@themickey I hope you don't mind that I decided to borrow your thread for a personal, self-evaluation post. I should probably go write in a private journal rather than a public forum, but for some reason my own journals seem lonely and I get nowhere with them. I don't want to open a new thread, so here are my thoughts on a totally unrelated topic that might even be considered a form a trolling.
After seeing the devastating effects a friend of mine has had in life from living an emotionally driven life and not maintaining balance in several areas, I have noticed that I have the same tendency. It kind of took seeing it in someone else to cause me to do some deep self-reflection and discover that I am not only overly emotionally driven in many areas of my life, likely because it's a bad habit that I haven't seen any reason to break out of, but I am also emotionally driven when trading in ways that are hurting my ability to trade. I've gotten this far in my self-evaluation mode, but there is probably a lot more I need to become aware of. Maybe tomorrow when trading I will have to pay attention to how my emotions are driving my trades. I know I fear losses so I take many tiny losses, rather than placing stops in logical locations. I fear losing money, so I take quick profits and hold onto losers occasionally, which I think is pretty common for a lot of people IF they are following an emotional style of trading. I really do struggle with a rules-based trading approach.
Then there is my emotional side when it comes to things about God. I like my happy emotions, I like the emotions that I get when understanding God's love, but I do need to keep the perspective that these are just emotions. God loves the same, whether or not I feel it or am aware of it. So, as a Christian, what kind of emotions are right and are any unbalanced? I have been thinking about this for the last few days. I came across this lengthy article that dealt with the topic very thoroughly. I'm going to pull a few quotes from it.
Quote #1
Finally, emotions do not authenticate truth; emotions cannot verify the historicity of the resurrection of Christ or other historical and theological realities. Emotions, however, do authenticate our understanding of the truth. A happy heart is the greatest evidence of the apprehension of spiritual truth. In the Bible, truth is supposed to strike the life with positive emotional force. Truth without effect is an unknown within scripture.
Quote #2:
God as the archetype of personhood is therefore the source of emotions. At the center of all reality is a being who feels and thinks. We are a reflection of that deep and wondrous reality. Since the Bible says that we are made in his image, we too feel and think.
3
Being made in his image is the reason for our emotions and our thoughts. Men and women are similar to animals in having flesh and soul (man—1 Cor 2:11; animals—Gen 7:22; Eccl 3:21-22), but the critical difference is that we are made in the image of God (Gen 1:26-28). The totality of our personhood including our psychological make-up has been molded to be a reflection of the divine. Animals are a whimsical poetic expression of God’s artistry; we are expressions of his nature.
Quote #3:
The management of our emotions involves our imagination (how we reckon; Rom 6:11), our mind (how we set our perspective; Rom 8:5-7), and our ego or self (how we relate to God and people). The terms fall naturally into that order because how we relate to people and to God is based on how we imagine the world to be and God to be, and how we analyze what life presents to us.
Management of our emotions is a by-product of a number of such factors. In New Testament terms the “by-product” nature of emotions is illuminated by the use of fruit and tree imagery. Matthew 7:15-20 and Gal 5:22 underscore the fact that character, the proper use of emotions and our inner life, is a product of a healthy set of spiritual processes or a healthy tree. Seemingly the healthy tree is the identity, perspective, and relationships of the righteous person. This makes the entire process more holistic and fits the biblical and psychological realities well.
What we have to do to gain and maintain spiritual health is as follows:
A. We have to recognize or differentiate what is going on within our emotional life and in the management of our appetites (Gal 5:16-24). This gives us information as to where we are starting from, either with spirituality or carnality.
https://bible.org/seriespage/10-holy-spirit-and-our-emotions
Oh no, I just realized that even now, when I'm trying to be aware of how emotionally-driven my decisions are, I have succumbed to my emotions once again, by posting here because I wanted to, not because it made any logical sense to.
