How Much of My Decision-Making Is Emotional?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Here's an email from a long time listener named Sharon.
00:00:08.480 | Dear Pastor John, I have listened to every episode
00:00:12.000 | of Ask Pastor John.
00:00:13.440 | - Good night.
00:00:14.280 | - Yes, wow, and countless sermons over the years
00:00:17.100 | at DesiringGod.org and I love what the Lord has done
00:00:19.880 | through you in my life and in the life of my children.
00:00:22.800 | Thank you.
00:00:23.640 | My question, what role do feelings and emotions play
00:00:26.860 | in the decisions of the believer?
00:00:29.280 | I desperately try to lead my heart with my mind,
00:00:31.760 | but the heart holds so many feelings and emotions
00:00:34.400 | that inform us and seemingly drive us
00:00:36.740 | in different directions through life.
00:00:39.280 | On things like career choice,
00:00:40.800 | attraction to a spouse, et cetera.
00:00:43.320 | So what role should our feelings play
00:00:45.440 | in our decision making?
00:00:47.140 | - Thank you, Sharon, for your trust.
00:00:52.660 | I mean, it makes me tremble to think 500 pieces of counsel,
00:00:58.320 | how many times must I have gotten things
00:01:00.680 | a little bit skewed that I hope I don't mess her up too much.
00:01:05.040 | Here's my effort.
00:01:06.900 | The answer to the magnitude of the role of the emotions
00:01:11.900 | in our decision making is this, massive, big.
00:01:17.720 | It is a big role in our decisions,
00:01:21.280 | whether we want them to or not,
00:01:25.020 | and whether we know it or not.
00:01:28.500 | And here's something even more,
00:01:31.160 | even more significant, I think,
00:01:33.320 | than the fact that our emotions play
00:01:35.460 | in our decision making about what to do,
00:01:39.960 | they play a role even more powerfully
00:01:43.620 | in the thousand things we do every day
00:01:47.260 | that we don't make a decision to do.
00:01:49.880 | You know what I mean?
00:01:50.740 | I mean, yeah, maybe 10 times during the day,
00:01:53.480 | you step back and have a hard decision
00:01:55.340 | and think it through with the pros and cons.
00:01:57.220 | And then there are 10,000 facial expressions
00:02:01.760 | and tones of voice and gestures
00:02:04.380 | and things that really make a moral difference in the world
00:02:07.860 | that you didn't give any premeditated thought to whatsoever.
00:02:11.940 | Where are those thoughts coming from?
00:02:14.020 | I mean, where are those actions coming from?
00:02:16.300 | Well, they're coming out of the abundance of the heart.
00:02:19.540 | The mouth is speaking and the face,
00:02:22.860 | the eyebrows are going up or the mouth is frowning
00:02:27.380 | or the gestures are acting
00:02:29.220 | or the body language is leaning away or leaning in.
00:02:32.340 | And oh my goodness, we are who we are
00:02:36.420 | quite apart from premeditated decisions.
00:02:39.540 | Oh my, if I could devote energy
00:02:42.140 | to becoming the kind of person
00:02:43.840 | whose spontaneous acts were godly
00:02:47.020 | and loving and upbuilding and kind,
00:02:49.260 | I wouldn't worry too much about my decisions.
00:02:52.100 | I mean, 'cause that's such a small part of my life.
00:02:54.860 | I mean, people tend to feel like their decision
00:02:56.680 | are the big parts of their life.
00:02:58.500 | They're not the main parts of their lives.
00:03:00.700 | We are who we are by the spontaneous overflow.
00:03:04.740 | So out of the abundance of the heart,
00:03:06.500 | the mouth is speaking, the face is smiling,
00:03:09.060 | frowning, arms are gesturing,
00:03:10.500 | the tones of voice are on and on and on.
00:03:12.900 | So we better focus.
