Many believers struggle with an important question: Do my emotions matter to God? In a faith built on objective truth, how should we process feelings like doubt, fear, or joy? If we can’t trust our emotions for assurance, does that mean they are irrelevant or even dangerous to our spiritual lives?
This tension is especially felt in Reformed theology and biblical anthropology. While pietism has often elevated emotions as the primary sign of faith, some Reformed Christians respond by pushing emotions aside altogether. But is that the right approach?
As image-bearers of God, humans are emotional creatures. Emotions are not a result of the Fall—they are part of God’s original design. Jesus Himself experienced a full range of human emotions, from grief (John 11:35) to joy (Luke 10:21) to righteous anger (Mark 3:5).
However, emotions were corrupted by sin (cf. Augustine’s “disordered affections”), leading to distorted affections. This is why we often feel things that are not aligned with God’s truth—like despair instead of hope, or guilt instead of assurance.
So the key question here is: how do we process emotions biblically?
Many Christians have been shaped by pietism, a movement that equates strong emotions with strong faith. Pietism teaches that if you don’t feel close to God, you might not be close to Him. This leads to a rollercoaster of doubt, where assurance is based on emotions rather than Christ’s finished work.
Instead of suppressing emotions or elevating them above truth, the Reformed confessional tradition teaches that emotions should be processed through the lens of God’s unchanging truth.
Many Christians feel trapped in an emotional cycle—one day feeling close to God, the next feeling abandoned. But the truth is solid, not cyclical:
If you’ve ever wondered how to balance faith and feelings, John Moffit and Justin Perdue over at Theocast, offer practical wisdom for processing emotions biblically without falling into pietism or emotional suppression.