The psychology of redemption, sinfulness, and righteousness (part 2)

For the next part of this discussion on the psychology of redemption, lets look in detail the relationship between the different parts of the chart I posted previously:

Emotions -> Will - The emotions are the primary influence upon our choices. While certainly we try to include reason in our choices, when it comes down to it, all our decisions are based upon our desires and fears (reason merely becomes a vehicle to decide what would best fulfill our desires or our fears). If we greatly desire something, we are almost certainly going to make a choice that obtains our desire. If we fear something, we will most likely make a choice that will allow us to avoid what we fear. At least, this would be the case if our emotional center was a unified whole with no internal contradictions. However, we as humans are conflicted. For instance, we may desire two things that are in opposition. Or we may desire something that we also fear. Or we may fear two options, one of which must be chosen.

Take the example of the person desiring to lose weight. They have a goal of losing weight, but however they also have a desire to taste certain foods that would hinder their progress towards reaching their goal of losing weight. What generally happens? Over all people, the average response would be to eat the food instead of refraining so as to be more likely to lose weight. Why? The desire for the pleasure that comes from the taste of food is greater than the desire to refrain and make it easier. Why is that? Two reasons. First off, an experience that can be had immediately will draw a stronger response than something that will take longer, especially if it means the immediate desires are not met. Or in other words, immediate gratification. But it goes deeper than that. The taste of good directly evokes an emotional response of pleasure. On the other hand, losing weight only indirectly produces an emotional response (by attracting mates, by allowing for greater athletic ability, by allow for a longer lifespan, etc.). While those too are desires, they are not as influential upon deciding to do things that only indirectly obtain those things. So in order for the person to be more likely to choose to refrain from eating food that might taste good but would hinder their weight loss goal, they would have to develop a greater desire for those things. But desires can not simply be increased by the snapping of the finger (nor can fears be decreased like that), but it takes a concentrated effort over time to change the desires of the person.

Now while emotional desires and fears place a strong influence upon our choices, they do not dictate each individual choice but rather they determine what we will probably pick. For instance, the person may have a stronger emotional desire to eat the food instead of refraining, but in certain instances they may actually refrain. However, this will probably not continue over the long run. More often than not, they would choose to eat, but there may be a few times where they choose not to. Our choices are not simply a matter of the strongest desires or fears, or otherwise there is not true concept of choice. Rather, our own ability to choose may pick something that is not as strong of a desire or that we fear more, but this less frequent.

Will -> Emotions - As I just mentioned, often times we have to increase our desires or decrease our fears in order to change the choices we make over the long run. However, we have partial control over our emotions, but not total. For instance, how many times do people who fear something that they have to do try to tell themselves not to fear it? They will try many techniques, such as focusing on something else, or analyzing the situation to see how irrational it is to have that fear, etc. The disheartening result is that often times our fear remains, and it can inhibit us from making the proper choice,

So is it impossible for us to overcome our fears or to reduce our desires? No. It is possible, however it is a complicated process often times. For instance, many people have overcome strong phobias through a process. Often times these processes include experiencing the thing that cause the phobia in progressively greater manners and thinking rationally about the fear and the object of fear. However, often times another party is necessary to encourage, if not force, the person to experience their phobia, or otherwise the person would as a result of their fear avoid it, not matter how much they think rationally about their phobia. So on one hand, merely thinking and trying to choose not to fear something does not free someone from that fear. But, without the cognitive process of thought and desiring not to be fearful of a certain object, the person would probably not overcome their fear either. In other words, the affect our choices have upon our emotions do exist, but are minimal. However, their real power is that they are the catalyst for other things that influence our emotions (our habits and actions, or the experience of our actions to be precise). Without a choice to overcome our fears, we probably won't overcome our fears, but in conjunction with facing our fears, our choices can help us to change our fears (and also change our desires).

But it would be overly optimistic to say that we all can simply overcome any desire or fear with great success (even if it is not as strong as a phobia). The desires and fears we are making choices to change are the same things that are influencing our choices. So it essentially becomes a tug of way between the desire or fear we are trying to change and our choice to change (or actually, our desire to change that influences our choice). Often times the status quo wins out and we are unable to change our desires and fears significantly on our own. Often times, external motivation is necessary but even then this in and of itself can fail to produce a change.

Knowledge -> Will - As I mentioned in my previous post, it is not precise to say knowledge alone by itself influences our choices. It would be more proper to say that knowledge only affects our choices in conjunction with the desire to make choices based upon knowledge. So, those who endeavor to make choice purely based upon reason have a stronger desire to make choices based upon reason. On the other hand, our emotions only influence our will based upon our knowledge (whether true or not) of what will happen with certain choices. A suitable metaphor is to say the emotions are the automobile, our will is the driver, and the knowledge is the head lights. Emotions are the primary influence upon our choices, but knowledge informs us what will happen with certain choices, which is what evokes our emotion responses and so influences our choices. Furthermore, just like a car can continue to drive with dim or no light, so can the emotions influence us without much knowledge. However, if the lights are working but the vehicle isn't, the lights serve do not help to make the car move, just as knowledge without the emotions does not influence our choices.

But looking back at the desire to be rational, a person may think if they make a certain choice, it will come out with the best outcome. However, often times, there are other desires that contradict the desire to make actions based purely upon knowledge. It is in fact a myth (with the exception of those who are brain damage in emotional areas) that people may be purely rational. Other things serves to influence our choices and do things that influence our choices in another direction, and may even influence our reason and our perception of the knowledge that we have. So knowledge (and reason) can influence us, but it is just like any other emotional desire or fear.

Now one might say then, in this chart, that knowledge may simply be a specialized desire that influences us and thus it might be properly listed under emotions. This can certainly be said, however knowledge is itself a big enough influence upon our choices to merit its own separate part.


I know that this is a rather complicated look at these things, but it is rather unavoidable in order to develop the point I am trying to bring out. One should keep in mind that my explanations are in fact just a very simple explanation for very complex processes. I am in fact only trying to bring out the points that have relevance to the topic of redemption, sin, righteousness (which I will tie in after I finish going through the chart).

The next post in this series will focus upon the relation between emotions and habits. Then the fourth post will look at how actions are influence by habits and choices, and how actions affect our emotions. After that, I will tie them into an understanding of redemption, sin, and righteousness.

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.