00:03:14.380 | So the point of all this is we better focus
00:03:17.620 | on our attention to becoming a kind of person
00:03:22.620 | not perfecting a kind of list
00:03:27.620 | or a kind of rational set of criteria
00:03:30.460 | by which we will hone our reasoning skills
00:03:32.960 | and make all of our important decisions.
00:03:35.900 | That list will never be long enough to cover everything.
00:03:39.980 | And the heart acts before we could consult it anyway
00:03:44.700 | on most of the things we do
00:03:46.940 | than before we engage in any reasoning process.
00:03:49.540 | That heart is a profound set of feelings
00:03:53.500 | and commitments and convictions and preferences.
00:03:56.740 | So Proverbs says, "Keep your heart with all vigilance
00:04:01.740 | for out of it flow the springs of life."
00:04:04.100 | And that heart includes emotions big time.
00:04:07.620 | But Sharon is not asking mainly about that.
00:04:11.260 | She's asking about decisions where we do think over
00:04:15.820 | what we should do, what role do feelings play there.
00:04:20.660 | So let me go to the most standard text
00:04:24.420 | and draw out a couple of things.
00:04:26.660 | Do not be conformed, this is Romans 12, two.
00:04:29.140 | Do not be conformed to this world,
00:04:30.980 | but be transformed by the renewal of your mind
00:04:35.020 | that by testing you may discern what is the will of God,
00:04:39.580 | what is good, acceptable, and perfect.
00:04:42.740 | What does the renewal of the mind
00:04:45.740 | for the sake of decision-making involve?
00:04:48.660 | And verse two says that the effect of this renewal
00:04:53.660 | is that we approve.
00:04:56.620 | Now the Greek word, dokimazo,
00:04:59.940 | never means merely do something, it means approve it.
00:05:04.940 | That is you do it because you assess it and you approve it.
00:05:09.700 | And that concept of approving is a valuing.
00:05:13.140 | This is more than mere rational response to an act.
00:05:18.140 | This is a moral weighing of an act
00:05:21.900 | by virtue of the preferences,
00:05:24.980 | the approval capacities of your soul.
00:05:28.700 | The word always includes a measure of approval,
00:05:31.980 | not just discernment.
00:05:33.620 | It means recognize and prefer or approve,
00:05:38.860 | want more than other things,
00:05:40.940 | treasure more than other things,
00:05:42.880 | which means that the renewal of the mind
00:05:47.220 | that produces that kind of refining of rational processes
00:05:52.220 | is more than that.
00:05:54.100 | It's the renewal of our preferences, our desires,
00:05:57.980 | our longings, our deepest wants.
00:06:01.600 | That goes into the renewing of the mind.
00:06:04.500 | And the confirmation of that for me is over in Ephesians 4
00:06:08.660 | where Paul says, "Be renewed in the,"
00:06:12.140 | in this amazing phrase, "spirit of your minds."
00:06:16.580 | I always wonder, what is that?
00:06:18.420 | Being renewed in your minds all sounds intellectual.
00:06:23.060 | Being renewed in the spirit of your minds is,
00:06:26.300 | oh, when Paul talks about mind and the renewal of the mind,
00:06:31.300 | he's got more in mind than merely rational capacities.
00:06:36.980 | This mind has a spirit, it has a bench.
00:06:39.740 | Like, let this mind be in you,
00:06:41.620 | which was also in Christ Jesus
00:06:43.980 | who made this massive approved decision to humble himself.
00:06:48.980 | Now, why does that matter?
00:06:53.060 | In Ephesians, five verses earlier,
00:06:56.660 | Paul tells us why it matters
00:06:59.740 | that we be renewed in the spirit of our mind.
00:07:02.040 | Here's what he says.
00:07:03.140 | The Gentiles are darkened in their understanding,
00:07:07.180 | alienated from the life of God
00:07:10.040 | because of the ignorance that is in them
00:07:13.780 | due to the hardness of their heart.
