And yet emotions are a part of being human. In fact, Bob Roberts argues that emotion is a kind of perception—it is a way of seeing the world. Based on a concern, we construe a situation in a particular way. If you had hoped to go on a picnic (your ‘concern’), you will see the rain (your ‘construal’) as a negative thing. But if you were nervous (your ‘concern’) about wildfires in the summer, you will see the rain (your ‘construal’) as a blessing. The emotion—either of disappointment in the first example, or of relief in the second—is a clue to your construal and, deeper down, to your grounding or orienting concern. So emotions are ‘interpretative perceptions’; they help make sense of a situation. However, emotions also have a kind of ‘perceptual immediacy’—they happen sometimes before we realize why, pre-reflectively.
Emotions are not just a way of seeing; they are a reason for doing. They are not simply perceptional; they are motivational. Because they are concern-based, they are affected by what the subject cares about and can move the subject to ‘action in a way that is suggested by the concern that is basic to the emotion’ and ‘along the particular way of construing the situation that the emotion involves’ (Roberts). Cranmer, the English Reformer, said it this way: ‘What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.’ There is little doubt Cranmer himself was drawing on Augustine who saw the call of Christian living as a call to have rightly ordered desires, to learn to love rightly.
III. Emotion and Formation
We return to our question, then, about what it means for emotions in worship to be appropriate. There are two dimensions of this—one which is theological, and one which is sociological.
