Book Review: Untangling Emotions by J. Alasdair Groves and Winston Smith
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”—Prov. 4:23
Book Information:
Author: J. Alasdair Groves and Winston Smith
Pages: 240
Publisher: Crossway
Year: 2019
Emotions are touchy things, aren’t they? There have been seasons in my life where I’ve felt so much rage that I scare myself. Other times, I feel so low in the pit that I despair I’ll ever get out.
Most of the time, I’m unsure about how to handle them. Do I give in to them as the world tells us? Or do I put a lid on them, or perhaps even do the exact opposite, so that others don’t find out the truth about us?
Part of the trouble is that I am rather skeptical about my emotions. Even the positive emotions like joy are tamped down. I tell myself not to be too happy, so that when it ends, the letdown won’t be as bad.
This is why I have really appreciated this wise, gentle, and thoughtful book. In it, Alasdair Groves and Winston Smith guide us through understanding what are emotions are—and aren’t—and then help us to engage them in a way that honors God and others as we grow in our sanctification.
If God’s goal for us is to become like Christ, then it would be helpful to see how Jesus handled the wide array of emotions. Rather than avoiding them, as if negative emotions are bad or positive ones are suspect, we see Him expressing godly grief, righteous anger, and joyful delight.
This is what makes Him such a sympathetic high priest. He knows and understands because He has experienced them. Using Christ as our guide, we can learn to respond well to these emotions instead of just categorizing them as right or wrong and judging them.
The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 looks at the nature of emotions, especially the negative ones. The challenging thing about emotions is that they don’t come individually but as a mixture. We can easily turn on a dime, or sometimes they are all blended together seamlessly.
Part 2 considers the two main ways we are often taught to engage our emotions. We are told to either “spit it up,” as if emotions are everything, or “suck it up,” as if emotions are nothing. The authors suggest a third option—engaging God in the midst of our emotions.
As we learn to engage both with God and with others, we learn to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. They write, “Engaging walks a deliberate, middle road between the twin pitfalls of the hyper-emotionalism that fawns over our feelings and sets them up as dictators and the stoicism that squashes negative emotions from the outset.” (ch. 8) Engaging helps us to nourish the healthy emotions while simultaneously starving the unhealthy ones.
These two parts sets the stage for Part 3, engaging the hardest emotions: fear, anger, grief, and guilt/shame. This was the most helpful for me as it got down to the specifics of each of these, looking at what it is and how to engage it with God.
Far from minimizing our emotions or letting our emotions dictate our lives, this book gives solid guidance on how to respond well to the emotions. Like a “check engine” light on your dashboard, they give solid clues and hints on what might be going underneath the hood.
As we do so, the goal is that God would nurture you through the struggles of life, drawing us closer to Himself. Emotions are a gift, a way we reflect God’s image, but they are not to rule us. They show us what we really love—and like gauges, point to areas we need to examine more closely.
So, if you have extreme emotions—whether dulled or dramatic—that baffle you or you seek to love and care for others in these situations, this is a wonderful book to explore. Through its gentle wisdom, we are given words to help untangle the mess of emotions that are within us. In this way, our emotions become tools in God’s hands to help us grow in faith and love.
How This Book Helped Me
As I write this review today, I am feeling some big emotions—namely one of fear. Not a fear of the future but a fear of being overshadowed or forgotten in ministry. A fear that I will not be successful in our new ministry endeavors.
These aren’t loudly clamoring for my attention. Rather, they are just simmering under the surface, needling me with doubt and anxiety, especially as my husband and I are challenged to develop OakHaven Ministries.
So I have returned to this book to help me start sorting things out. What does these emotions on my “spiritual dashboard” reveal to me about my heart? What are the inner workings underneath—my worship, my loves, my idolatries, my commitments?
As I bring these emotions to the Lord, He helps me to see that when I feel fear, it really pokes at something that I might not readily see: my values. I fear because I am afraid I will lose something I really find important. And for, me that is being successful.
The authors point out that while our fears can be rooted in good values, such as a fear of the Lord (Prov. 1:7) or Paul’s anxiety for the church (2 Cor. 11:28), they are also not always so. As I look at things more closely, I am humbled to realize that my fear comes because I am afraid I will not get the recognition I think I deserve—and with it, the praise from others I crave.
When reworded in this way, I can see far more clearly the deeper motivations that lurk under the surface and drive me. As God helps me sort these hidden desires, I am better able to confess my sins to Him, ask Him to replace them with truth, and help me to walk in a new way out of them.
The more important thing is to change our hearts—only then can we change what we feel. The authors state, “…God gave us emotions that are actually designed not to change unless what we love changes or what is happening to the thing we love changes.” This is how I can learn to walk not in fear but in faith.
A Quote and A Question:
“…it is only by entering into both the joys and the pains of God’s love for his children that we can live in honest, wise relationship with the One who made us. Only those who love the Lord enough to open their hearts to the pain in his world will be able to enter into his joy as well.” (ch. 1)
How do you view your emotions—as the ultimate truth? Or do you treat them with suspicion?
What makes you afraid to enter into the joys and pains of our emotions? How might knowing that God is ready and willing to enter into them with you for your good help give you courage?
Will you open your heart to both the pain and the joy of this invitation?
Additional Resources:
Negative Emotions (Part 1 and Part 2): a 2-part podcast series from Alasdair Groves through CCEF, where he serves as the executive director.
