be?

Sending emails is so much more fun.

Sending emails is so much more fun. But we want to welcome you guys tonight. We've got an interesting show. I don't think it's something we haven't really discussed on this show, at least as long as I've been a part or I've been associating with the show, which has been probably, what, two, three years-ish around there.

But first, hold on. I got to pull this up. Chris Honholtz is in the comments. Yeah, he is. What's up?

What's up, Chris? He's taking a break from Twitter, I mean, X, and he's hanging out with us tonight. That's right.

That's right. Plus, he's a Christian podcast community podcaster, so you can head on over, listen to Voice of Reason Radio. You will be edified. I love Voice of Reason. I mean, who doesn't? I don't know.

Chris comes up with some of the greatest episodes. I just love listening to them. So we were trying to discuss, trying to find something about the news to talk about in the opening. And we kind of landed on something that I think is absolutely true.

And it came from all people of Mike Tyson, pretty much. And I think we need to discuss this and open this up more, because I don't think this is going to get us in trouble at all. No, definitely not.

Definitely not. Well, it started because I made an observation that there are these videos going around, and you'd seen them, where women are getting up in men's faces. Like, people are videoing this.

This is supposedly happening in real life, God forbid. And these men are just sick of it, and they're hauling off, and they're just decking these women, or pushing, or kicking, or whatever. Which, you know, I'm just going to say, somebody's already asking a martial arts question in the chat.

I'll say, as a martial artist, a woman's going to have to do an awful lot before I'm going to put my hands on her. Likely, the chances of me ever punching or kicking a woman is exceptionally slim, and it's nearly impossible to justify.

I'm leaving a tiny crack open because I can think of some situations where it would be. But none of these videos is a justify. It's wicked, and it's awful. But people are talking about, like, not whether or not the guy should have punched her, but whether or not she deserved it because of all the garbage she was saying.

And Mike Tyson, it was a number of months ago. I can't remember exactly when. He was commenting, you know, in the way that only Mike Tyson can, which I would never do to his face because of what I'm about to just share.

I'm glad you said that before I took my drink because it would have hit my nose.

He's talking about people, you know, they say all this stuff on the internet, right? Because there's no fear of reprisal. Not really. What's a person going to do? You know, I'm going to block you. Because back in the day, though, you say that to someone's face, and you just get punched.

And he's basically saying, you know, more people need to get punched. And I think in a way we're seeing the fulfillment of that months later because people are saying the same stupid things that they say online in the real world, and they're getting punched, whether they should or not.

So that's the news item. Even like, you know, how long ago was it when they did the Oscars, which I did not watch, but I heard about it after the fact.

I think it was. Maybe it was earlier this year. I want to say last year, but I think it was this year. I think it was.

You know, Chris Rock makes an offhand joke about Jada Pinkett Smith, you know, basically being bald. You know, she has alopecia, and so, you know, she doesn't have any hair. You can argue it was a tasteful joke or not.

But, you know, Will Smith just gets up in the middle of the show, steps up there and just slaps Chris Rock. Just boom. Right. And a huge fallout that happened from all of that. Why is this happening? What are we seeing?

People are justifying burning down cities. You know, that epic meme when, you know, Trump was proclaimed, you know, president of the United States. And there was that individual, you know, that, no, you know, that just that scream of utter despair.

And this emotions in this country in particular, I'd say lots of places in the world. But emotions in this country are absolutely at a boiling point. Yes. It is everywhere. It's online. It's in person.

I mean we're seeing, you know, the looting that's going on in a lot of the liberal cities. And the retaliation sometimes that's coming as a part of that. And the political stuff. I mean we have so many.

And never before in my life have I seen so many political politicians stooping to using such vulgar language in their impassioned tirades. Yes. It's like it used to be that certain words, you know, that's for the sailors.

Right. But nowadays it's just everybody. Be a president. Say whatever you want. You know.

So this. You can also. I mean you can also be a pastor and say whatever you want. As long as you're in. Yeah.

As long as you're in Acts 29. You know. Well, I mean, I have to say the King James Version does make it difficult for some people. You just can't preach certain passages if you're not going to use certain words.

True. So I did not come up with this title. I think it's a great title. It's perfect for the show because it takes a concept and really, really. But I have to say there is a misspelling. There's a misspelling.

