Emotions are tricky. They’re an essential part of being human, but they don’t function rationally. At least they don’t do so reliably. And nobody is emotionally pristine. People have anger issues (quite a lot of that, I know), insecurities, esteem problems (either too much or too little), abandonment concerns, and the list could go on and on. The thing about emotions is that they’re difficult to fit with logic. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that logic is an artificial construct and that emotions are just as important to survival as reason is. Evolution gave us emotions. Fight, flight, or freeze still operates in most human beings—I’ve seen all three responses when a threat arises. Feeling sad when unfortunate events take place is normal and natural. Dogs and other higher mammals feel it too, as has been amply demonstrated.
It’s easy to let our emotions speak for us, even when doing so causes damage we would never rationally seek to impose. You push me and I push you back. Something I realized long ago, and this is just to do with my own situation, is that I can’t easily let go of negative emotions. I recently learned that a relative I never knew very well had a similar trait. Such people have invisible scars that they bear their entire lives. The logical mind says, “Let’s use chemicals to erase them.” The artistic mind says, “Erase my emotions and you erase me.” It’s important—vital even—that we don’t question a sincere person’s reasons for their emotional responses. Most people are just trying to do the best that they can.
Religion is generally based on emotional need. That’s not to say it’s bad or for “the weak.” It seems that evolution has deemed it a valuable asset for human beings. As someone who’s studied religion for many, many years, this aspect has become quite clear to me. Religion is a coping technique and, in the best of circumstances, it contains some of the truth. As I used to tell my students, nobody intentionally believes a false religion. The stakes are far too high. And we have no rational standards by which to measure which religion is right. It’s a matter of belief. Religions have to meet us emotionally where we stand. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a shift took place where religions were supposed to be logically, literally true. This was believed with intense emotion and it led to a situation we still face. Emotion and rationality must work together, but some ways seem much more productive than others.
