6: THE SPIRITUAL/EMOTIONAL CONFLICTS THAT HINDER CHRIST-FORMATION

JENNIFER BECAME A CHRISTIAN as a teenager. During high school, she was a leader in the church’s youth group where her family attended. She actively served in the children’s ministry and community-outreach projects and participated in a couple of mission trips to Guatemala and Peru. The source of Jennifer’s love to serve came out of her devotional life. She spent significant time in prayer and Bible study and took long walks on the beach to be alone with God. By all accounts, Jennifer had a deeply personal relationship with Jesus.

When Jennifer was a junior in college, she was sexually assaulted while walking back to her dorm one night. During the months of intensive therapy that followed this traumatic event, Jennifer realized that she was feeling an uncomfortable dissonance with God as she struggled to align what she believed to be true about God—that he was her all-powerful, loving heavenly Father—and her experience of being assaulted. Jennifer found herself stuck in a deeply disturbing cycle of doubts: Is God truly ever present and all-powerful? Is God with me? Does he love me? Can I trust him to protect me? The dissonance Jennifer was experiencing is what I refer to as spiritual/emotional conflict.

Spiritual/emotional conflicts often emerge from human hurt or a traumatic experience. Your perception of God will cause you to either move toward him or away from him. So distorted perceptions of God must be confronted and corrected in order for us to experience the abundant life.

The Origin of Spiritual/Emotional Conflicts

Maybe your situation is not as traumatic as Jennifer’s, but all of us, at one time or another, find it difficult to align our beliefs about God with certain experiences. Pastor and professor James Hamilton explains this dynamic tension:

Psychologists are keenly aware that there can be a great gap between what one knows and how one feels. . . . This cleavage can also be experienced in regard to one’s relationship with God. Thus, while one’s knowledge of God may be valid, the way that one feels about God may be distorted.[1]

The gap between knowledge and feelings created by a painful experience not only affects how we see God but can often distort how we perceive God thinks and feels about us. For example, the Gallup organization surveyed 1,721 Christian college students and found that 31 percent agreed with the following statement: “God is quite angry and is capable of meting out punishment to those who are unfaithful or ungodly.”[2] It’s not hard to imagine how this type of thinking would adversely affect one’s relationship with God. If we believe that God is constantly angry and ready to throw a lightning bolt at us, we’re going to live in fear and try to stay as far away from God as we can.

To believe that God lives in a perpetual bad mood is a complete distortion of the truth. I recognize that there are examples in the Scriptures of God being angry with the Israelites (2 Samuel 24; 2 Kings 17:18), and I know the Bible teaches that God will one day judge unbelievers (Revelation 20:12-15). But God is not a smoldering volcano of wrath waiting to erupt at our slightest misstep. In fact, God revealed himself to Moses as “a God of mercy and grace, endlessly patient—so much love, so deeply true—loyal in love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7, MSG). Yes, God is holy, righteous, and just, and he punishes sin (Exodus 34:7). But those attributes are not in conflict with God’s loving, compassionate, and merciful nature.

It’s important that we check our thoughts and feelings about God at the door of biblical truth because a distorted perception of God will carry over into a distorted perception of self. James Hamilton argues, “There is a significant correlation between a negative view of God and low self-concept. . . . Almost without exception I find that persons who have negative views of God also have negative views of themselves.”[3] Hamilton goes on to say that spiritual/emotional conflicts are mutually reinforcing:

One’s view of God is the foundational issue. If that view is valid, it makes for both health and happiness. If the view of God is distorted, it results in feelings of alienation from Him, feelings of alienation from oneself and often feelings of alienation from others.[4]

The lies inherent in distortions about God and self can generate thinking patterns that produce unhealthy emotions. These affect decision making and can ultimately drive behavior that takes us away from God. In order to resolve these conflicts, we need to review the dynamics of the heart.