Andrew did all the spelling. I just came up with the name. Oh, Andrew. A-L-T-A-R. Altar. A-L-T-A-R. Worshipping at the Altar of Emotionalism. Oh, my word. I think just to simplify that, though, what we're seeing.

And that's accurate. Worshipping at the Altar of Emotionalism to a certain degree is definitely accurate. But what we're seeing is just an absolute utter explosion. I mean human sacrifice on the altar of emotion.

And it's insane. I do want to say here real quick something, kind of a funny observation to more of a serious note into a little bit of a shout out. So this is my fourth time on this show. And all four times I've appeared from a different place.

And this is my fourth place in my second state that I've been on this show. And this time we're in Indiana. And we just drove up today. My kids and I were in the van. Actually, it's going to sound strange.

My wife flew. She has a medical condition that makes eight hours, nine hours in the van almost unbearable. So my kids and I were driving. And we just got here. We had a little bit of time. And then I cruised over here for this.

But we're here because a week ago on Friday, my wife's grandfather died. So, you know, we're talking about emotions, right? The emotions running high around a funeral. Some bittersweet, some very sad, some joyful, right?

Emotions all over the place. That's where we are right now as a family experiencing that, preparing for the funeral tomorrow. So I'm in a different place. But I do want to show you a little bit about where I am because of its tie to the gentleman who passed away.

So many years ago an evangelist, Ford Porter, wrote a tract, a salvation tract that some of you may be familiar with. It's called God's Simple Plan of Salvation. This was kind of like well, this was actually one of the original ones.

But then there was this one that was a very familiar design during my years in the 80s and so on and so forth growing up. And then they came out with this design here, which looks like this one there.

And it's God's Simple Plan of Salvation. So my wife's great-grandfather wrote this. His son, Robert Porter, who just died last Friday, and then my wife's father, Mark Porter, run the LifeGate Tract Ministry where they produce God's Simple Plan of Salvation, but they also have other tracts that they've produced.

And I know Andrew is huge on using various tracts. He has a very huge street preaching ministry and handing out tracts. So I'm kind of sharing this because I know a lot of his viewers are potentially going to be familiar or should be familiar with LifeGate Tract Ministry.

They have tracts in over 125 languages. And the ones that they know about, their tracts get printed by a lot of people. They're not always the one printing them. But the ones I know about, over 660 million copies have been printed over the life of this tract and just all over the world, again, over 125 different languages.

So it's been a significant ministry for a long time. And so again, Ford Porter wrote the tract. His son took over the ministry. He just passed away. It's his funeral, his life that we are celebrating tomorrow.

He was a morning unbeliever. And then his son, my father-in-law, still runs the ministry to this day. So when I landed at his house, he said, you should go over to the office and you should you have the whole place in quiet there.

So that is where I am tonight. So a lot of information there.

Something silly. Well, we got a lot of people in the comments saying that they're going to be praying for you and your family. I will likewise. That's very kind. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

So, I mean, wow, that's awesome. Just to think about that many tracts that are being printed and going out, right, being put in the hands of people. That's mind-blowing. Huge. Big number.

A lot of years, a lot of sacrifice. Big number. But praise God that he his word doesn't return void. And that's one thing that the original tract all their tracts really have a lot, just tons and tons of Scripture, and put into an easy-to-consume format that people can encounter God's word and have the Holy Spirit work through that.

And it really is a powerful medium.

Yeah. You know, when you were mentioning gospel tracts and handing out tracts, it just brought this to my mind, which was kind of funny.

If everyone Drew's not feeling well. I'm not. If you hear him sniffle and you hear him cough, he is not feeling well. You need to pray for this man because he is under the weather.

The sinus infection, absolutely, yeah. It is the pressure all around here. So if I fall out, that's why. I just passed out. You'll have to take over the show from there. But so yesterday we had because G3 started today, the G3 conference.

Well, there was a pre-conference rally at one of the abortion mills in Atlanta. And OSA, Operation Save America, was putting it on, and I was one of the speakers. I was one of the prayer leaders. So we had guys like Jeff Durbin, Luke Pearson, Zachary Conover from Apology and End Abortion Now that came to speak.

And so we spoke on some different topics. And, I mean, there was a lot of people there, more than I was expecting. And I was one of the prayer leaders for that. Well, we get done, and we're doing some ministry afterwards.

