Emotion vs. Spirit: What Am I Feeling?
It was the Sunday afternoon fireside closing an
exhilarating week of ‘Especially for Youth” activities. There were almost 300 of us in the
auditorium. The speaker was amazing. One minute we would all be laughing uncontrollably
together and the next minute he had us all in tears. The spirit in the meeting was so thick you
could cut it with a knife! None of us
will ever forget the wonderful spiritual experience we had that day!
This is a familiar description. We all know what it feels like to be moved to
tears by a good book, or movie, or piece of music, or a speaker. Is this the description of a powerful
spiritual experience? Maybe so, or maybe
not. Clearly the speaker had a powerful
effect on the audience, but the audience reaction may have been purely a
response to emotion, and not to the Spirit, or more specifically, not to the
promptings of the Holy Ghost.
The true encounter with the Spirit, and the emotional
response to a stimulus, can have similar physiological results; a lump in the
throat, pressure behind the sinuses, and even the shedding of tears. The two phenomena may be difficult to
distinguish, but it is important to understand that they are different, that
they have different sources, and that they lead to different outcomes. To not understand the difference is to live
in danger of deception, for though the emotional response can be used to good
purpose in the Lord’s work, Satan can also use emotion as a tool in his arsenal
to create either hostility or sympathy in us, according to his desires. In contrast, he cannot use the influence of
the Spirit to further his purposes.
So how is one to distinguish between the true influence
of the Spirit and the effects of pure emotion?
This is a complex and sometimes difficult question. I will try to give a few simple tests
followed by a few examples that may help; first a couple of tests.
The Spirit generally operates on us in an individual,
personal way. In the case of the
“Especially for Youth” example above, is everyone in the audience struggling to
hold back tears? If so, that is likely
to be an emotional response. Is the
speaker in tears? In that case the
audience’s reaction is almost certainly a sympathetic response to the speaker’s
emotion, rather than the working of the Holy Ghost.
Is the experience you are having in a group causing you
to have a change in your heart, especially when those around you are not showing any signs of emotion? Are you feeling truly prompted to change
something in your life, or to do something like visit someone or call someone
or enroll in a class or serve a mission?
Or is your first concern merely to hide your emotional reaction from
those around you? The true influence of
the Spirit will generally be prompting you to do something, not just embarrass
you with tears.
If you are having such an experience when you are totally
alone, perhaps reading a book or listening to music, and, again, if there is a
connected urging to take some action, no matter how simple or trivial it may
seem, this is likely a prompting from the Spirit. If there is no such urging the experience is
likely just an emotional one.
One final test, connected to the notion of feeling
prompted to some action, is if the experience is opening your mind to some new
knowledge or insight or understanding of a question or problem. It could be a question you have been
pondering for some time, or some totally new insight to a problem that you have
never considered before. When new
knowledge flows into your mind that is almost always the true working of the
Holy Spirit.
Now we will consider a few examples where, with the
benefit of hindsight, we can judge whether the Spirit or simple emotion was
operating. The first that comes to mind,
it being an example of a large group listening to a powerful speaker, is the
community of King Benjamin whose reaction to the King’s words is recorded in
the fifth chapter of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon. After lecturing his people on principles of
good parenting, the Law of Imparting, and other principles and rules for living
together in peaceful community, the people testified together that through the
Spirit of The Lord they had received new knowledge, that a change had occurred
in their hearts, that they desired to change their behavior, that they had new
insights and could prophecy of future events, and that they wished to make new
covenants with God. There is no mention
of weeping either on King Benjamin’s part or on the part of his people. All of the other tests that we mentioned
above are showing in favor of a true experience with the Spirit, not with human
emotion.
Another group example, and one that clearly shows the
danger of purely emotional power over many, sometimes called ‘mob behavior’, is
the band of men who, under the influence of a leader skilled in controlling
emotions, worked themselves into a murderous frenzy and took the lives of
Joseph Smith Jr. and his brother Hyrum Smith.
This case is in many respects just the opposite of the example of King
Benjamin’s people, the one commonality being that both groups were moved to
action.
It might be well to mention here that this whole issue is
complicated by the fact that there are evil spirits that can work on our minds
as well as the Spirit of The Lord. Their
influence can sometimes be deceptive to the degree that we have trouble
distinguishing between the two. This may
be a topic for another discussion.
An example of the Spirit working on an isolated
individual is found in Joseph Smith’s reading, presumably alone, of James
1:5. Joseph recalls how this passage
prompted him to retire to a secluded wood to pray about a question he had been
struggling with for some time. It is
interesting that he reminds us of his visits to the several protestant congregations
active in his vicinity, where the preachers successfully worked their audiences
into emotional states but after the meetings all returned to their bickering
and bad feelings. Joseph did not seem to
be affected by his attendance at these so-called “spiritual” gatherings. In contrast, the true working of the Spirit
urged him to individual action.
A similar experience was had by Parley Pratt in
1830. After living alone with a Bible in
a log cabin in the Ohio wilderness for a year he recounts that he felt driven
by the Spirit to leave all of his possessions and embark on a missionary life
to fulfill the Great Commission to take the Gospel to every creature. He did not respond at once, but married and
tried his hand at farming before giving in totally to the urgings of the Spirit
to begin his missionary activities. On
his way west to visit his and his wife’s families, while traveling by canal
boat in the vicinity of Palmyra, New York, Parley was powerfully moved to stop
and make some visits. So affected by
this urging was he that he sent his wife on ahead alone while he stayed back,
explaining that he knew not why he should do so. He soon made the acquaintance of a Baptist
deacon by the name of Hamlin who told him of the recent publishing of a new
book, the Book of Mormon. Deacon Hamlin
loaned him his copy of the book, which, after a day and a night of continuous
reading gave Parley the answer to his unexplained delay in this strange place
where he knew no one and had no rational reason to visit.
In summary, we should be aware that there is a
difference, although sometimes subtle, between a purely emotional response and
the workings of the Holy Spirit. Be wary
of group responses. The Spirit prefers
to work on us individually. If a group
seem to be responding emotionally it is probably just that, an emotional
response and nothing more, with the interesting exception of Benjamin’s people
which has been noted. Also, the Spirit
will instruct us with new knowledge, or insight, or urgings to take some
personal action for good. This, of
course, can be counterfeited by evil spirits so we must be on guard. Our ability to discern between emotion and
Spirit can be complicated and cloudy, but we can strengthen our judgment by
continuous study of scripture and by participation in sacred ordinances such as
the sacrament and the ordinances of the temple.
Remember the Lord’s words; “whoso treasureth up my word, shall not be
deceived . . .”