00:07:18.780 | So if you walk with Paul down, down, down,
00:07:21.760 | deep into the root of things,
00:07:23.740 | you might've thought he would end by saying
00:07:26.920 | they're alienated from God
00:07:28.860 | and they're darkened in their understanding
00:07:30.740 | because of the ignorance that is in them, period.
00:07:33.620 | So let's get about changing ignorance.
00:07:36.100 | And that's not where he stops.
00:07:37.700 | He says because of the ignorance that is in them
00:07:40.060 | due to the hardness of their heart.
00:07:43.340 | Beneath the intellectual problem of ignorance of God
00:07:48.100 | is the moral problem, the emotional problem of the heart.
00:07:52.660 | It is hard against God.
00:07:55.520 | So the reason the mind must be renewed
00:07:58.220 | so that it can decide good things
00:08:01.700 | in the spirit of the mind is not just rational or factual.
00:08:06.700 | That's not our deepest problem.
00:08:09.540 | Our deepest problem is feelings and preferences,
00:08:12.780 | not reasoning.
00:08:14.060 | Reasoning is affected by sin, for sure,
00:08:17.080 | but the deepest problem is our hard heart.
00:08:20.460 | So my conclusion from this
00:08:25.820 | is not that we check our minds at the door
00:08:29.260 | when we enter the house of wisdom,
00:08:30.940 | like, oh, thinking doesn't matter here.
00:08:32.900 | I've got some emotions to deal with.
00:08:34.660 | No, that's not where I'm going.
00:08:36.800 | But that we realize that every decision,
00:08:41.800 | the ones that she mentioned,
00:08:43.260 | every decisions are a complex response of heart and head
00:08:48.260 | or this spirit of the mind.
00:08:52.720 | And that's okay.
00:08:55.300 | I want her to feel okay about that
00:08:57.340 | 'cause she seems to be worried
00:08:58.420 | that if her emotions are involved,
00:09:00.540 | that might mess things up.
00:09:02.460 | We are to be renewed in both.
00:09:06.980 | Neither is perfect.
00:09:08.460 | The rational faculties are not perfect
00:09:11.540 | and the emotional faculties are not perfect,
00:09:13.520 | and neither is useless.
00:09:16.380 | When the mind has done what it can do
00:09:18.940 | in discerning the pros and the cons of a situation,
00:09:22.020 | so I think that's what you should do,
00:09:23.380 | weighs the pros and cons of job possibilities
00:09:26.940 | and by all means, spouse who you're gonna marry and so on.
00:09:31.380 | That's not wrong to weigh the possibilities with your mind.
00:09:35.060 | The psalmist says, however,
00:09:36.980 | delight yourself in the Lord
00:09:39.960 | and the Lord will give you the desires of your heart.
00:09:44.260 | So when you have done all the rational weighing you can,
00:09:49.140 | the renewal of your mind being deep
00:09:52.980 | is centered on delighting in God
00:09:55.900 | and therefore those desires that grow up,
00:09:58.920 | they're not negligible.
00:10:00.940 | They should be paid attention to
00:10:04.200 | as they accord with God's will.
00:10:07.340 | - That is gold.
00:10:08.160 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:09.100 | And thank you for the superb question, Sharon.
00:10:12.380 | Sharon has listened to every APJ episode.
00:10:15.340 | That's about 68 hours worth of audio recordings.
00:10:18.980 | Wow.
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00:10:40.820 | Well, we are gonna break for the weekend.
00:10:42.660 | On Monday, a podcast listener named Bryce
00:10:45.020 | wants to know how can we trust the Bible?
00:10:47.900 | And John Piper will have an answer.
00:10:49.820 | I'm your host, Tony Reike.
00:10:51.100 | Have a wonderful weekend.
00:10:52.380 | (upbeat music)
00:10:54.960 | (upbeat music)
00:10:57.540 | [BLANK_AUDIO]