There was some ministry that took place before, ministry that took place afterwards, just calling out to women, trying to get them to come talk to us and not to kill their baby. And one of the things that's encouraging is when I was looking out, I'm standing on the ladder, and I'm doing my prayer.

But before that, I'm looking out and kind of surveying the crowd. And I noticed there's a lot of teenagers and people just in their 20s, like early 20s. I'm like, wow, a lot of young people are getting into this fight against abortion.

And that's encouraging. But it was towards the end, and we're doing ministry. And some of the younger folks there were from Praise Mill Baptist Church, Josh Bice's church. And one kid was wearing a God is Sovereign shirt, which is the theme of the conference this year, God is Sovereign.

Well, a lady was pulling out of the abortion mill, and she had her window rolled down, and she was going to receive a gospel tract. And this kid with the shirt, he jumped out to give her a gospel tract just as a car was turning in.

And he wasn't paying attention to the car. And I was like, this kid is really trusting in the sovereignty of God right now. Or just not paying attention. As he is trying to give this woman a tract. Live the shirt.

Yeah, but it was encouraging yesterday to see that a lot of young people out there. Trying to save babies. But getting back to our topic of emotionalism. Now, how do we define emotions? Like if we had to put a definition on emotions, I think that's a good place to start.

How would we define emotions?

It's an almost good place to start. Okay. I want to start. I want to get there really quickly. But there's something else I think would be good to point out. Because the reality is emotions are not easy to define.

That's part of the reason we are where we are. And I think that if we dive into that, there will be a lot of people going, well, that's just a lot of information. Wait a second. What I like to do, anytime I discuss this, and I discuss this frequently.

Because this is such a huge deal. As a biblical counselor, this comes up a lot in counseling. I work a ton with parents. Emotions and parenting from both sides is huge. So one of the things I like to start off with is what I call acknowledging the discrepancies when we talk about emotions.

Sometimes the best thing we can do before looking at something the right way is to acknowledge that all of these are the wrong way. So some of the discrepancies we see, and there's really four main ones, is that first of all, we talk about feelings as feelings.

And these aren't all wrong, but it's just what we do. Oh, what's up, Andrew Rappaport? He's coming in. Are you in a sauna? I think he's in a sauna. No. Actually, it's the cabin. I'm in the camp of the woods.

Ooh, nice. That sounds cozy. For proof, since I'm here. And here's my pillow. See, I brought my pillow. I'm up in the air. Did you have to say my, my pillow? Yes, I brought it.

So, Andrew. You can't come up with a better name of the company. So, Aaron, notice a spelling error in the title that you put there. I didn't know it was you. I was blaming Drew for that. Wait. There's no way you copy and pasted that for me.

The description, I think, came up.

So, what did it say? No, because in mine, it was lowercase A. You typed that in there as uppercase A, so you had to put it in.

It's alter A-L-T-A-R, not E-R, but it's okay. It's okay. I thought I was making fun of Drew, but then he threw you under the bus, and I was like, gosh, have I said anything?

It probably was me. I think I thought all I did was capitalize them to make it a title, but hey, oh, well, sorry.

Somebody asked if you're at the Overcoming Evil Conference.

Yes. I'll turn it this way so that we're all in. Yes, I am at the Overcoming Evil Conference. John Harris spoke tonight. Just doing a good job encouraging men to be men, to not be afraid to be men. It's a crazy idea.

But I know that you guys are going to be talking a good topic that we'll have on emotionalism, so I'm looking forward to hearing that later.

It should be good. I keep forgetting that we have to be good because he listens to this later. Keep forgetting that. That's right. Thank you for reminding me, Andrew.

Yes. You have to behave yourselves. Maybe, Aaron, I'm going to try to get you out for this event next year, we'll see. Awesome. I just figured I'd pop in real quick. All the men are going to get together for a bonfire.

I don't know who I'm throwing in as the oh, wait, we're not supposed to do that. No, okay. But I was talking about tonight's topic at church Wednesday night at our prayer meeting, so a lot of people seem interested to hear about it.

My pastor, I don't know if I told you, Aaron, but he's an ACBC counselor, he and his wife. So they were looking forward to last week's. Very cool.

