“Bobby
got mad at me and punched me,” he sobbed.
Not
only was Bobby’s little brother crying, so was his little sister.The
mother asked her why she was upset.
“Bobby
wanted one of my favorite Legos and stole it from me,” she complained.
Bobby
was usually a much nicer, more cooperative child and his mother wondered
what had come over him.She found
him sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor eating cookies out of the
cookie jar.
“Bobby,”
she exclaimed, “what has gotten in to you?Why
did you punch your brother and steal from your sister and why are your
now raiding the cookie jar?”
Bobby
looked up at her and smiled, “I heard you tell daddy to trust his feelings,
so I’m taking your advice too!”
Can
our emotions be good moral guides for us?That
will be our question this morning as we join together in the celebration
of life.
Control
of sexual behavior is still a desired norm in Western society, but it is
approached quite differently.We
teach our children to have pride in their self-control.When
they deviate from socially accepted norms, they are ostracized in a way
that is designed to stimulate guilt.A
female child might be teased for her behavior and respected if she is follows
the norms.What is at stake is her
reputation not her life.
The
difference between these two approaches has to do with the internalization
of morality.In the Middle Eastern
example, what is external is what matters, how one’s family is viewed.Everyone
is expected to follow the same rules.There
is no space for one family to have a different moral code that permits
a sexually active daughter.Family
honor is determined from the outside not the inside.
In
our pluralistic society, we value individual autonomy allowing a greater
range of moral activity.To separate
religion from the state, we recognize that different religions have variations
in their moral code.Thus, the society
releases some of its moral authority to the individual.The
individual is expected to internalize a moral code aligned with beliefs
or their religious affiliation.The
beneficial trade-off here, an insight of our founding fathers, is preventing
religious civil war by expecting citizens to internalize their own moral
code.
Still,
having people living together in the same nation operating out of different
moral principles creates conflict.Think
about our fight for women’s reproductive rights and the current controversy
over stem cell research.Saul Rigberg
shared with me an instructive illustration of the differences between the
internal and external approach to moral action.His
family was attending a dinner hosted by an Orthodox Jewish relative at
which some Hasidic families were present who followed a Kosher diet.One
of those families was allowing their children to have potato chips and
soft drinks for dinner.Saul and
his wife Chris, like many parents, are constantly struggling to encourage
their children to eat nutritious foods.When
their children saw these other children being permitted to have potato
chips for dinner, conflict ensued.
Saul
objected to this families’ interpretation of the Kosher dietary laws.Yes,
they were eating Kosher potato chips and drinking Kosher sodas, but that
wasn’t the spirit in which the dietary laws were given.Saul
believes that these laws were laid down to guide the Jews toward a healthy
diet.If they were to be written
today, he thinks they probably would demand people be vegetarian and eat
organic food.Saul’s disagreement
with the other family was centered on their adherence to the letter of
the law, not the principle behind the law.
Principles
are central to Unitarian Universalism.We
recognize that in a complex, changing society, we can’t lay down a rule
for every situation.Thus we need
to develop an internal guidance system driven by principles to help us
adapt our rules to fit each situation.This
is a big responsibility that requires continuing education throughout our
lives that often thrusts us into the forefront of social change.
Take
gay marriage, for example.Fifty
years ago, I’d say most of us probably would have been against it.We
didn’t know that much about human sexuality and would have followed existing
cultural prejudices.Over the last
forty years, partially through the results of scientific research, and
partly through an expanding openness of sexual expression, most of us have
examined our feelings and values and have gradually moved to a view of
acceptance, in a remarkably short time.Now
we are a Welcoming Congregation, accepting gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and
transgender individuals into our midst with conscious recognition.It
is still a growing edge for some of us-–and that is okay.Our
congregation is an appropriate place to continue that exploration.
We
are far ahead of the rest of the culture as we see the backlash against
opening marriage to same sex couples.I
heard our Representative, Mike McNulty, discussing gay marriage on WAMC
this past week.He agreed that gays
and lesbians should have the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual
couples.But then he backed up a
little and said he just didn’t like using the term marriage to describe
the relationship.From what sounded
like primarily an emotional motivation, he felt the word marriage should
be reserved for a man and woman.
McNulty’s
comments are a useful illustration of the difficulties of shaping our individual
morality out of principles.Intellectually,
McNulty supports gay rights because he values the principle of equal rights.Emotionally
however, he still holds on to the traditional wedding cake view of marriage
with a bride and groom on top.
This
split between emotion and principle is the challenge of taking personal
responsibility for one’s morality.In
a rule-based society, it doesn’t matter what you feel.The
rules are the rules.You follow them
or you die.If I take responsibility
for translating my principles into actions, I need to recognize how powerfully
my emotions can color my judgment.If
I don’t recognize what I’m feeling as I make a judgment, my moral principles
can be compromised.
Parents
early on discover this struggle while raising their children.I’m
always amused seeing soon-to-be-parents pore over the baby books learning
all the right techniques.They are
instant experts who know all the right principles to follow to raise a
healthy, happy child.Then the baby
arrives and the principles turn out to be harder to apply than was expected.Emotions
can get in the way.
