Three weeks
into the semester, the bookstore called Professor Jinx to explain
that 180 books for the class lay unpurchased. Evidently a maverick
professor had refused to use the book after all. Jinx was furious.
But he knew that of all the profs to pull such a stunt, of course
it would be Professor Steara. He was always on the edge, always
insistent, challenging the simplest policy. The bookstore confirmed
Jinx’s suspicions. It was Steara, all right. Jinx told
the bookstore he would straighten out the situation. Then he
hung up the phone and smoldered—but while he did other
things. Although he felt to action and call Steara, he busied
himself with other demanding ( and seemingly endless) tasks
that just had to be done.
Jinx put
off calling Steara for almost two days. He worked hard, gritted
his teeth, was aware of a nagging feeling he should take action,
but remembered how intimidating Steara could be and kept himself
immersed in the mundane. Then the phone rang, and Steara was
on the other end of the line. He was not calling about the book
problem, for as yet, he was oblivious to it. Jinx gave direct
but impatient answers to Steara about a variety of matters.
Finally Steara said,”Hey Jinx, is anything wrong?”
Barely able to produce civility, Jinx let it out: “Well,
yes as a matter of fact, there is. You agreed, along with everyone
else, to use the required text in the class. Now the bookstore
wants to know what to do with the 180 books you decided not
to have your students buy. Maybe I should have them bill you!”
Steara explained
that he had required the book and that his students were in
the sixth chapter already. Jinx’s anger gave way to disappointment.
He thought Steara was guilty—even wanted him to be—and
being confronted by his innocence was even more irritating.
It took another hour before Jinx came to his senses. His feelings
of anger were not due to what Steara was or was not doing to
him, but were produced by Jinx’s own hardness against
another. He apologized to Steara immediately.
These four
stories are of seemingly inescapable feelings generated in everyday
life, although some of them are deeper in consequence than others.
They all involve emotions of two incompatible qualities. On
the one hand are feelings of impatience, irritability, anger,
and resentment. On the other hand are emotions of compassion,
forgiveness, and sorrow. The emotions are incompatible because
while feeling one kind, you can not feel the other kind. (For
example, I can not simultaneously resent you and respect you.)
To classify these two types of feelings simply as positive or
negative does not do them justice, for such labels ignore a
more fundamental distinguishing feature. The emotions are of
a different moral quality. What makes the negative emotions
negative is that they attend relationships of contention and
destructiveness. What makes the positive emotions positive is
that they communicate a concern for others, a connectedness
that is nourishing. When a mother abandons irritation about
injustice in order to write a compassionate note to a mother
who has lost a son, she has moved from one quality of feeling
to another.
In explaining
how these two qualities of feeling and emotion come to be, I
wish to present a possibility, not offer an argument.
Here is
the possibility: The quality of emotions may be nothing more
nor less than an expression of whether we are walking in the
light. To walk in the light is the moral course. It is to honor
the truths we know. To walk in darkness—including the
emotions that attend contention is to turn our backs on the
light and knowledge we have received. The moral quality of our
emotions changes when we live untruthfully. We then are hard-hearted.
The scriptures say this more strongly: “Can ye be angry,
and not sin?” (JST, Eph. 4:26) If some emotions are signals
of wrongdoing, then when we give up our sin, our feelings should
change in quality. At least the scriptures suggest this possibility:
“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour,
and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and
be ye kind ont to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another,
even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”
(Eph. 4:30-31) This view that we can abandon such feelings is
not welcomed in popular culture. This is, in part, because the
prevailing view of emotions does not grant that emotions can
be judged as being of different moral qualities.
I have read
debates about the meaning of emotions such as resentment, hostility,
and despair. One camp adopts the general view of U.S. culture:
You cannot help feeing what you feel, but you can decide how
you are going to express it. Thus, those who get angry or frustrated
with a mate or an employer are not to be faulted for the feelings
themselves. Yet they are expected to channel or control their
feelings. In this view, feelings are neither right nor wrong,
they just are. The morality of the frustrated or angry person
is in their control or lack thereof in expressing those “honest”
feelings. And those who commit violence while afflicted by rage
or resentment are guilty of crimes of passion, but only because
their feelings got out of bounds. The idea is that we are victims
of emotions, but are not necessarily unable to control them.
So, the
logic goes, while you may not be able to help how you feel,
you had better control your feelings responsibly. The counsel
often fostered by this view is, “Get a grip” So,
according to this view, feelings can be controlled or expressed
responsibly, and our agency consists in being able to do just
that. This view purports that the ability to express frustration
without doing damage to others is a matter of learning, maturity,
and personality. Perhaps it is a matter of practice and rehearsal.
