Out of Control: Mastering Unbridled Passions

I am examining why America appears to be getting more chaotic. I thought when I began this series it would lead to complex mysterious causes. What I have found is that all roads lead to the same root cause. On these roads are quite a few Biblical road signs that are posted as warnings. Until now most have been ignored. Why? Because the signs being placed are being placed for a people who ignore God. They don't recognize the signs as warnings. Why would they pay attention to His signs? This was God's pattern throughout Scripture: Warning, judgment, punishment, correction. We're ignoring the warnings and speeding headlong into judgment.

As the mind leads, the body follows. As the individual hearts go...so goes a nation. A mind for God follows God. A mind for the world follows the world. God is immutable, measured and certain. The world is inconsistent, maddening and chaotic.

Proverbs 14:30 A tranquil heart is life to the body, but passion is rottenness to the bone.

Proverbs 16:32 He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city.

Proverbs 29:11 A fool always loses his temper, but a wise man holds it back.

As most know about me I have always said that, “I don’t care what you feel until I know what you think.” What I mean by this is that until I run what you say through a filter of Scriptural principles everything you’ve felt is subjective and therefore prone to error. Especially prone to the potential error against the principles that underlie and are commanded by Scripture. Men’s hearts are enmity against God. It is safe to assume that more often than not what man feels is usually going astray from God. This is not to say that I condemn feelings or emotion. No, God gave them to us for a reason.

Just because I tend to analyze things in a clinical stoic manner does not mean I am emotionless. I merely control my emotions in review of things better than others do. I approach problems analytically and calm. Emotions are good but not when then they’re so heightened that they cloud judgment and cause strife and error. You can trust me on this statement: I was extremely emotive when I was younger. It was my default position when approaching the world. It caused me nothing but grief. At the same time we need to realize that just because one does not emote doesn’t mean they are somehow more reliable. I see this mistake also. People that are mostly analytical and scientific are somehow more intelligent and their views are somehow more valid. That isn’t true either, which was strongly illustrated by an unwarranted panic and overreaction by ‘officials’ and ‘experts’ over the last year over what was essentially a really strong respiratory virus is a perfect case in point.

So where is the middle ground? Unbridled emotion in society with little thought is leading to chaos and confusion in America. Pure unadulterated emotion without reason and logic isn’t the answer. But neither is approaching things from a clinical dehumanized angle and dealing with people in a purely scientific analytical manner either…or is it. I posit that a reasoned logical approach is the best approach to problem solving. I believe we need to review how and why we quantify the scientific analytical approach the way we do. I posit that the analytical scientific approach is, in itself, a form of emotional approach. I also believe we could refer to this approach as an impassioned scientific approach that seeks to passionately solve the problem. All the while doing so under complete control and calm. I believe this is my general approach (except when you piss me off). I believe this level approach allows me to reach more people I otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach had I been hysterical, overly emotional and undisciplined.

Follow me here people…I believe this is going to produce a big payoff for those that understand what I am about to say.

On the subject of the feelings they need to be viewed in varying levels of degree. We need to realize that many names for different feelings are in reality feelings that belong to the same general category but vary by degree. Such as happy, content, content, glee, serenity, ecstatic, etc. They are all forms of happiness only marked by degree of intensity or ‘passion’. In other words, most know I will generally present things in a clinical analytical way to win an audience's or person's trust but I pursue that endeavor with zeal in terms of researching the facts and delivering them in a coherent package that is easily digestible by the reader or hearer. I am zealous for the truth but will systematically and in a delineated manner deliver the facts or data through level-headed reason and logic (syllogism). In a way I am logically scientific in my approach to theology and things of faith if only to show a scientific and sterile society the validity of my reasoning for existence of God and why we should adhere to a Judeo-Christian worldview. Specifically, why Jesus Christ is exactly who the Bible said He was…Son of God sent for forgiveness of our sins.