Well, Chris Von Holtz is joining us today in the comments. So, I mean, everybody's here.

He's been absent for a long time. Hello, Chris. He's here tonight.

He's here tonight. Yeah. He says, howdy, Andrew. Howdy, partner. Hello, little doggie. Well, okay.

That's what I'll do. I'll get along. I'll see you guys later. I look forward to the discussion. All right. All right. All right. So we're about to talk about the discrepancies we're having. And the first thing I was pointing out is the fact that we talk about feelings as feelings.

We say things like, I feel sore. I feel sick. You feel sick, right? Don't you? You feel sick. I do. I feel cold, people say. We also talk about, though, like feelings as emotions. I feel happy. I feel sad.

I feel afraid. So there's a difference, right? There's feelings, but then there's emotions, feelings. But we also, especially in the church, we talk a lot about feeling as religion. I feel like God is talking to me.

See, not feeling, not emotion, something very different. I feel the Holy Spirit's presence. I feel the peace of God. That one's kind of close. Maybe sometimes we think it would be emotions, things.

So in feelings, there's both a subjective aspect and an objective aspect, right? So the I feel, which physically, I feel cold or I feel sick. I feel those symptoms. And then that would be the objectively.

And then subjectively is kind of in the abstract. I feel like God is saying something or moving.

Yes, that's an accurate delineation. But I still think even that objective reality is different, too. So we were joking earlier, you being from Georgia. I used to live up in the north woods of Wisconsin.

You and I feel cold differently. Right. I feel cold at a very different temperature than you. I mean, I'll just say you feel cold way earlier than I feel cold, right? Right. So I think one of the important things we're going to see as we go through here is we're going to learn to understand the subjective nature of feelings in general.

Okay. For sure. But there are even some things that are even more subjective than others. And this last one I think is really rough. So there's feelings as feelings, feelings as emotions, feeling as religion.

But then there's also feelings as thoughts. I feel like you're mad at me. I feel like this isn't the best decision. I feel like there's another way. Thomas Sowell, a philosopher, a brilliant man, he says, quote, the problem isn't that Johnny can't read.

The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is. He confuses it with feeling, unquote. And so since we use this word feel in all of these different ways, nobody has any consensus on what we're talking about.

And this is why it's super important for the Christian to say, okay, well, what are feelings? What are emotions? Biblically speaking, how did God create us? How does all this work? Because whatever our vocabulary consistently tells us constitutes the most integral parts of our existence, that will become eventually the single most important concept in our lives.

So if everything is identified as feelings, that becomes central in our lives. And I think we're seeing that definitely in the world today. And when we look at the scriptures, we see that actually feelings are very periphery, very periphery when we understand what they really are.

So that's one of the discrepancies. There's a discrepancy in vocabulary. There's also a discrepancy in perception. And this kind of goes to what you were saying earlier. The world has told us a couple of things.

Only you can know your feelings. Only you can accurately interpret your feelings. You will always accurately interpret your feelings. I just have to laugh at that one. Yeah, that's the case. You can't tell me how I feel.

I'm not sure that you can tell you how you feel. But then the really scary one is that feelings are reality, which means that because feelings are reality, feelings are more important than anything else.

Those are the perception that we have about feelings. And then there's questions about discrepancies in the authority, like who gets to decide how important emotions are, who gets to decide the purpose of emotions, who gets to decide what emotions mean.

So there's all of these discrepancies, all of these things that we need to push all of that off the table for a moment. And we need to kind of start from scratch by opening up God's word and saying, okay, Lord, what do you have to say about emotions?

And it's now that I find once everyone sits back and goes, you know what, I haven't thought about it. But I rarely ever say I think anymore. I say I feel. And man, oh, man, there are some people I know, they never say I want.

They never say I think. They never say I believe. They've just they've substituted the word feel for all of it. And if they stop it and if they're honest with themselves, they realize that they use that word in so many different ways that there are two great dangers.

Number one, that the word doesn't mean anything anymore. It literally carries no meaning. But then there's the other danger that I take this definition of feeling that's appropriate when I use the word over here, and I cram it into this one.

The perfect example of this is the whole idea of the peace of God. A whole generation of Christians believe that the peace of God is a feeling. Now I believe with all my heart that there are feelings that accompany the peace of God oftentimes, not always.

