Joy and Tears: A Review by Jared Price
“There is a right way to show joy and tears. Anger, love, fear, and other emotions, all God given, need to be transformed through the power of the Spirit. ”
“I don’t remember.”
This is what Janelle said initially when I asked her the following question.
“When was the last time you remember me crying?”
In 8 years of marriage, it is doubtful if I have averaged an annual cry.
I have always thought of myself as a dynamic outgoing person who isn't afraid to show emotions. But the more I analyze my actual behavior, I have come to realize that I am somewhat of a closet rational stoic.
It is week 31 of 52 in the Tim Challies 2020 reading challenge, and my task this week was to read a book on joy. I chose my former professor, pre-marital counselor, and friend, Dr. Gerald Peterman’s book Joy and Tears: The Emotional Life of the Christian.
Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages says this about Dr. Peterman’s book, “At last, a book that sees emotions as a gift from God rather than a tool of Satan.”
I am not sure I have ever thought of emotions as a tool of Satan; however, I know I haven’t thought of them as gifts from God. I guess I had mostly operated as if emotions were neutral, a bi-product of circumstances that helped express experience but not necessarily shrouded in sin or covered with grace.
Dr. Peterman’s book provides an honest look at the human experience of emotions while utilizing a robust biblical theology to dissect our specific experiences. Joy and Tears is a bibliocentric dance between critical analysis and emotional experience. Being neither fully academic nor freely experiential, Joy and Tears offers the reader an engaging invitation to scrutinize one’s previous positions on emotions. But to embark this ship of introspection will likely bring freedom to some and conviction to others.
The following are a few highlights from my reading this week!
Life is about Thinking and Doing
"Life is about thinking and doing, I told myself. Besides, emotional swings are unhelpful. They’re also irrational and belong to weak people” (p. 9).
Dr. Gerald Peterman
This is how Dr. Peterman viewed emotions as a high-schooler. My guess is that is how a not so small section of our American population view emotions today.
I would say that I am not necessarily immersed in that camp of thinking, but I have one foot in it. Being "emotional" to me has often been viewed as a weakness. While re-reading Joy and Tears this week, I started to notice how I spoke to my three girls. I often corrected them when they showed excessive emotion but quickly engaged with them whenever they displayed thinking.
Dr. Peterman provides six reasons for taking a deeper biblical look at emotions. The fifth reason stuck out the most to me.
“Fifth, to learn the most from the Bible, we need to engage it both cognitively and emotionally. We understand the Scriptures more clearly and fully when our emotions are involved in the stories and applications of the Bible. Anything less than this sets us up to misunderstand and disobey” (p. 26).
I found this point exceptionally striking. We can misunderstand and walk-in disobedience if we do not engage our reading and study of scripture with our emotions.
Several years ago, I was praying for God to give me his heart for the lost. Blame it on my Calvinistic theology if you must, but I realized that in practice I wasn’t concerning myself with people who didn’t express faith in Christ.
I was reading through the book of Matthew, which I had read many times at that point when God answered my prayer. I read the following:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matthew 7:21-23).
Before I had always read these verses with my mind. Trying to conceptualize the theological implications of Jesus’ statement. But this time, I read it with my heart.
The worker of lawlessness will be rejected from the throne of God. The door will slam. They will be cast out. For eternity they will be separated from God. To suffer. Forever.
My heart broke. Jesus’ words did not just hit my mind, but they hit my heart.
Faithfulness to the word of God must mean engaging it both cognitively and emotionally.
Feel Joy for the success of others
“Life isn’t competition; we can rejoice with others when they enjoy good things” (p. 56).
I appreciate that at the end of every chapter, Dr. Peterman provides several practical ways to execute the topics of that specific chapter. This one comes from chapter three: The fruit of the Spirit is Joy.
I am competitive. I know it. I have worked on it. And I still am. Unfortunately, my competitive spirit has kept me from celebrating the successes of other people at times.
This small little sub-paragraph at the end of this significant chapter hit me hard. Not being able to celebrate other people’s success is not only a joy killer but is a sin issue. The suppression of emotion to rejoice with God’s work in someone else’s life is telling of hidden arrogance, pride, and discontentment.
Yet, on the other side, we shouldn’t conclude that Christians must always be jubilant sunflowers! I appreciate that Dr. Peterman touches on circumstantial joy in this chapter. Meaning that sometimes there are circumstances where the holiest most God-honoring emotion we can express is sadness.
When Jesus is assaulted with the climatic effect of sin in his friend Lazarus, that being physical death, he weeps. The godliest thing at that moment is to weep.
I found this chapter superbly beneficial and convicting!
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Overall, much more could be said of Joy and Tears as it is a wonderful biblical-theological look into human emotions that can reset our preconceived cultural understandings to a God-honoring and joy-giving perspective.
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John Owen came from Welsh descent, was educated at Queens College, and became a renowned Puritan theologian, Oxford professor, and passionate pastor who lived from 1616 to 1683. In 1647, he wrote the exhaustive treatise The Death of Death defending Limited or Definite Atonement against the Arminian view of Universal Atonement or Unlimited Atonement.