Spiritual Health is not Emotional Lobotomy

There seems to be a hidden notion in much of Christianity that holds up the idea that the truly spiritual has no need for emotion, or at the least has their emotions under control.  Hence the title of this blog.  For myself, I spent so many years essentially trying to lobotomize my spiritual life (rid it of emotion) that I nearly disassociated from my self.  That is until my poor emotional health pointed out the lack of my spiritual life.  You can't have one without the other.  In fact, God so dynamically created us that our spiritual, emotional, social, physical and mental health are all intertwined.

It's a sad state that so many Christians believe their emotional self is detrimental to, or even harmful of, their spiritual self.  

In Isaiah 61, which is where Jesus read from at the outset of his ministry in Luke 4 (think: vision statement), the Messiah is said to be the one anointed by God to bind up the brokenhearted.  Let that marinate for a minute.  To heal the heartbroken.  Jesus did not say that he came to 'do away with heartbreak' or 'replace one's emotional state with a more rational self.'  Nope.  To heal.  This means to make your emotional self even more whole than it is now.  

Now apply this mission to his encounters with people throughout the Gospels:

-The Samaritan woman, a woman deep in shame, was forgiven.  This forgiveness came through a man sitting and speaking to her heart in the middle of a hot day.  A man who didn't care to take on the shame encountered for sitting with and talking to, for all practical reasons, a whore.  Think of the relief she had from his strong and gentle presence as he spoke with respectful honesty. (John 4:1-45)

-Bartimaeus, a blind beggar rebuked when he asked for mercy (literally told to shut up so as not to disturb everyone else) was told to take heart because Jesus was calling him.  His sight was healed, and possibly for the first time in a long time this beggar, this man who sat on the same side of the road every day asking others to give, was asked by the God-Man what it is that he desires. (Mark 10:46-52)

-A woman who had internal bleeding for over a decade, of which the physical trauma alone would scare a person's psyche, but who was additionally told she was unclean and thus not allowed to worship or even be touched; she was freed from the internal wound as well as the shame, doubts and questions she had about her worth when Jesus saw her and called her to take heart. (Matt. 9:20-22)

-Read the entire account of Lazarus' death.  Notice how Jesus enters into the sisters' anger, fear, mourning, grief and confusion.  He doesn't stay stoic.  He doesn't tell them to stop being angry, to get it together, to put on a happy face.  He's moved, troubled even.  He could  have left Lazarus for the resurrection Martha knew was coming, but he didn't.  At great cost to himself (his death is plotted on account of this act, which he must have been fully aware of)  he wept with hurting sisters and loudly calls out his friend from the dead. (John 11:1-44)

There's plenty more.  This is only four of the thirty to forty miracles recorded in Scripture.  Read these passages and get a feel for the man who claimed he came anointed by God to heal the heartbroken.  

My challenge is this.  Please stop thinking Jesus doesn't care about anything but your spiritual state, and by that I mean those things Christian's ought to be doing.  Notice that he more than just takes a care about your emotional self.  He seeks you out.  He literally pursues the healing of your heart, those emotional wounds you've carried on your own which no one knows of because you think you can't speak of them.  Allow Jesus in when you're ready.  Allow him into your anger, your loneliness, your disappointment.  He is the great healer after all, not just the great forgiver.