What
surprised me about becoming a parent was how much anger I could feel at
times in response to my son Andy’s behavior.I’m
a pretty calm and levelheaded fellow.I
just don’t get angry very often.I
knew taking my anger out on Andy was wrong.What
I didn’t know was how sneaky anger can be in influencing my behavior towards
him.Toddlers can drive you up the
wall.I found myself acting out
my anger without realizing what I was doing and rationalizing that it is
“good for him.”I remember one day
about seven years ago, when I flew into a rage at Andy’s unwillingness
to stop some inappropriate behavior.The
intensity of the rage shook me.It
helped me recognize how far I had strayed from my principles, by not paying
close attention to how my feelings were influencing my behavior.I
recognized then and there, my need to increase my emotional intelligence.
You
see, I was denying my anger was influencing my judgment.Sometimes
my choice of punishment when Andy misbehaved was coming from my feelings
and not my principles.As long as
I didn’t make the connection between my feelings and my actions, I couldn’t
open up my emotional reactivity and begin to explore how it distorted my
actions.I couldn’t recognize that
my feelings of helplessness motivated my anger.I
couldn’t see how much fear, shame, guilt, and inadequacy were creeping
into my decision making process.
An
unwillingness to recognize and name what one is feeling can cripple one’s
morality.An unwillingness to explore
the sources and connections of those feelings can also hobble one’s moral
action.This is particularly evident
in the life of someone suffering the scourge of addiction.Rather
than feel and deal with painful emotions, the addict turns to a substance
or a behavior that numbs the pain.Addicts,
again and again, cut themselves off from their unpleasant emotions and
refuse to incorporate any learning those emotions might offer.
This
denial has a corrosive effect on relationships.Relationships
require regular negotiation of unpleasant emotions that naturally arise
from personal differences. The denial and suppression of that pain doesn’t
make it go away.That pain gradually
builds and can destroy the relationship, leaving in its wake a wreckage
of compromised principles.
I
encourage us to take a hard look at this because, to a greater or lesser
extent, many of us engage in addictive behavior to deal with difficult
emotions.Our materialistic culture
teaches addictive behavior to deal with suffering.Feeling
down?Have some chocolate.Having
a mid-life crisis?Buy a new car.Stressed
at work?Take a vacation.Bad
news?Have a drink.
Avoidance
of suffering, unfortunately, can block our emotional growth.By
avoiding feelings, we inhibit our ability to increase our emotional intelligence.It
is only when we are actually feeling emotions that we can begin to understand
their origins, their patterns and their connections to our intentions,
beliefs and values.These intentions,
beliefs and values are often hidden in our emotional conditioning rather
than freely available to our rational minds.
For
example, my father spanked me.When
I was at my wit's end with Andy, my emotional conditioning just took over.I
spanked him.My principle of non-violence
went out the window before I even realized what is happening.By
exploring that emotional territory while I was angry, I began to recognize
the patterns, beliefs and values connected to my feelings.Once
I educated my emotions, I now had a choice.I
was able to recognize that disturbed feeling state of wanting to spank
Andy before it took me over.I allowed
my principle of non-violence to intervene and redirect my action.
Educating
our emotions is not only a way to prevent harm.Educating
our emotions can also open our hearts.
Last
week I described the love story of Rachel and Christine from the movie,
“A Family Affair.”The two had fallen
in love and decided to marry.Rachel
was finding herself unable to commit fully to the relationship and found
herself being seduced by her ex-girlfriend Reggie.In
a tender scene between Rachel and her father, we discover what is holding
Rachel back from committing herself to Christine.
Rachel
goes to her father to have a heart-to-heart talk with him about her doubts.Her
father sees through her confusion about being still attracted to Reggie,
which he dispels quickly.He recognizes
a deeper issue.We had learned earlier
in the movie that Rachel had an older sister who died in an accident when
Rachel was thirteen, a very impressionable age.The
pain of that terrible loss had distorted her emotional life.Her
fear of experiencing that kind of loss again had unconsciously been shaping
her decisions most of her life.When
she recognized this pattern, the tears flowed as she felt her fear of abandonment,
a fear Reggie stimulated to control her.Rachel’s
problem wasn’t committing to Christine.She
really was.Her problem was opening
to that old pain and not letting it control her life or limit her love.
We,
like Rachel, put our relationships and moral agency at risk by ignoring
our difficult emotions.The fruit
of struggling to educate our emotions reaches beyond preventing immoral
action.Thankfully, the seven deadly
sins of pride, greed, envy, anger, lust, gluttony and sloth are not the
only feelings at work in our emotional life to shape our moral agency.
Virtuous
feelings of kindness, generosity, moderation, enthusiasm, humility, patience
and love radiating emotions of joy, happiness, contentment and peace can
also shine through our actions.Those
feelings can also be intentionally developed.Singing,
meditation, dance and movement, devotional prayer, reading inspirational
books, hiking, bike riding, skiing, running, among other activities support
these emotions in us, which can then strengthen and direct our actions
toward the good.
Except
for some fully enlightened person, none of us will be free of unpleasant
and harmful emotions lurking in our minds waiting to subvert our moral
behavior.The wisest path to morality
is through increasing our inner awareness of our difficult emotions so
we can head them off at the pass.We
can increase our capacity for good by intentionally cultivating beneficial
emotions.Good mental health supports
good morality.
Our
emotions are not some troublesome prehensile tail we can evolve beyond.They
are vital to our moral character.May
we honor their place in our moral development and educate them by turning
toward them, feeling them, and discovering their nature.
Copyright
© 2004 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore.All
rights reserved.
References:
Nussbaum,
Martha C., Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, 2001,
Cambridge University Press.
Goleman,
Daniel, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Cam Matter More Than IQ,
1995, Bantam Books
Damasio,
Antonio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotions in the Making
of Consciousness, 1999, Harcourt Press.