In chapter 4, we discovered the fourth gear in the heart that can either work for us or against us. If lies are driving the fourth gear, distorted thoughts and damaging emotions may influence the will toward sinful behavior. If God’s truth is driving the fourth gear, however, an entirely different outcome will ensue. Distorted thinking will be replaced with biblical thinking, which will promote healthy emotions, which will influence the will toward behavior that’s in keeping with the fruit of the Spirit.

No metaphor is perfect, but the gear metaphor offers a visual example of how thought, emotion, and will work together. They are affected by lies or truth; they drive behavior. All these dynamics are taking place in the heart (Proverbs 4:23; Luke 6:45).

God didn’t reform the heart; instead, he gave each of us a new one.

I will give you a new heart—I will give you new and right desires—and put a new spirit within you. I will take out your stony hearts of sin and give you new hearts of love. And I will put my Spirit within you so that you will obey my laws and do whatever I command.

EZEKIEL 36:26-27, TLB

The context of these verses shows God is referring directly to the Israelites, but this truth applies to you and me today. The good news of the gospel isn’t only about the forgiveness of sin and a home in heaven when we die; it also involves becoming a “new creation” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). That means, in part, that the former self—that deceitful and wicked heart (Jeremiah 17:9)—is now dead, crucified with Christ (Romans 6:6). The self that was enslaved to sin and consumed with “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16, NIV) is now no longer in control. God gives every believer a new heart and a new capacity to live with him and for him.

So, why do we still struggle to do good? Because the deceptive thought patterns from the old heart remain like old habits. The lies we choose to believe are the lingering thoughts associated with different experiences. Dallas Willard described this dynamic using the words spirit and heart interchangeably:

The human spirit is an inescapable, fundamental aspect of every human being; and it takes on whichever character it has from the experiences and the choices that we have lived through or made in our past. . . .

Our life and how we find the world now and in the future is, almost totally, a simple result of what we have become in the depths of our being—in our spirit, will, or heart. From there we see our world and interpret reality. From there we make our choices, break forth into action, try to change our world.[5]

Our entire being is shaped by experience. When the hurt from past painful experiences lingers unresolved, it can affect what we believe to be true. These beliefs commingle with other beliefs—whether influenced by lies or truth—to compose what is often referred to as a worldview.

How My Worldview Influences My Heart

A worldview is a philosophical term that refers to how we view reality and the purpose of life. Author and editor James W. Sire provided a helpful definition:

A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.[6]

In other words, a worldview isn’t necessarily built on truth. It can also be informed by lies and distortions. Distortions left unchecked do not resolve themselves over time; they must be identified and addressed. I know this from personal experience.

In 2014, I reached a state of burnout that affected my leadership and ministry effectiveness as a senior pastor, and the staff of pastors I served with and the board of elders decided it was time for me to leave. After serving faithfully with them for over ten years—I had done nothing immoral to disqualify myself from ministry—I was shocked by their lack of support and unwillingness to help me work things out. After less than three months of meetings, all but one elder (who resigned in protest) called for my resignation. I refused to resign, partly because I was not willing to let the congregation believe my resignation was a mutual decision between myself and the elders. I was also unwilling to imply that God was calling me out of the church into another ministry. In response, the elders immediately terminated my employment.

I was devastated and deeply hurt. I felt betrayed by men who I thought were my friends. I was under the illusion that we were a family, committed to working things out in an amicable way. As I walked out of the church building the night I was terminated, I asked, “God, why is this happening? What am I going to do now? How am I going to tell my wife when I get home?” I was filled with confusion and had never felt more rejected, abandoned, and hurt.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but how I processed that traumatic situation was greatly influenced by unresolved emotional pain and former distortions I still had from past experiences. The torrent of unresolved pain made the fresh pain a hundred times worse.

