Emotion, as defined by dictionary.com, is “an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.” After reading this I had to look up the word “volitional”. Since it is the most important word in the definition, volition means “a choice or decision made by the will.” Emotion, then, is not a matter of will but of involuntary reaction. You cannot control your emotions any more than you can avoid feeling physical sensations; they are the nervous system of the soul. We can (to an extent) manipulate the world around us to avoid or experience certain emotions as well as ignore them when we know that they are not aiding our current situation. But we cannot (by force of will) alter them or make them disappear.
An emotion comes when a certain situation occurs; we can decide how to respond to it whether that be to ignore the sensation or to choose one of several possible responses. For example, let’s say that a woman makes flirtatious advances on a man who is emotionally drawn to her. The woman’s behavior excites sensations in the man which cause emotional pleasure and promise even more of that same pleasure if the man’s will chooses to follow a certain course of action. The man cannot control the fact that he is attracted to her, nor can he control the fact that her behavior is making him more drawn to her. His emotion is a reaction to a stimulus and he cannot change what he feels any more than he can change a cool breeze on his face during a hot summer day. Being offered a desirable flirtatious encounter causes unavoidable emotional pleasure just as the smell of food excites the olfactory system. Feeling emotion is about as subject to the will as feeling wet when thrown into water.
Unlike physical sensation, our emotional response is completely based on what we know. If you feel a cool breeze on a hot summer day, you will feel the same physical pleasure whether or not you are aware of it. Your body was too hot, and now it is cooler; your nerves will give you this information no matter what. On the other hand, if a man is not aware that the woman he is attracted to is attempting a flirtation then he is incapable of feeling the emotional pleasure of her interest. The knowledge of the woman’s intention changes the man’s sensation. Likewise, if the woman has no intention of showing interest but the man thinks she is interested, the man’s emotional sensation will be based on the inaccuracy. Take this a step further (the uninterested woman feigning interest) and you will see that outright lies can create fabricated (yet authentic) emotion. But emotions rooted in falsehood (when truth is discovered) will eventually lead to the opposition emotion of an equal or greater intensity. If the man was delighted he will be disappointed, but if he was annoyed then he will be relieved. I hope we all agree that it would be better for the man to not have been lied to.
So then, in order to enjoy our emotions consistently, we must believe in things that actually exist. This may seem obvious, yet I have repeatedly heard a distressing argument (mostly from non-believers) that people should be allowed to live in their fabricated emotions in peace so long as they are happy. But when you base your beliefs/emotions on lies, in reality you aren’t actually standing on anything. As soon as reality reveals that your source of joy does not exist, your worldview will collapse and you’ll be in despair. If you then fabricate a new system of belief that is not consistent with reality, you have started a pattern that can only lead to endless depression.
When our emotions become stimulated by studying the things of God (truth in its general sense), we can be confident in our positive emotions. However, we also must understand that our emotions are fickle and will not always deliver pleasant sensations when consuming truth. We must remain confident that the truth with which we are filling our heads will guide our impulses towards things that are authentic and thus good for our souls; it is always better to have something that exists than to have something that you imagined whether or not the real thing is pleasant. So then, if we base our relationship with God on the emotional sensation we get from it and then pursue our emotions to wherever they happen to go when the sensation dissipates, we can be confident that our relationship with God is not based on reality and cannot bring lasting joy. You can see the health of your walk with Christ based on the effort that you put into your relationship with him when you’re not emotionally drawn to him. This shows that you have affection for Christ and not for your feelings; affection for your feelings is narcissism and therefore satanic idolatry (Isaiah 14). Being happy for the sake of being happy is a logical fallacy that evaporates into death. It’s best to forget about the emotion completely and focus on the object, thus viewing sensation as the indicator that it is rather than the source of life.
The beauty of emotion is not in where it guides us. Letting emotion govern our lives would be a like a sailor only going where the wind took him. No, the beauty of emotion is that it powerfully reinforces what our hearts, minds, and souls already know to be beautiful, true, and good. Emotion does not tell us what is good, but it is the part of ourselves that enjoys what is good. Unfortunately it also enjoys what is bad so we must guard our emotions with our objective faculties so that our emotions do not lead us into sin. When emotion comes out of building our relationship with God, it is a gift from God which he uses in our hearts to draw us towards himself. But the best part of the gift is that it is not always there. If the only reason we go to God is to have pleasant emotions, we are worshiping the gift rather than the Giver. Instead, this temporal gift sticks in our memories even when we are not feeling it. If the gift was always available, then it would be useless. Therefore, surges of excitement as a response to learning about God is God’s way of giving us positive reinforcement as we study Him so that we can become more motivated to continue our walk even when we don’t feel like it.
Consistently positive emotion emanates out of on an ever-growing wealth of accurate information about God and his creation under the condition that we accept and respond to this truth obediently. Jesus is the bread of life (John 6). Worship bread, enjoy satiety; never the other way around.