Emotions, Logic and the Wise Mind

Lately, I feel like I lack purpose in my life. I used to have purpose or a sense that there was something to get out of the bed for in the morning. I’m not feeling it today. I’m feeling like the things that used to matter to me just don’t matter anymore.

However, feelings aren’t always accurate. I don’t get to that conclusion on my own. It takes someone else pointing it out to me. Feelings seem accurate, but they can be misleading. I feel a lot of things that are not necessarily true when the whole picture is looked at. Of course, feelings are indicators of a thought that might be going through my head at any given moment. So they are valid in the sense that they give me information, but I have to take them in context.

For instance, I can feel angry but not know what I’m angry about until I attach some thoughts to the feeling. And, sometimes those thoughts are not accurate either. I have a lot of distorted thinking if I stop with how my emotions are making things seem. I’ve learned that there are other ways of approaching a situation or event or a feeling. One aspect of that is to evaluate the situation from a rational, reasoning point of view. I can say that but doing it is another thing altogether. My emotions often cloud my reasoning and I need to get help from outside of myself to see things from a reasoning position. And, reasoning is not necessarily the whole picture either. Logic only takes us so far as humans. God made us to be emotional and logical – even at the same time.

That leads me to what is called, in some psychological philosophies, the wise mind. The wise mind makes decisions and evaluates situations taking into account the emotions and the logic. There’s something deeper to that kind of thinking. It comes from an inner state of being that can be seen in the psalms of David. He often started out with how he felt and moved into the logical point of view and then combined them to come to one conclusion: God.

I know that when I allow myself to look at things from a wise mind perspective I usually end up thinking about God. God is not emotion or logic. He is bigger, deeper, more profound than either of those things. Yet God made man in His image so there are elements of emotion and logic in God as well.

I don’t know where I’m going with this thought exactly. However, I do know that I can’t rely on my feelings or my reasoning to navigate successfully, purposefully in this world. I need an inner knowledge. That only comes from the Holy Spirit and gets me to see things from God’s point of view.