YOUR EMOTIONS MATTER TOO

Your Emotions Matter Too

Who We Are

Intellectual

Emotional

Spiritual

Social

Physical

Popular thinking has it that (wo)man is a tripartite being, comprising spirit, soul and body. It’s always seemed easy, therefore, to describe (wo)man as a spirit, with a soul, and who happens to live in a body. It may indeed be a useful illustration of our essence as humans. Knowledge, however, is ever evolving, which partly accounts for why life remains exciting. Reading the hugely successful book authored by Peter Scazerro titled, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, turns out to be a major paradigm shift, as it has for many. Essentially, Pastor Scazerro argues in the book that it’s impossible to be spiritually mature, while remaining emotionally immature. It is not an oversimplistic statement. It is a revelation.

Scazerro takes the view that Christian spirituality, “without an integration of emotional health, can be deadly – to yourself, your relationship with God, and the people around you.” This is what Scazerro refers to as “the problem of emotionally unhealthy spirituality.” Be mindful that the servant of God is not pointing to a problem with our spirituality; rather, he is taking issue with the health of our emotions. He should know. By his own admission, a lack of emotional health in the early years of his ministry almost cost him everything – marriage, family, work and his own well-being. The mercy of God, however, saved him.

To illustrate his viewpoint, Scazerro shows that our full humanity, as people created by God in His own image according to Genesis 1:27, includes the physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual and social dimensions of our being. With a very helpful illustration using a pie chart of equal subdivisions, Scazerro helps us understand that as humans, we are emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual and social. In this piece, I take the liberty to reconfigure Scazerro’s pie chart illustration, and place spirituality at the centre of our lives.

Irrespective of how one may prefer to visualise the components of our humanity, one thing stands out: emotional underdevelopment is not always so obvious. More worrisome, as Scazerro notes, is that the spiritual-discipleship approaches of many churches and Christian ministries underemphasise the emotional dimension of our lives. Making the link between emotional and spiritual maturity thus becomes liberating. Your emotions matter. So, what exactly are Scazerro’s symptoms of emotionally unhealthy spirituality?

• Using God to run from God

• Ignoring anger, sadness and fear

• Dying to the wrong things

• Denying the impact of the past on the present

• Dividing life into “secular” and “sacred” compartments

• Doing for God instead of being with God

• Spiritualizing away conflict

• Covering over brokenness, weakness, and failure

• Living without limits

• Judging other people’s spiritual journey

The remedy? “The pathway to unleashing the transformative power of Jesus to heal our spiritual lives is found in the joining of emotional health and contemplative spirituality”, suggests Scazerro. It would be impossible to move away from Scazerro’s hopefully helpful insights without saying a word about his recommendations about practising two ancient disciplines - ‘the Daily Office’ and the ‘Sabbath.’ At the heart of both approaches is “stopping to surrender to God in trust.” The ‘Daily Office’, unlike our usual ‘quiet time’, helps us to really be with God. Like God, on Sabbaths, we simply stop working and rest.

Of course, none of these are going to come easy in a contemporary culture that celebrates the constant doing of something, even if this means doing nothing of serious consequence. Think about it. A Sabbath rest from your mobile phone? What if you missed out on the next big news story breaking in some distant part of the world? We are probably the most mentally and physically exhausted generation in history. It is not the way of the Master. Jesus always found a way to stay centred, maintaining emotionally healthy spirituality. So should you, whichever way works for you. Make emotionally healthy spirituality a goal.

Dr Yinka Oduwole

Dr Yinka Oduwole is the Managing Editor of Sunrise and Pastor of The Risen Christ, Knebworth.

Twitter: @YinkaOduwole