Additionally, we should realize that the words ‘zealous’ and “passion” are often used in normal everyday speech, and even defined in scientific books, as properly meaning feelings in their highest paradigm. I see no discontinuity here between scientific and Christian etymology. They are not mutually exclusive. They’re synonymous just as science and Christianity can merge into a single worldview for the same reasons I just mentioned. Impassioned reasoning and logic allow for both the physical realm of our sterile godless scientifically based society and religious worldview. Evenhanded logic and reasoning will lead you to accurate conclusions about both…primarily that the physical and metaphysical, the scientific and spiritual both exist and can be logically explained.

Unfortunately to date, the use of the term ‘passion’ has been wrong or misused. It assumes the extreme of something. As I just showed before, I can be level-headed and rational yet also be impassioned. Passion drives my stoic pursuit of the knowledge of Scripture, God and a passion to discover how to apply it in the world in people’s lives. My sincerest form of worship of God is study. For others singing and still others, pray and mediation. I study and exegete the Scripture to produce a practical application based on the truth or principle I have gleaned from the abundant spiritual Godly harvest fields of the Bible. I then rationally and calmly explain it to others that don’t believe, might believe or do believe. That is my ‘passion’. A passion of composed, equitable, unbiased delivery of truth. That truth will do its own work in other people’s souls and minds and produce further impassioned ‘A-ha’ moments or personal epiphanies through the work of the Holy Spirit.

When we realize that there are marked increases and decreases of degree or intensity we begin to realize something. Lower or more subdued feelings although controlled and restrained…are still feelings. They are just calmer and less emphatic. Lower volume does not imply less importance any more than higher volume denotes more importance. In truth ideas or truths without passion and or emotion equals no motion….no impetus of movement. There is only idea unmoved. Unfortunately these calmer degrees, although true feelings, are often mistaken and spoken of as if they were only functions of rational judgment. I disagree. I see them as merely delivered in a controlled manner by rational reasoned approaches such and as such are more dignified, honorably and accessible.

My approach is therefore not robotic, automaton or dehumanized but rather methodical and controlled. Why?...because this type of approach minimizes the chaos caused by heightened passions that ensue from overt emotionality and borderline ecstatic behaviors. I have a much better chance of getting my point across accurately and clearly as opposed to someone ‘feeling’ what I am saying. So, I say it again, “I’ll care about how you feel after I know what you think is correct.” Passion pursued in error creates much greater emotional error. Passion pursued in accuracy and truth produces something more than the sum of its parts. When that accuracy and truth is biblical it produces what God wants. It produces something righteous….something holy. We need to master or feelings not let our feelings master us.

In this way my calmness is still emotion not stoic judgment. Unfortunately, we have been sociologically programmed to believe that one who does not emote…does not care because they are not overtly manifesting emotion. This just isn’t true. I’m often just trying to prevent people from going off halfcocked unbiblically and in a ardent foolish manner. There is nothing worse than an emotionally sincere person that is sincerely wrong. It’s like a drag car out of control. Plenty of power but are in danger of veering out of control. From that origin has come many errors, wars, heresies and deaths.

I believe we must learn to separate the concept of the essence of emotion/feelings and the traits of urgency, intensity, agitation. When we see urgency and intensity we generally only characterize these as higher degrees of emotion. This is wrong. As I’ve shown, emotion may be emotion and yet not be ‘emotional’ or intense but rather calm and even. It’s an individual choice of delivery method and choice how to behave…or misbehave.  As I’ve heard it said before, feelings are the temperature of thought. Feelings are the energy expended to produce the action. Not everything needs to have the throttle pegged to the floor or the tachometer redlining to win a race. Sometimes consistency of effort wins the race. A beam of light may vary in intensity from the barely visible, to blinding or from an imperceptible trickle of warmth on a wintry day to the fierce scorching heat of the midsummer sun. Yet there is still heat in the ice of winter which is a hint of the summer to come. 

Said simply. When given over to ruled and measured emotion or passion, fruitfulness and prosperity abound and that is why God gave them to us and it is in knowledge and obedience to Him that they are controlled. In God there is peace. When given over to unruly passions and reckless emotion... fruitlessness, failure and hardship are harvested. In these we will see the conspicuous absence of God in people's lives. That is exactly what we are seeing in the world today. God warned us that this would happened to a people under judgment. 

Romans 1:24-26 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God….