| The Emotions & the Spiritual Life Selected passages taken from Prayer: Living with God by Simon Tugwell (Templegate Publishers: Illinois, 1975) pp. 66-73. “If we would become the kind of people who can keep company with God, we must allow all our faculties, every aspect of our personalities, to be healed and converted, so that we will be able to carry out the divine command to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength (Matt 22:37; Deut 6:5). “And the first thing is to be quite clear that all our faculties are in themselves good; deep down, underneath all the disorder of sin, they are good, springing as they do from the creative goodness of God himself…God’s promise was that he would take out of us the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, a fully human heart, a heart fully alive (Ezek. 36:26). “As we grow, then, in the life of faith, trusting in God and so becoming more receptive to the truth of our own nature, we must not be surprised to fine our emotional powers developing and maturing. It is not our part to suppress them but in cooperation with God’s unfolding grace to see to it that they are progressively more securely rooted in God’s creative goodness, and therefore more in harmony with his total purpose… “Even in the most sanctified and spiritual life, our emotions are still meant to be emotional; they should be harmonised and guided by [our] mind, but not reduced to mere rationality. “Indeed it is one result of original sin…that we often do try to impose absolute control upon our own emotions. It is part of our desire to create our own identity for ourselves, and to become entirely predictable to ourselves… “It is a great mistake…to suppose that it is always our emotions that are at fault, and that if only they were properly docile to our reason all would be well. We forget that reason is at least as fallen as any other part of us. All our faculties are striving for power… “Of course, in this life perfect equilibrium, if ever achieved, is very very rare. Most of us are likely to be tossed from tyranny of the reason to tyranny of the emotions, and back again. “…We must allow ourselves space for the real human growth that is involved in any true approach to holiness…” |
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