Yesterday we said we were going to spend time today talking about how to deal effectively with negative emotions. I know of two ingenious ways of doing so. The first is Descartes' three-step method, and the second is sacrifices. Today, we will talk about the three-step method, and tomorrow we will talk about sacrifices. Because I am fascinated by Descartes' method, I spend considerable time thinking about it, and I often come up with cooler ways of understanding it. One such cool way is what I call the 3 C's. Descartes' method can be reformulated as the 3C's method. The three C's are: consciousness, conversion, and choice. In this post, we shall talk about them one after another.
The first thing to do when a negative emotion confronts you is to become conscious of it. How can I say this better? The first thing to do when a negative emotion confronts you is to call it by name. Identify it. Know that it is there. The theology of calling something by name is such that you become able to control it. You become an equal to it. So, call the negative emotion by name. When you feel upset, or insecure, or queasy, or unsettled, call the negative emotion that is bothering you by name. Say, "Hey you there, Mr Anger. What's up, fella?" Or, "Hey you there, Miss Envy, what's hanging?" Identify and become conscious of the emotion. Now, this is easy. And yet not so easy. Some people are so lazy that they don't even care to call the emotion by name. They just succumb to the emotion at once. They don't even try. As soon as a negative emotion confronts them - immediately, they have thrown in the towel, just like that. These people are lazy. They are not vigilant. They do not keep watch. They do not keep guard over their soul. They are not circumspect. (Remember our etymological friend, circumspectare?) These lazy folks do not see clearly all the things that compass them about like bees and blaze like thorn fires, and so they are not poised to hack these enemy emotions down. They are oblivious to the biblical injunction which says: "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour" (1 Pet. 5:8). These lazy folks do not maintain a philosophical pose. They are not, as the passage says, "sober." We, on the other hand, should always be on the alert, always sober; always vigilant, and always circumspect, ready to identify any encroaching negative emotions. In effect, we should be like bouncers at a kegger. We stand at the door and identify people there; alert, vigilant, watchful. I don't think I can say any of this any clearer. But let me try. The first thing to do when you are confronted with a negative emotion is: become conscious of it. Know that it is there, and please o please call it by name. Got it? Okay then, moving on.
The second thing to do is convert. Do you recall the first law of thermodynamics? It states: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it is convertible from one form to another. The negative emotions that threaten us are energies. Because they are the effects of evil spirits, they are similar in nature to evil spirits, which themselves are "powers in high places" (Eph. 6:12). Doesn't the word, power, remind you of energy? It should, because they are synonyms. If you doubt me, go to google.com, and type exactly this: "energy (synonyms)" and press enter. One of the entries for the synonyms for "energy" you will see is "power." And then, while still at google.com, type this entry: "power (synonyms)," and hit enter. The fourth entry for synonyms for "power" you will see at the top of the screen is "energy." And so the word, power, and the word, energy, are synonyms. The negative emotions that threaten us are powers, and they are energies. And we have already said that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but - wait for it - can be converted from one kind to another. So, the second C (conversion) as applied with regard to effectively dealing with negative emotions is to convert these negative emotions to thoughts. Take the emotion energy as you feel it in your heart, and change, convert, transform - hello, thesaurus! - it to thought energy. Let me say it again, in the simplest possible way: Take the energy which is emotion, and change it to the energy which is thought. I should say it still one more time: Take the energy of feelings and transform it to the energy of thinking.
How to do this? Simple. Detach yourself from the emotion. What this means is that you take a couple steps back from the emotion, and allow it to pass from the heart where you felt it all the way to the head, where you begin to analyze it. Let me use an analogy to further explain. Now, imagine you are in a chemistry lab. You want to perform say, an oxidation experiment. You have the chemicals in front of you. You don't just start writing a report - I mean, you haven't even performed the experiment yet! If you went ahead and wrote a report, you would score a big, fat F! You need to take a step back; put on your lab coat and your goggles, and then mix the chemicals, watch for the reactions, and make proper analysis. Observe all the changes and reactions, and then draw up your report. You could then score a good grade, like an A or a B+. Similarly, when you are confronted with a negative emotion, like anger, or envy, or hate or something - you don't just act immediately based on the emotions. No senor! You think about the emotion. What sorts of behaviors is the emotion suggesting to you? If anger, is the anger telling you to act violently? If envy, is the envy asking you to steal? If hate, is the hate telling you to discriminate? If sadness, is the sadness telling you to fall into depression? If loneliness, is the loneliness telling you watch pornography, or have indiscriminate sex, or overeat? What is the negative emotion suggesting to you?
More so, what would result from your doing what the negative emotion is telling you to do? If hate, and the hate is telling you to discriminate, visualize yourself discriminating and see if the results would be good. They would not be. You would not be perfecting yourself as a child of God, and you would be hurting the victim of such discrimination. If envy, and the envy is asking you to steal, visualize yourself stealing and see if the results would be good. They would not be. You would be hurting the one from whom you stole, and you would be harming your reputation possibly irreparably if you got caught. If anger, and the anger is telling you to act violently, visualize yourself acting violently and see if the results would be good. They would not be. You would be hurting others and yourself too. If sadness, and the sadness is tempting you to fall into deep depression, visualize yourself falling into such depression and see if the results would be good. They would not be. You would end up melancholic and possibly suicidal. Converting emotion energy to thought energy helps you to analyze possible behavioral responses in the face of the situations that your intellect encounters, and in a fuller way than opinion or supposition or assumption.
And then, choice. Having thought through all the possibilities, you then make an informed decision. You act out of pure thought, and not emotion-laden insinuation, or supposition, or opinion. You choose the best possible behavior, one based on thought. You say to yourself, for example, "No, I will not act out of anger. Even if I feel angry now, I realize from thinking this through that acting angrily would end badly for me and for others. And so, I will act in a restrained and mature way instead." Or, "No, I will not act out of hate. Even if I feel hate now, I realize from thinking this through that acting hatefully would end badly for me and others," and so on. You act instead based on rational thought. And because you did not act on the negative emotion, the emotion will vanish, as will the evil spirit that occasioned it. The bible says in this regard: "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (Jas. 4:7). Also, when Jesus did not act in any of the three ways the devil proposed to him through the negative emotions of hunger (stones to bread); pride (falling from a high spot), or greed (kingdoms of the earth in exchange for a profound bow), the devil left him alone, and angels (positive spirits) ministered to him instead (Matt. 4:1-11). And so, when we choose based on reason rather than based on emotion, we escape the stranglehold of the evil spirits that occasion in us negative emotions.
Let us bless the Lord, and praise him all our days. What have we learned today? We have learned the 3 C's. It is a cool way to better understand Descartes' three-step method for dealing with negative emotions. The first C is consciousness. Whenever a negative emotion confronts us, we should become aware of its presence. We should acknowledge it is there and call it by name. We can do this by maintaining a philosophic pose, and being perennially vigilant, and circumspect. Once we have identified the negative emotion, the next thing to do is the second C. We should convert it from emotion energy to thought energy, by taking a couple steps back to analyze it thoroughly, evaluating the possible acts it suggests to us and visualizing their possible results. Then, we choose to act based on reason rather than based on emotions. In this way, the negative emotion fizzles away, and positive emotions filter in. We become peaceful and saved. We become disposed ever more fully toward the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.
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