Over all,
proponents of this view suggest that we can be in control of
how we express our feelings. We are counseled, for example,
that “nobody can make us angry, we make ourselves angry.”
Emotions such as anger are decisions within the realm of our
agency. Thus, when Bill is confronted by the person in heavy
traffic who cuts in front of him, Bill’s resulting frustration
or resentment is because of his decision, not because of the
other’s behavior. Bill can decide whether to be angry,
frustrated, compassionate, patient, and so on. But if Bill is
unaware of his feelings, he cannot control them. Thus, additional
counsel fostered by this view is, “Be honest about your
emotions (own them), but express them responsibly.”
The scriptures
offer a possibility that transcends these ideas. That possibility
is that the moral question is not how we either control or express
our feelings. Rather, it has to do with the quality of the feelings
themselves. This thought is expressly repeated, but as good
a starting point as any is 3 Nephi 11:29:30. “He that
hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil,
who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts
of men to contend with anger, one with another. Behold, this
is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts oe men with anger,
one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things
should be done away.”
This does
not mean that we must just control or express feelings responsibly,
but that we must do away with them. How is such a thing possible?
It is not possible if you believe that you can’t help
how you feel. How can you do away with something you are not
responsible for in the first place? The condemning of anger
is not, in public circles, an idea whose time has come. Some
even suggest it is a backward step to the days of guilt and
repression of feelings. For example, to say that anger or contention
is of the devil makes matters worse, because it heaps great
guilt upon those who experience an emotion considered to be
normal by popular philosophies.
But we have
evidence of our own experience, as well as from scripture, that
such a view may eclipse the truth. Greater peace and freedom
await those who grant that their bitterness can be abandoned
than those whose best hope is to cope with feelings beyond their
control Of course, as a practical matter, it is still better
to “school thy feelings” than not, but the gospel
solution to troubled feelings is to walk in the light. Otherwise,
we control and express the symptoms of the problem without dissolving
the source of our emotional difficulties. The four examples
presented at the beginning of this article are genuine cases
and are consistent with scriptural counsel and promises. Cheryl’s
anger dissolved in an instant when her anonymous antagonist
became the face of a favorite aunt. Cheryl’s anger in
the parking lot didn’t disappear because she controlled
it but because she gave up accusing the other driver of emotionally
victimizing her. Greg actively held a grudge for years. It poisoned
his life until he forgave his father. We could as easily say
he repented of his sin against his father. The hostility toward
the military by the mother of the Marine was an expression of
her refusal to be true to her conscience, and not reality, no
matter how much she wanted to rationalize it, because of the
military red tape. Moreover, just because she gave up her resentment
didn’t mean she felt nothing about not seeing her son.
But her sorrow at being away from him was of a different moral
quality than her previous bitterness Her sorrow reconnected
her to her son—and included compassion for a woman who
had lost one.
As for Professor
Jinx, his feelings of frustration against Steara were real and
completely unnecessary. They were an expression of his hard-heartedness,
not of human helplessness in the face of some else’s irresponsibility.
Jinx came to his senses and went to Steara with an apology.
He also solved the bookstore problem without rancor. In the
instant Jins began to act on the moral feelings he had had in
the first place—to do something about the problem—his
irritability turned to cheerful determination.
The view
of the morality of emotions is not naïve to the reality
that we all experience emotions of resentment, anger, hostility,
and so on. To invite us all to give p such feelings is not an
act of condemnation of each other but of love. It is an invitation
to give up the idea that we are trapped in miseries we could
trade in for compassion and sorrow. When Ephesians 4 is lined
with Mosiah 3:19 (“Natural man is an enemy to God…and
will be…unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy
Spirit”) it may be seen that some emotions are of a moral
quality that constitute sin and that we experience as natural
men and women, but that can be given up. We are commanded to
put off the natural man. In so doing, we also put off the immoral,
accusatory feelings that attend being an enemy of God, for what
is left when we accept the Atonement is that we are submissive,
meek, humble, patient and full of love (Mosiah 3:19). The issue
is not to express or control negative feelings, but to give
them up. To give them up is to run to obedience to the Atonement.
It is a doctrine of hope that makes a reality of the Savior’s
promises, For “If we walk in the light, as he is in the
light, we have fellowship one with another” (l John 1:7),
and, as King Benjamin suggests, we “will not have a mind
to injure one another, but to live peaceable” (Mosiah
4:13). Eventually we will “have no more disposition to
do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2)
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Dr. Terrance Olson is a member of the Department of Family Sciences
at Brigham Young University.