But the reason that they believe that the peace of God is a feeling is in part because of our sloppy usage of our vocabulary. We talk about feeling God's peace. Are we really feeling it? Is that the right word that we should be using?

Is that how the scriptures so we take all these ideas that are accurate about emotions, and then we cram it into this usage of our word feeling, and we think it's appropriate. And that just completely messes up this understanding that we're supposed to have over here.

So there's just so much danger if we're not going to do it the way the scriptures say we should do it.

Yeah, that's a I think you just gave a lot of information, right? It's true. I do that.

That was all the negative stuff, like what we shouldn't be doing.

Right, right. That was a lot of information. So hold on. Melissa has a good comment here. Transgenders base their identity on their feelings. So sad. And when you were talking about the discrepancies of I think this was in the perspective.

They have a feeling of and they say, I feel this way. I feel like I'm this gender. I don't feel like I'm this gender, like my assigned gender. I don't feel like that. And so they do everything they can to try to change into that gender based on their feeling.

And if you don't accept my feeling, you're bigoted, right? You could be a racist if it's someone a person of color, right? And so you have to no matter what the cost, you have to accept my feeling because my feeling trumps what you think or my feeling trumps reality.

I think it was in the discrepancy in reality that you were talking about.

Yeah, the person says that if I feel this way, it must be true. And you can't understand it, so I have to explain it to you and then you have to accept it as true because obviously it is true. I feel like but what's interesting is that some transgender people feel as in they have an emotional thing that they're dealing with.

Some people feel as in it's a physical thing that they're dealing with. And some people feel as in it's just a thought process that they're dealing with, that they all feel like they're in the wrong body.

But even those three different people feel they're in the wrong body for three very different reasons. Which one of those is emotions? Right. You know? Yeah, yeah. This girl is uncomfortable in her blossoming pubescent body.

That's a physical oftentimes a physical yeah, emotions get mixed in with that too. But oftentimes that's very physical. This person just thinks that they'd be happier as a boy. But this person right here is having this emotional turmoil caused by the popularity of this movement in the world, caused by confusion in themselves.

And it's not a physical thing. It's not a thought thing. It's actually they're having emotional turmoil. What's the real issue there?

And each person is going to be a little bit different. You also brought up a point as well that you don't hear people say, I think. You hear them say, I feel. And so they're confusing thoughts and feelings, or they're being led by feeling and not actually thinking about what they're feeling.

So in that, are people just not being taught how to think? And are they being taught how to be led by emotions? And that's why they're not resulting to, well, hold on. Instead of me responding or instead of me reacting, you know, maybe I should stop, slow down, think, and respond accordingly.

I'm just going to react according to my feelings.

Yeah. I think it's safe to say that most people do kind of feel their way through lives, even intentional. I mean, born-again believers, I put myself into this category. I was driving up here. How much of that driving was on autopilot?

How much of that just kind of goes into just brain off, doing whatever kind of feels right, seems right in the moment? So, yeah, I think that's a human thing, right? The question about whether or not we don't think right is 100 true.

I actually I have a free podcast series called Teach Your Children to Think. Because though God created us to think, and he commands us to think, and he capacitates us to think, we don't naturally think well.

We actually have to be taught how to think God's thoughts after him, have the mind of Christ. If we just assume that our children think and they think okay, we're handicapping them because the reality is we all need to grow in our thinking as we are maturing and becoming discerning and wise and submitting to the scriptures.

So, no, people don't think well, and it's a lot easier just to feel. It's also a lot more fun. It's way more fun of an experience just to kind of feel happy and so throw myself into it, right? And to be honest, sometimes we just really like feeling negative feelings too.

Like have you ever been in a bad mood and someone tried to cheer you up and you didn't want to be cheered up? Because there's a certain enjoyment that can happen there because of the nature of what emotions are.

And we'll get to that soon, what are emotions. And so it's more enjoyable.

What you're saying with that, in the feeling negative, could some of that be. I want to continue to feel negative because there's a tension that comes from feeling negative. I'm getting attention from people because they're always now they're coming to me and saying what's wrong, how can I help you, and I'm enjoying turning them away or something like that.

There are so many dynamics. I think the key though comes down to the very nature of what emotions are, like what an actual emotion. I try to stray away from the word feeling. I try to use them they're a little interchangeable, right?

