Emotions are by-products of human life and thought given of God. As human life and thought have been cursed by evil, they have also been blessed by good. The good preceded the evil, and may be expected to win the wars of tension between mutual contradictions. I am beneficiary of good growing emotions, and the victim in fading good ones. I want the good ones, and dissolve the bad ones. All this is related to the fact that the individual is an emotional person, and has some say over the emotions to be cultivated and those to be rejected – and that with never denying that human beings would not be human without the nature that includes emotion as a structural factor. Emotion (inner feeling, of spiritual nature, not fully subject to the common factors of the senses, like hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling and touching but greatly influenced by those senses) is an undeniable characteristic that expresses something of individuality in a world of nature, Even the most restrained and controlled persons we will ever know are touched by emotion. Motivation for this or that conduct and/or belief is dependent in part on uniting the concepts of ought-to-do this or that to want-to-do this or that. We tend to do contradictory things when ought-to and desire-to, do not match up. When the various factors (and there are usually more than two) are in agreement, we tend to find happiness, and fulfillment. We do have ability to approve or disapprove of ourselves in our context.
No matter the orientation of our lives, Christian or humanistic, our emotions can run away with us. We need emotions as a fulfilling factor of our humanity. They contribute strongly to our faith, family, and virtually everything we are and do. They are a constant related to our existence. They are something like a beautiful pet in our lives that needs to be kept on a leash, so to be controlled more than controlling. At some point they may tear away in anger, or jealousy, or selfishness, or grief, or some other debilitating, even dangerous, mood. Persons prone to anger and not effective in self-control may murder even persons they love in normal context. Recently a man angered at his wife in a divorce decision, went home and killed their three children. He knew his act would be the worst punishment he could give her. Knowledge of the context of the reality had been lost in the ferocity of his anger. Emotion, so vital to the love factor in our lives is also influential to the negative factors related to feelings and actions. Emotions are active in righteousness and in the evil of our lives. The issue of the context of emotions ought to be a part of the education of parental guidance for children. Some of this appears automatically in the interchange in a normal family relating to domestic order, but that order appears to be diluted in modern styles of life, especially for the children of cities. If the digressions to excessive individuality and independence continue to be chosen or pressed upon youthful generations, the society will have difficulty in finding balance for the one and the many. Currently to this writing, there have been multiple attacks of random shootings that have taken many lives of innocents on school grounds, in businesses, restaurants, and other public places. Innocent persons are those related to a context in which they had no personal free choice.
An important evidence of biblical Christian thought and context is to keep reign of our lives for deliberate empathy to all persons, even for those who are enemies or presumed enemies. The understanding does not change with any violations of an affirmative approach to troubled persons. Their orientations may show similar conducts we followed previously. Ill conduct may have been introduced years earlier when a sibling interpreted some action as unfair – such as presuming a sibling was favored in some matter. The problem was introduced to us early in the Bible when Cain took umbrage over the obedience of his brother Abel. It resulted in the first murder and that soon after the appearance of the human race in the narrative. Nurturing and parenting children is a major assumption and specific education in Scripture. The concepts ought to be significant to all persons, but especially to those who give attention to Scripture. This is crowned in the realization that one of the major commandments of Moses relates to honor for parents as a commandment of God. Parents ought to earn the honor. It takes mature effort and individual adaptation. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020