In the days that followed, it felt like I was unraveling emotionally, and I knew I needed more help than my family and friends could give. So I sought out professional help from Dr. Bill Gaultiere, a psychologist and pastor who specializes in helping local church leaders.[7]

Early on in my therapy, Dr. Gaultiere asked me how I was feeling. My response was pretty raw: “I feel betrayed and victimized. The picture I have in my head is that I’m riding in the car with my friends, and suddenly, one turns on me with a gun and shoots me in the head, another opens the door and pushes me out into the street, and they all drive off, leaving me alone in the gutter to die.” I was angry, but underneath it all was an overwhelming feeling of failure: I failed God, my family, the congregation I loved, my staff, and the elders I served with. I was stuck in an abyss of shame and consumed with the terror of an uncertain future, perhaps long-term unemployment and financial disaster. I was catastrophizing everything. It felt like my life was over and my job prospects were bleak: Getting fired as a senior pastor doesn’t look good on a résumé. Most search committees prefer a candidate with less baggage than I had, and I can’t blame them. After twenty-five years as a local church pastor, I had become another casualty of a local church-ministry conflict. I was grieving the death of a dream.

These raw feelings were given extra weight by lies and distortions that went back to many of my early childhood experiences, such as my parents’ divorce, which had promoted feelings of being unloved, unimportant, and abandoned. The incessant bullying and rejection by my peers I had experienced throughout elementary school was informing how I processed the experience of being terminated. These unresolved feelings and resurrected distorted thoughts were triggered by being fired. I felt I was unworthy of love and that I didn’t really matter. During those early months of therapy, it became clear that I had a lot of baggage to unpack.

Early one morning a few months after my termination, I was sitting alone on the beach, near my house. It was still dark, and I was crying out to the Lord, feeling desperate about my situation and wondering what in the world I was going to do now. While sitting there, feeling like I was drowning in fear and sadness, God spoke to me. I didn’t hear an audible voice, but I knew it was God because I would never make up what I heard in my head: “Ken, I want you to initiate a reconciliation process with the elders.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What? Are you kidding me, God? Are you serious? The elders hurt me. They need to apologize to me. They need to go on a forgiveness tour for me and for everyone else they nuked by their decision.”

Have you ever been there with God? Have you ever experienced something so painful, so grave that it caused you to lash out at the one who knows your situation and loves you the most? If you have, you know exactly what I’m talking about, for we have wrestled with God.

The longer I sat there on the beach and thought about what God was inviting me to do, the more I knew that he was right. I’ll admit that I didn’t do it with the best attitude, but I took out my cell phone and composed a text to each elder personally, asking if he would meet me for coffee. I made it clear that my only intention to meet was to apologize for my part in the process that lead to my termination. The texts were a simple act of humble obedience that brought about results that only God could bring about.

Over the next several months, I met with each elder and offered a heartfelt apology. One thing I discovered is that there is no downside to humility.[8] I could have easily stayed stuck in victim mode, allowing anger and bitterness to reside in my heart, but by God’s grace, that’s not what I did. Instead, I let God’s desire for unity flow through me.

Reconciling with fellow believers who have hurt you doesn’t make what they did okay, nor does it mean you have to vacation together or be golf buddies. But we must love one another as Christ has loved us: When we hurt each other or hold a grievance of any kind, we must apologize and do everything we can to right the wrong. This isn’t only for the sake of unity but also for our own spiritual/emotional well-being.

A few months after my meetings with each elder, the board invited me to join them for a reconciliation service at the church. During the packed service, the cochairman made a public apology to me, my family, and the congregation. The apology was heartfelt and greatly appreciated. I preached my last sermon on the same topic I chose for my first sermon to the congregation ten years earlier: grace. And during the message, I offered my own heartfelt apology to the board and congregation as well. The service ended with Communion and a lot of tears.