We talk about tactile feeling versus a feeling in here. But when I'm talking about a pure emotion, I'm talking about what's actually happening in the body. That is a gift, a wonderful gift from God designed for many purposes that when we misunderstand it can become a horrendous tool for evil.

So if you think it's a good idea, this is where we get to your original question about what's a definition. What are emotions? Do you think it's a good opportunity for that? Do you want to dig into this other stuff?

Well, let's pull up some comments here. Dee says feelings are being exalted above critical thinking in our culture. I think that's absolutely right. I mean even to the point where even if you're able to get someone to think, they're actually if you listen closely, they're not able to think in correct categories.

So things are all over the place even in what they're saying. I mean I don't know if you've noticed that in some people.

Oh, no, for sure. Yeah, it's like actually Natasha Crane, I've interviewed her a number of times on my show. She's a wonderful apologist. She talks about the fact that it used to be something where in a debate, you would win if you were able to prove that you were more logical.

Nowadays, that's not the case. In fact, you're made fun of if you're trying to be logical because all anyone cares about is the emotion you're able to drum up. An anonymous Facebook user, maybe you can put that one up there, says so many are deconstructing their faith because of this very issue.

Maybe there was a void of solid beliefs because their whole faith system was built on feeling in many cases. And that's also super true. It's like sometimes I mean obviously anybody who truly deconstructs their faith was never born again.

So what was their initial experience built on? The vast majority of the time, those experiences are built on an emotional experience. I felt something. And so therefore, I believe that something had happened.

Yeah, and we see that. I know being someone who was in the charismatic movement, who played worship in the charismatic movement, played all the songs, the Bethels, the Hill songs, mainly because I just wanted to play those guitar riffs and be the guitar player that everyone looked at.

But it's eliciting an emotional response. That's the whole purpose. And so when you go to these concerts, you go to the conferences, everything is emotion-driven. And even at their churches to where the Bible is not taught.

They're not taught how to think about who God is. It's emotionalism that's put forth. And so when they have a call to accept Christ or something, they don't know what they're doing because they haven't even been presented a Christ.

They've just been presented emotion.

I think we may have talked about this last time, but having been in the music industry on the secular side of things, obviously you wrote songs to make people feel a certain thing. We had a parody song that we wrote.

The song was called No Jumping. But the song was written that that's exactly what you'd want to do when listening to it. You'd make you want to hop up and down and jump around. And then partway through the song, there'd be this guy and this speaker going, no jumping.

Because we knew what we were doing. We wrote songs, ballad-y love songs or driving power chords because we wanted a person to feel something. And the secular music industry isn't hiding that. For a long time, contemporary Christian music, they did hide that.

It was about worship and about God. But even nowadays, more and more, they're just coming out and saying, no, we have to create this emotional experience because they equate that emotional experience to the presence of God, which is that discrepancy of feelings as religion, which is really super dangerous.

Yeah, which kind of gets into this comment here by, I was lost but now I'm found. Dopamine, what is that word? Endorphins. See, I can't read. Enducing. Do you have a musician? I'm a guitar player, right?

So I can't read music, right? I can just read tab.

That's it. And so what that person just said, the dopamine, the endorphins, that we're actually getting to what pure emotion actually is. And when you were saying sometimes we just like to be upset, a lot of people can't understand somebody who would cut themselves, who would actually create physical pain to themselves.

They don't get that. But what the person who does that knows is that there is an endorphin hit. There is that reward stimulus from the body when that occurs. And so that person who just wants to be grumpy and mad at the world, and that person who is cutting themselves, or that person who is just always on this artificial high, they're all getting an artificial chemical hit from their bodies, which continues to reinforce that.

So here's the big question that has to be asked, that we need to as Christians need to come to a consensus on what are emotions. And I want to start with the secular description of a pure emotion because I think that this secular description actually gets it partially right.

This secular description gets it far more right than many Christians do. They break the emotional response into three main things because it can't just be broken into one. They say there's a subjective experience.

They most often describe as being external. And by the way, this is just coming from like wow, who's this? Psychology Today or something. I should have everyone agrees they all said the same thing.

Sorry, I didn't cite them properly. But most psychologists will say these three things are the key. A subjective experience, generally external. An internal physiological response, and that's key. There's a biological, chemical, physiological response.