Don’t Divorce Emotion – Use Them As Fuel

It may be your impression after reading a portion of this material that Spartan Christianity is Anti-emotion. After all, we do spend a great deal of time talking about the ways emotion affects the minds of men negatively. But that is not to say that all emotion is bad or useless, in fact it is not the case at all! The principles that are presented here are meant to motivate men to first build a foundation of logic that is later supplemented by emotion rather than using emotions as the foundation.

To help illustrate this, we will look at a few non-religious examples where emotions are used before skill or logic is developed, and how it typically ends in disaster.

Here are a few examples:

No doubt you have seen a singer or watched one of those television singing shows and seen someone who was clearly filled with passion and excitement about singing but had absolutely no skill in it whatsoever. He may have had a certain amount of talent, or some potential that could be built on through training, but he had no appreciable level of skill with music.

Yet he still tries out for the show thinking that passion alone is enough to allow him to fulfill his dreams. This is not the case, passion can only be added after a respectable skill level has been reached.

Also consider the aggressive man who exercises and channels all his anger into his physical training, but injures himself because he lacks proper form in exercise. No doubt aggression improves the intensity of training, but only if an appreciable level of skill in training has been established first.

Proper body mechanics must be established before aggression or other emotions can be unleashed.

The best singers in the world or the best athletes in the world undoubtedly have high levels of passion for their skill. But they also added that passion to an already high level of pre-existing skill. The best singers in the world are the ones who have high levels of technical skill built on hours of practice that they later supplemented with passion. That passion provides the human element that allows music to be a connecting experience between people. But the value of a man’s passion is stifled when he obviously lacks technical skill in music.

How many times has one of your favorite songs been ruined for you because someone played or sang it badly?

The best athletes in the world are the ones who know their exercises, drills and sports plays so fluently that they do not need to think about them. Their skill level is so high that they can go on mental autopilot and then focus on concentrating massive amounts of energy, aggression and passion into the sport.

The Spartan Christian must be the same way.

It is absolutely necessary to have supplemental emotions for your faith, but you must not build upon them as the foundation. Emotions alone are not enough. First you must cement in your mind what it is you believe through logic and rationality. Upon a Foundation of rationality you can add your emotions to make your faith unbeatable.

Once you understand the evils of sin, you can concentrate your aggression into crushing those evils. Once you mentally appreciate the magnitude of gifts and blessings that God has given you, then you can thank Him with tears and emotional joy.

Emotions are jet fuel for the mind and for action.

But you must first build a functioning plane before the type of fuel even begins to matter. What good is the best jet fuel if your engines blow out two minutes after takeoff? What good is jet fuel if you can’t even “crank up” your plane?

The greatest structures in the world started out as logical blueprints on paper. Those blueprints later became a concrete foundation and stable wooden frame. Creating the beautiful appearance of a building is the final thing to be completed. You cannot have a beautiful building without a strong foundation first.

Your faith must have titanium architecture built on logic before you can add the beautiful aesthetics of emotions.

Even God designed parts of the human body to be the same way.

Consider all your bones. Bones are 50% collagen and 50% ground substance, which is made up of minerals like calcium. Both pieces are vitally important for the structural integrity of your bones, and your body wouldn’t work without this combination.

The collagen gives the bones flexibility. If we didn’t have collagen, our bones would crumble and break because they would only have calcium and other salts. It would then be as easy to break a bone as it would be to snap a calcium pill in half with your fingers.

But the calcium is still important. It provides the bone with rigidity and strength. Without the calcium and other bone salts, your bones would bend and snap like a sapling.

But when combined together, the benefits of each substance create bones that pound for pound are stronger than concrete at a fraction of the weight.

Emotions are the same way. Our emotion must be combined with logic for there to be any appreciable level of strength in each one.

Emotions are not strong without logic, and logic is not strong without emotion.

Emotions alone will crumble under adversity. How strong is the faith of an emotional person when those precious emotions fade to nothing? How faithful is the emotional Christian once it is no longer safe or convenient for him to be a Christian? Most people leave the church as soon as it becomes dangerous to be a Christian.

Logic alone is not enough for some men to maintain their faith. When atheists seem to make such great, logical points about the origin of the universe many men must call on emotion to maintain their faith.

This is the main point: emotion and logic are complementary.

You will be weak if you have one without the other. But many Christians today are so concerned with increasing their emotions or their passion that they neglect logic altogether. At Spartan Christianity, the purpose is to increase logic in a world of men who worship emotion.

Build your faith with the mind before you add your emotions to it. This is the Spartan way. Once your faith is built, then add emotional conviction and become unstoppable.