Not long after the service, the cochairman and I sat down together with Dr. Bill Gaultiere and told the story, on camera, about the painful process that led up to my termination and the things we learned along the way about the nature of forgiveness and the importance of a better process when staffing changes need to happen in a church. The video was posted on Facebook and has brought healing and hope to many pastors, elder boards, and congregations who have endured similar difficulties.[9]

The story of my ministry burnout is an example of how unresolved emotional pain resulting from past experiences can be triggered by a current event and create a blast radius that hurts many people and presents a poor testimony to a watching world. The feelings of rejection, abandonment, fear, and shame that I experienced during my early childhood and teenage years informed a worldview with lies and distorted thoughts that I projected onto my termination experience, making it much more painful—for everyone involved—than it needed to be. Today, research supports the fact that many of the difficult situations we find ourselves in are caused by or made far worse by unresolved emotional pain that distorts our thinking, creates distress, and leads to destructive behavior.[10]

The Correlation between Distorted Thoughts and Damaging Emotions

Dr. Caroline Leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist, explains the strong correlation between distorted thoughts and damaging emotions:

Science shows that our thoughts, with their embedded feelings, turn sets of genes on and off in complex relationships. We take facts, experiences, and the events of life, and assign meaning to them with our thinking. . . .

Our thoughts produce words and behaviors, which in turn stimulate more thinking and choices that build more thoughts in an endless cycle.

We are constantly reacting to circumstances and events, and as this cycle goes on, our brains become shaped by the process in either a positive, good-quality-of-life direction or a negative, toxic, poor-quality-of-life direction.[11]

According to Leaf, there is a cause-and-effect relationship between how a person chooses to think about a painful experience and the emotions that follow. Psychiatrist Curt Thompson agrees: “Virtually everything that we experience is shaped and influenced by emotional tone. . . . Whenever we are thinking or sensing something, emotion is part of the process.”[12] These experts bear witness to the fact that thoughts beget feelings. For that set of feelings produced by our conscious thoughts, healthy thinking promotes healthy feelings (including love, joy, peace, hope, and gratitude), and unhealthy thinking—influenced by lies and distortions—promotes unhealthy feelings (including shame, fear, anger, depression, and anxiety).

While it’s true that we cannot control our emotions directly, we can influence them indirectly by truth. What we want are feelings created by truth, not deception. In a very real sense, our beliefs and corresponding thoughts have a direct impact on the quality of our life. Philosopher and professor J. P. Moreland writes,

Beliefs are the rails upon which our lives run. We almost always act according to what we really believe. . . . The actual content of what we believe about God, morality, politics, life after death, and so on will shape the contours of our lives and actions.[13]

A painful experience—like my termination—can both shape and expose the beliefs and thoughts inherent in a faulty worldview. A worldview shaped by lies distorts reality, leading to damaging thoughts and feelings that influence the will toward sinful behavior. Sinful behavior, then, is often less an act of outright rebellion against God and more a distorted, damaged attempt to cope with or numb emotional pain.

Regardless of the cause, sin quenches and hinders the work of the Spirit in Christ-formation and thus a more complete experience of the abundant life. To stop this destructive cycle, we must expose the lies and neutralize the shame.

Restoring My Soul with God

We are all prone to distorted perceptions about God. In order to replace these lies, we must internalize the truth about God as revealed to us in Scripture. Psalm 86 is a helpful place to start. For the next three days, spend ten minutes a day reflecting on Psalm 86 using the following questions as a guide.

DAY 1: Read Psalm 86 from your favorite translation three times and make a list below of the character traits David attributes to God.

DAY 2: Read Psalm 86. This time, make a list of David’s requests and reference his attitude before the Lord.

DAY 3: Write out Psalm 86:15 on a 3 × 5 card and read it twice a day—once in the morning, when you first wake up, and again in the evening, right before you fall asleep. Do this exercise for seven consecutive days.

Restoring My Soul with Others

  1. Why is it common for people to think that God is always angry? How could you help them reconcile this distortion?
  2. What distortions about God can you identify in yourself?
  3. Why is our view of God so important to Christ-formation and abundant living?
  4. If you feel comfortable doing so, share a painful life experience that shaped your worldview. Can you identify any conflicts those experiences created? Any distortions about God? Any distortions about yourself? How have you processed the pain from those past experiences?
  5. In your own words, explain the correlation between distorted thoughts and damaging emotions. Give an example of a distorted thought and an example of a corresponding emotion.