Now the Pharisees, having heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, gathered around him, and one of them, an expert in the Law of Moses, asked him a question to test him: “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment of the Law?” Now he said to him: “‘You will love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with your whole mind.’” This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You will love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments the whole Law hangs—and the Prophets.” –Matthew 22:34-40, translation by DS
Go into any bookstore, and you’re bound to find a section dedicated to books on self-help. Many, if not all of them, focus on how to access your emotions. Our society is obsessed with getting in touch with how we feel. This obsession, more than likely, points to the fact that we have a hard time doing just that—getting in touch with our feelings.
But we sure like to think we that we know how, though. We like to think that when we get in touch with our feelings, then we’ll really be able to make headway into conquering the problems facing us individually and as a race. I’m not quite so convinced.
Last summer, I completed a unit of
Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) as a requirement toward ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The purpose of this experience was twofold. On the one hand, it was about providing me an opportunity to get practical experience in providing pastoral care to people from all different walks of life and faith backgrounds. On the other hand, it was about reflecting on the theological and personal “baggage” that I bring into any and all interactions with other people, both inside and outside the pastoral relationship.
I found the CPE experience frustrating not long after it began. Of my fellow chaplain interns (that’s what we in the CPE summer program were called) and my supervisor, I was by far the most “thinking” oriented of the group. It’s no wonder to me—when I took
the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, I scored
INTJ. Out of twelve possible points, I scored eleven on T, which stands for “thinking.”
I’m a thoughts guy—one who thinks about things and operates on my thoughts about whatever matter is at hand. Many other people tend to be more “feeling”—F is the counterpart to T in the Myers-Briggs world—than me, and so operate more readily on their emotions than I do.
In my CPE experience, I was frustrated because I naturally worked in my head when others around me challenged me about being genuine because I wasn’t fully in touch with my feelings. Once I began asserting myself about who I am, Daniel the Thinker, and owning my cognition as integral to who I am, I found it easier in fact to delve deeper into my feelings. In this case, it was my feeling of frustration at “feeling over against thinking” that I learned to appreciate and articulate.
Part of accepting this component of my personhood was helping my group understand who I am—and who many people are. I used the passage from Matthew above to do so. When asked what the greatest commandment of the Law is, Jesus responds that it is loving “the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with your whole mind.” It’s not about loving God with just your heart, just your soul, or just your mind. It’s about loving God with your whole being. That’s why it’s important to get in touch with your emotions if you’re a heavy thinker like I am—I can love God more deeply when I get in touch with the emotional part of my life experiences. At the same time, it’s important for the feeling types out there to think about their beliefs—what they believe and why they believe it. God commands us to love with our whole beings—with both heart and head—and embrace that wholeness as a fulfillment of the Law.
The church is made up of all kinds of people. It’s full of diversity. St. Paul uses the masterful metaphor of the body to refer to the church—the body of Christ. In his letter to the church at Corinth, he writes
Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. –St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 12:14-26
We as the church must be careful not to privilege particular ways of approaching the world over another. We must be careful not to say, “Those who are more in tune with their emotions have a more genuine experience of the Holy Spirit.” We must be careful not to say, “Because I have the Holy Spirit, I have no need to ponder and think over the nature of God.” We are all members of the body of Christ and each members of it—members whom God calls with our individuality, our personalities, and our gifts. To some God has given the gift to be able to think deep thoughts. To others, God has given the gift to be able to experience the raw majesty, glory, and transcendence of the Divine in a way that our intellects can’t articulate.
We need all these expressions of God’s graciousness toward all of us individually in order to create a complete body—a complete body of Christ. The very diversity of gifts, experiences, and personalities that marks us a complete body, many would amputate and cast away as unnecessary, unfaithful, or ingenuine. Nothing can be more opposite or farther from the truth of reality that that misguided, inoperative assumption belies.
God has called us, with our distinctive personalities, be they thinking or feeling, to love—to love God and to love one another. As a church, we are called into unity, unity as of a body that is Christ’s presence in the world, unity with one another and with God through Christ Jesus—whose unity with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit didn’t preclude his distinction from them.
Our separateness from another doesn’t mean our alienation from one another. Our diversity doesn’t mean our disunity. Our differences of seeing, experiencing, and recognizing our world and God’s love don’t mean incompatibility. For in truth, all these gifts make us more whole and reflect the glory of uncorrupted creation as God first intended—a creation rich in diversity yet harmoniously one with itself.
-DS
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