Monday, October 24, 2016

Using Truth to Hide Pain

Attended a conference for my wife's work this past weekend. This post will be an attempt to process through some of the thoughts that I encountered while at the conference.

Went to a seminar on/about emotional health with low expectations and was confronted with some ideas that challenged my preconceptions. I consider myself to be pretty emotionally healthy so when the speaker challenged my thoughts about it I felt the need to spend some time to consider how I should react to it.

I think that a good place to start at on this subject is my previous definition of 'emotional health'. Previously, I would have defined emotional health as neither getting too up or too down when confronted with an emotionally charged moment. That along with the ability to use logical thought processes in order to overcome whatever obstacle was at the root of the emotion.

What I'm starting to be confronted with is the necessity of emotional highs/lows. My use of logic and intellectual processes in the past to overcome emotion has not been adequate in grappling with it, its merely a vehicle I use to deal with the emotion for the shortest amount of time necessary, so that I can move on to my normal rhythm of life which doesn't include the bad emotion.

I've often in the past been particularly conscious of the fact that I oftentimes don't feel a specific guilt when I'm confronted with a sin.What happens is that I am aware of the knowledge that sin is wrong and therefore I should avoid it and also by extension, I should feel bad when I commit a sin. Sin should be grievous! We should feel the weight and burden of the acts that separate us both physically and emotionally God our creator! I think one way of improving on this is to regularly participate in the act of confession. By confession's inclusion in 'The Lord's Prayer' we can treat confession as being a commanded part of our prayer. My acknowledgement of sin's everyday presence in my life will help me feel the weight of sin and consequently my need for a Savior on a daily basis.

Probably more thoughts to come on this subject, that's all I have for now.

-A