Emotion vs. Spirit

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 . . .”