(Proverbs 4:23 NKJV) Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.
Good emotional management is a highly needed
commodity in Christian work. Unfortunately the good secular materials available
do not draw on the resources that the Holy Spirit can bring to emotional
transformation and few good Christian resources exist that start with first
principles. This volume is primarily a handbook for the emotional
transformation of Christians that incorporates appropriate secular insights
into a Christ-centric biblical framework
This book is divided into three sections,
theological, ontological and practical, with five chapters each. The
theological section discusses some foundational teaching
about the Christian emotional life, the ontological section looks at how
emotions arise in our spirit and soul and are influenced by our body and
how our inner emotional life is formed, finally the practical section looks at
our experience and understanding of emotions and how they should be best
expressed.
What is EQ?
Emotional
intelligence is the term we use to describe a complex set of human abilities
related to emotional management. The four key aspects of emotional intelligence
as described by Mayer and Salovey (the pioneer
researchers in the area) are:
1.
Emotional identification, perception and expression
2.
Emotional facilitation of thought
3.
Emotional understanding
4.
Emotional management
Various
other researchers, most notably Daniel Goleman, have
broken these into various factors which are continually being reviewed. The field is fluid and a final decision on
what finally constitutes EQ has not been entirely reached yet. There are two or
three main schools. One holds that it is a metacognitive
ability - that is, it is how we think about our emotions and has a genuine
cognitive component. This the original Mayer and Salovey
view. The second sees EQ as largely independent of IQ - as an almost orthogonal
variable and closely associated with traits that make a person effective in the
workforce. This was Goleman's original view. The two
schools are moving closer together. The third view sees emotional intelligence as an innate
given like IQ but EQ can be damaged by negative life experiences. This
recognition of the difference between the potential emotional intelligence of a
child and its practice in later life has been noted by the main
schools of thought and is now included in their literature also.
What Is
Biblical EQ?
This
is the biblical perspective on the above four key skill areas. It doesn't
neglect the findings of neuroscience but it adds in the transforming power of
the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of Proverbs. It has as its model the emotional
life of Jesus Christ with His personal presence, self-control, emotional
expressiveness and discernment of situations. Thus it has a clear pattern, a
master plan that can be used to analyse theories and
to determine what is true and false, wise and unwise. Secular theories have no
"ideal person" to point to - they merely assemble ideals from their
own theories and worldview. In Jesus we have a model ,
a guide, a point to aim our teaching towards. This is invaluable. The Christian
believer is to aspire to have the emotional life of Christ Jesus! For that is very much part of being "in His image".
Above all Biblical EQ is biblical -
founded on faith in the inspired, inerrant and authoritative Scriptures.
The Failure Of The Secular Models of EQ
Even
after reading Goleman’s books you know that emotions
are important, that you should handle them better and a lot about how they arose within
you, but you are not shown how to conquer them. In fact many of the EQ programs
based on this kind of research have had fairly middling results. The corporate
sector is pulling back from them, partly because of recession but partly
because they are not delivering as expected. Why is this so? Why has the
secular approach to emotional intelligence fizzled?
Firstly
they have a philosophical underpinning that has no definite direction. There is
nothing in it that tells them what to aim for when helping a person achieve a
higher level of emotional intelligence. Apart from being in touch with ones
emotions and being able to express them accurately, appropriately and
responsibly there is no “big picture” of what the emotionally intelligent
person should turn out like. People end up confused and perplexed. Theories
seem at variance with each other and the result is that some practitioners are
almost Zen Buddhists while others are extremely businesslike, manipulative and
pragmatic. Without any agreement on what an ideal person is they cannot make
much real progress.
Secondly
much of the work of Goleman and others involves a
model steeped in a medical and neurological framework that sees our responses
as entirely conditioned by biology, genetics and environment. Alteration of
responses is through medication, education and behavior modification. After a
while people start to feel depersonalized by this approach and react against
the diminution of human responsibility that seems to be the outcome. It is so
reductionistic and materialistic that after some initial enthusiasm people are
repelled.
Thirdly
prayer and spiritual disciplines are marginalised in
the literature despite their utility. For instance on page 75 of Goleman's first book Emotional Intelligence he
says "Finally, at least some people
are able to find relief from their melancholy in turning to a transcendent
power. Tice (a researcher into depression) told me "Praying, if you are
very religious, works for all moods, especially depression". Despite
this obvious therapeutic value for prayer it is never again referred to in Goleman's book. People know religion works - they are just
refusing to admit it in print.
Should
we then throw out their work entirely? Not at all.
Truth is truth and measurements are measurements. There is an enormous amount
of good work and wise information in the current EQ literature. It can be, and
is, very helpful in giving us understanding of how our emotions work. However
it does not give us a whole lot of power to transform them. The power to defeat
deep and difficult emotions comes from God and involves the human spirit coming
into contact with God's Spirit. So in this book we shall tend to turn to
secular sources to explain much of the physiology and the mechanisms of emotion
and to Christian sources for the power to deal with them.
To
get answers that genuinely help people we need two things, a clear destination,
and the power to get there in reasonable time. Our destination is the image of
Christ Jesus, our power to get there is the infilling with and transforming
work of the Holy Spirit. These are just the some of the great advantages of the
gospel in this area. We have hope, and we have lots of hope! Thus the central
premise of the book is that Christians can have their emotional life redeemed
so that it is transformed to mirror the emotional life of Jesus Christ and that
the Holy Spirit’s power and grace is the key to this process.
This
involves renewing seven key aspects which will be discussed in detail as we
move along:
1. Renewing our basic
perceptions of reality and our perspective on life.
2. Renewing our individual
belief system.
3. Renewing the purposes and
intents of our heart.
4. Renewing our physical bodies
and their influence on our emotions.
5. Renewing our ability to be
aware of and to understand our own emotions.
6. Renewing our ability to
understand the emotions of other people.
7. Renewing our ability to
appropriately express emotion according to the desire of the Holy Spirit.
The
first few of these are a very deep work. It takes effort, courage and time to
change one’s perspective on life or to review and change core beliefs, thoughts
and intentions. However unless this is done the foundations are not strong and
any positive emotional changes will be temporary at best. Thus it is important
that you work through the foundational chapters and understand them. They are
the chapters which will give you the deepest wisdom to assist you with your
emotional growth. Before we go much further we need to answer a few of the
common questions about emotions and that is the topic of the next chapter .
.