Beware the Allure of Emotionalism

The desire for community is so strong in the human heart that when shared facts and values don’t unite us, we will find consensus through shared emotional or subjective reality. We will retreat into tribes that validate our own experiences and form community around these biases and identities. And when this tribal or party identity is threatened, we will respond, not from carefully considered decisions made for the common good, but from a place of insecurity. In the world of a mystery novel, this tribalism is the mob beating down the door of an innocent man because, more than anything, they want to satisfy their need to resolve the crime.[1] They don’t hate the innocent man, but they hate the uncertainty of not knowing—and they will sacrifice him (and truth!) to make themselves feel safe again.

What keeps that man from being hanged is the detective producing evidence that proves his innocence.

In much the same way, factual evidence must check our tendency to be swept up in a wave of emotionalism. It’s not that emotions are bad—indeed, they are good gifts from God. But emotions alone cannot guide us to truth. Our fear might be able to tell us that something is wrong, but it cannot tell us what is wrong, how or why it happened, or even who is to blame.

In the wake of September 11, 2001, the Manhattan Transit Authority developed a campaign to help identify potential terrorist attacks before they happen. The slogan “If you see something, say something” became so popular it was soon emblazoned on posters in subways, bus stations, and airports around the country; public service announcements aired on TV and radio. The goal was simply to enlist the public to identify threats to our communities. There’s only one problem: the public hasn’t been trained to know the difference between what a valid threat is and what it isn’t. Is a box sitting at a doorstep a bomb? Or did the mailman just deliver a birthday gift from your parents? What about your new neighbor who just emigrated from Syria? Is he a threat, an enemy inside the gates? Ultimately, the campaign relies on personal discomfort, rooting the decision about what to report within the experience and feelings of the individual. This results in an exceptionally high number of false reports and has the potential to encourage racial and ethnic profiling. It also keeps the public in a constant state of suspicion and alarm. Yes, we must be aware of potential threats, but without facts, our fear and ignorance can trap us in a state of perpetual anxiety.

The problem is not our emotions; the problem is that we are relying on our feelings to do something that they were never intended or equipped to do. Our feelings cannot tell us when someone is a true threat to our safety. Because of this, pursuing truth will require being painfully honest with ourselves. Before we judge someone else’s words or actions, we must judge our own understanding and reaction to them. We must let truth penetrate our “inward parts.”[2] This requires more than simply repressing or denying our emotions; we must do the harder work of identifying and acknowledging the role our emotions play in our decisions. We must acknowledge that we are not immune to prejudice and fear. We must question our gut responses and compare them to external reality. Like I tell my children, your head and your heart must talk to each other.

“Emotions alone cannot guide us to truth.”

To understand what this looks like in practice, consider what happens when your favorite politician or Christian leader comes under scrutiny. If our understanding of truth is rooted in tribal loyalty, we will immediately rush to defend “our guy” without considering the merits of the debate. Instead of carefully weighing each argument, we will caricature the opposition and build straw men we can easily defeat. The whole time, we’re sacrificing truth for a more immediate sense of unity and cohesion.

On the other hand, pursuing truth forces us to critique our emotions, to test our loyalties and aversions. To ask:

Why do I like or not like this particular person?
How does my emotional response to her cloud my ability to think about the situation?
Is my aversion rooted in actual fact?
Have I simply been told to dislike him?
Why do I feel threatened by her opinion?
What is underneath my reaction?
Is it because she introduces new ideas that I don’t have an answer for?

If we don’t allow truth to pierce our internal process, we run the risk of letting our feelings about another person trump the reality about their actions. We will either demonize them or be duped by them. Our aversion can keep us from embracing and enjoying the good things that they have to offer while unquestioning loyalty can blind us to falsehood and leave us open to manipulation. As much as the detective must separate her personal dislike of someone from the facts of the case, she must also be willing to entertain that even her most trusted friend or lover could be guilty of the crime.

And doing this requires a commitment to truth that supersedes the relationships and structures that we normally trust to keep us safe. This kind of commitment to truth will test and unsettle us in ways we can’t anticipate and prefer to avoid. But as Flannery O’Connor famously quipped, “Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”[3] No, this kind of commitment to truth will both reveal and build our character.

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[1] Genesis 1:28; 2:16.

[2] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, a revised and amplified edition, with a new introduction of the three books Broadcast Talks, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 38.

[3] Henri J. M. Nouwen, Rebecca Laird, and Michael J. Christensen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 6.