The psychology of redemption, sinfulness, and righteousness (part 1)

In combining my two interests and focuses in my education (psychology in college and theology as part of my focus in my masters of divinity), I naturally enjoy and ruminate how to combine the experience that we as Christians feel in our life and what it corresponds to in the psychological world. Of especial importance to me is the nature of sinfulness and righteousness and how a person goes from one end to the other (when its from sinfulness to righteousness, we speak of it as redemption). So this will be the focus of this post and others, which I will slowly add over time (due to the amount of work I have to dedicate to my seminary studies and preaching). In order to discuss the nature of redemption, sinfulness, and righteousness, I will first attempt to discuss the factors in human behavior (at least those factors that are adequate enough for this discussion). So here is a graphic to start off the discussion with:

(Excuse the crudely drawn graphic. I am not a graphics expert).

This graphic separates the two dichotomies that I feel are responsible for determining our actions. The will versus habits both have direct affects upon our actions and they can work with each other or against each other. On the other hand, emotions versus knowledge indirectly affects our actions by either influencing our habits or our choices. Now lets look at each part and its relationship to the others purely from a psychological view (I'll integrate it into a theological understanding as I progress).

Will/Habits
In one on my psychology classes (social psychology), we learned about two types of thinking: automated thinking and controlled thinking. The names are self-explanatory. One happens without use making much choice, and the other happens with conscious effort on our own part. There is a similar division in the ideas of behaviorism and cognitivism. Behaviorism is primarily focused upon the actions and most actions are simply a result of learning (this is especially true of the early behaviorists like Skinner and Watson), whereas on the other hand cognitivism has a greater focus on the thoughts of the person. What I am trying to get at here is in psychology there is division between what happens in human behavior that is nearly automatic (habits) and what happens that is a result of conscious thinking (choice or the will).

Now, it would be improper to say that habits are purely automatic whereas choice is purely conscious thought. In fact, the two concepts probably actually fall on a spectrum than two mutually exclusive categories. For instance, we all generally have a habit of eating (though to varying degrees), but yet we also make conscious choices as to what to eat. So both habits and choice comes into play, as is the case with most things we do. But there are some things that involved more thinking that others. For instance, when I wanting to go somewhere I do not deliberately think about each step I take but that is essentially automated. However, if I am walking in a place that has many physical obstacles, I become very conscious about each step I take in order to not stumble and fall.

However, the problem with the will, or controlled thinking, is that it requires knowing something needs to be thought about and then it takes a lot of energy to think (most everybody has experienced some form of mental drain). Controlled thinking is terribly difficult to keep up for a long time because eventually the brain will want to relegate back to automatic control, which is the norm for our behavior. So its next to impossible, if not impossible, to make conscious choices about every significant choice we are about to make. So if we wish to change a certain part of our lives, we have to develop the habit so it becomes more automatic on our part. A prime example of this are people who want to lose weight. They may make the choice to work out and eat healthy, and they are successful initially. However, the following days they may often forget about it and their old habits kick in (this is not to mention our desires/emotions conflicting with it, but that will be discussed a bit later). So it is sometimes hard to do what one chosen in the past (key phrase there) constantly without developing the habits (and considering habits are mostly formed by repeated actions, it can be difficult to change habits).

Knowledge/Emotion
In our society today and many societies in the past, a high premium was placed upon reason and knowledge. In our scientific world today, we value knowledge and more knowledge. But on the other hand, there has also come to be an appreciation for the emotions of each individual by our society (perhaps much greater than previous societies). But formerly, these two were sometimes seen as mutually exclusive and opposing each other, but this is not really the case. They can work against each other, but that isn't always the case.

However, if they do work against each other, it is primarily the emotions "conquering" our knowledge and only occasionally does knowledge "conquer" our emotions (and even then, it really emotion based upon knowledge). The idea of the purely rational man is an unattainable myth (except maybe those who brains are damaged in the emotional centers). For instance, we may know that if we eat a piece of cake it will go against a choice to lose weight, but on the other hand our desire for emotional pleasure will often times overcome what our knowledge and reason says not to do. That is because we are primarily emotional beings, and in fact our knowledge and reason only influences us when such thoughts are associated with other emotions and desires that can overcome the first emotion or desire (so one might could display knowledge in the graphic above as affecting the will through emotions). To continue the example of weight loss, the desire to lose weight might "overcome" the desire to experience pleasure from eating the piece of cake, but the desire to lose weight uses the knowledge that the cake will affect our weight loss goal in order to choose not to eat.

However, going back to choice and how emotions (and knowledge through emotions) affect choice, one must avoid the danger of saying choice is purely, abstractly speaking, a qualitative analysis of our desires and the strongest one always wins out. This presumes that there is no part of the will that isn't affected by emotions (in other words, there is no part of the will that transcends emotions), but that everything is mechanically determined. On the other hand though, one must avoid the other pitfall (though a bit rarer) that emotions do not affect our choices.

Now I haven't touch on how emotions affect habits (or vice versa) or how the will affects emotions, but I will detail each interaction and direct separately in the next post.