Guard Your Heart

"Guard your heart bro/sis."

This is what most Christian teenagers tell each other nowadays when it comes to talking about their "crushes" and the like. Where does this phrase come from anyway?

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." Proverbs 4:23

What do you mean by guarding your heart? It means that you should watch over what you "feel". 

This concept of guarding your heart is a popular phrase emotional purity. But what is emotional purity? What is purity? Let's dig deeper from the roots so we can understand what these things actually mean.

Purity. 
People usually describe purity as "innocence","without blemish", or "clean". These are true synonyms to purity but these are by the dictionary definitions. What is biblical purity? Now even biblical purity is perceived to have lots of definitions as well. People usually connect it with virginity,which to some extent is biblically true, but we should know what purity really means. Purity means holiness, righteous, and yes, it also means that it is without blemish; without blemish means perfection. So how do you know if you're pure? We aren't. We are all like lambs with blemish because all of us are sinful beings. But we were made righteous before God through Jesus Christ.

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Corinthians 5:21

How do we become pure?= How do we pursue purity?

Purity= Jesus

Therefore, How do we become pure?= We pursue Jesus

We pursue Jesus by pursuing Christ-likeness.

Emotional purity. 
Now what is emotional purity? It's keeping yourself from any "emotional" thoughts and feelings that displeases God. How do you know if your thoughts and feelings displeases God? Well you need to know Him. You get to know what kind of author the author is by reading his book. In the same way, you need to read the Bible to get to know God, the Author of our life. 

One of the things which involves emotions and displeases God is lust. Lust is a sexual desire outside the boundaries that God has made. So if lust is an "enemy" of emotional purity, then how do you know if you lust?

"But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Matthew 5:28

Even looking at someone lustfully means that you have already committed adultery, an act of impurity. But the opposite of emotional purity is not only confined with lust. I mentioned that emotional "thoughts" are part of emotional purity as well.

Connecting it all together. In my recent post regarding emotions ["Emotions and Feelings are the Same, Right?"], I mentioned about the thalamus, a part of your brain which is responsible for your emotions, motivation, behavior, and the like. This is what you actually call "heart" with regards to emotions. Now since it is part of the brain, those emotions usually affect your thoughts as well. You see, when you dwell on your emotions you generate feelings. You dwell on your feelings because you thought about it. And you continue thinking and feeling at the same time which leads you to overthinking. Overthinking then affects your actions and your actions affect your behavior.

Learning nugget. To conclude, guarding your heart means that we guard ourselves from the fleshly desires that we have. Remember, it is human to have those desires and it isn't sinful to be tempted. BUT, what you do with those temptations, how you respond to those desires, does not negate the fact that you will still reap the consequences of your actions. All actions have consequences so guard your actions. 

Life Nugget. 
"I can't"-Rev. Edmund Chan

But actually, I've learned in time that we just can't guard our hearts. We are just that weak and vulnerable to sin. This is why we need to surrender ourselves to God because we just can't...but HE CAN. But of course we need to do our part as well. Let me end this post with this verse.

 “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, THINK ON THESE THINGS. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:7-10

Let God guard your heart.

:)

Emotions and Feelings are the Same, Right?

"Emotions and feelings are the same, right?"

"And uh,I think it's also similar to mood." 

"Wait what is 'affect'?"

These are the questions that popped in my head when our class discussed about emotions. So what have I learned about these 4 complicated words? 

Emotions, feelings, moods.  
First of all, I know that every human being has emotions. But honestly, it was really hard for me to define and all the more differentiate what emotions, feelings, and moods are. I thought they are just all the same. I could also not define them in reference to the context of crush or infatuation that my peers usually talk about.  
I don't know if it is due to how I am wired, how I was brought up, the environment surrounding me, or both. I learned about the differences among the three when it was discussed in my Soc Sci 1 class.

Definitions.
 I learned that 'affect' is the result of your instant reaction to a situation. It is short-lived and it may or may not register consciously in the person. Mood, on the other hand, is something closely similar to affect in some aspects. 

Mood is a temporary state that you feel due to your environment, thoughts, physiology, or current emotions. For example, hunger plus sleep-deprived state plus the need to study can result in to a cranky behavior. 

Emotions was explained as the state of 'affect' of a person. It is your psychosocial response to situations and events that are cooperated with chemicals released in your brain. I will further explain what this cooperation with the brain is later. 

Feelings, which I thought by semantics were also emotions, are actually the result of soaking yourself or indulging in your emotions. 

Disgust and Anger. 
I further learned that general Emotions are actually divided into three sections based on W.G Parrott's detailed list of emotions. Contrary to what I learned in the movie entitled Inside Out about, Disgust is actually a secondary emotion under Anger, which I think is appropriate since Disgust has the element of irritation rooted in Anger. But, I wanted to know why is Surprise not under Joy or Fear. This actually led me into asking whether it is possible to combine emotions to produce another (since Surprise may be a product of Joy and Fear). Although there are a lot of theories regarding emotions, some do show that a combination of the primary emotions is actually possible. One example is Plutchik's wheel of emotions that show how love, submission, optimism, awe, disapproval, remorse, contempt, and aggressiveness are combinations of the eight primary emotions Plutchik used. But I still haven't researched enough to see whether surprise may be indeed a combination of joy and fear.

Parott's List of Emotions

Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions

Limbic System. Moving on, another learning nugget that I was able to get from this topic is the understanding of the Limbic System or the paleomamammalian brain. This is actually what most people refer to as the 'heart' in regards to emotions. As opposed to its more popular term, the Limbic System is actually located in the brain on both sides of the thalamus, right under the cerebrum. The Limbic System is also responsible for other functions such as behavior, motivation, and long-term memory. 
(Side note: I think this is where Inside Out based the setting of their story.)

Learning Nuggets. 
This topic is actually encouraging me to study further about the brain and the mind, a mental concept where mental reality exists. Being a student of philosophy who is interested in psychology, this is a topic that I would very much like to study.

Now because of all these learning nuggets, I had another question in my mind that remains unanswered. Is it possible, for a human, to be emotionless? Before I researched about this, I started to answer this piece by piece by going back to what I've just learned about emotions. First, I took notice of the differences among affect, mood, feelings, and emotions. This helped me greatly since now, I can define what being emotionless means. Since emotions are something that is not just psychological, but is also supported by something physical, the Limbic System, I conclude that it is impossible for humans to have no emotions. Besides, every human being has emotions since it is part of the composition of being human. BUT, I found out that it is possible to be not aware of your emotions. What am I saying? Well, being aware of your emotions will naturally lead you to soak yourself into it. This will actually result to what you call feelings. Having said that, I conclude that feelings can actually be managed since we have the choice whether or not to focus and indulge in our emotions.

Alexithymia.I recently learned that there is actually a rare case of a person being 'emotionless'. This personality trait is called Alexithymia which is classified as the difficulty in identifying and describing how and what you feel. This thus proves the possibility of not being aware of your emotions. Take note though that maturity can also be the reason why a person doesn't dwell in his or her feelings. It may be that he or she chooses not too because they know the possible negative effects of doing so.

To sum this all up, I am glad that I was able to learn a lot of things in this topic even for just a short amount of time. Yes, this motivated me to study further in this matter and might even go further as to study how it connects to other social sciences.