I’m part of a men’s group at my church. Our church has Wednesday night small groups, and ours was started four years ago because there wasn’t already a men’s group on the schedule. Within a couple of months, we had started a series called “33”, which used the 33 years of Jesus’ life to teach us a true model of biblical manhood. We had no clue of the impact that was going to come when we learned the concept of how men typically handle emotions. It was called the Manhole Concept. We learned that most men take all of their emotions and stuff them down in a manhole. Then we cover the manhole so no one can see our emotions and so they can’t get out. Finally, for good measure, we park our trucks over top of the manhole so that no one can get to the manhole cover and let our emotions out. One by one, each of us in the room realized that this is exactly what we did with our feelings and emotions. 

Our group has grown over the last several years, and we are in the midst of another very challenging series that is taking us to a very similar place. Earlier this week, I posed some questions about emotions to my buddies in our group chat. 1) What were you taught about emotions as a boy? 2)What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word “emotions”? 3)How do you understand your emotions in the current season of your life? Here are the common threads from the responses I got:

• Most boys aren’t taught at all about emotions by a male figure in their life. 
• Emotions are equated to weakness. More than one man responded that they were taught to “suck it up and be a man.”
• Most of us struggle to understand emotions. Nearly all of us struggle to express them. 
• Most men experience extremes when it comes to emotions. Either we don’t express them at all, or we express too much of one. 
• The one emotion that is expressed by most men is anger. And a lot of times, this emotion is stuffed until we explode. 
• And this one quote really summed up how a lot of us view emotions: “Whether you are hurt or happy, that is something that another person can use to manipulate you.”

I didn’t get a single man respond to me and say that they were taught about the healthy expression of emotions. And I would venture to say that most men wouldn’t even know how to identify the different feelings that they were experiencing. When I went through counseling during the end of my first marriage, my counselor put me through an exercise to help me with this. He gave me a chart with different emotions on it. He directed me to pick my favorite TV show, and while I was watching the show, he told me to refer to the chart and see if I could identify the different emotions that were being portrayed on the screen. The goal was to get me to a place of identifying and acknowledging my emotions. This simple exercise helped me more than I thought it would. I’m still not the best at expressing my emotions, but I can say that I am finally in the place in my life that I don’t believe there is anything wrong with me for expressing them. 

The reason that most boys aren’t taught about emotions is actually pretty simple. It’s because their dads weren’t taught either. Most of the time, this is a generational pattern that just keeps getting passed along. So boys are influenced by their favorite athlete, action hero, or in today’s day and time, their favorite social media personality. None of these are healthy options. Another epidemic in today’s society that is magnifying this is that many boys are growing up without fathers. So they are learning about emotions from their mothers or grandmothers. Even the healthiest woman isn’t going to be able to teach a boy how to express emotions as a healthy man. 

To begin to understand our emotions, we have to understand that God created each one of us with emotions. Doesn’t it stand to reason that if he gave them to us, then they aren’t bad? Realizing that emotions are a gift helps us experience them without feeling guilt or shame. It should keep us from denying them or stuffing them like most men do. Denying our feelings causes them to fester inside of us. We may fool ourselves into thinking that we have resolved the feeling, but all we have really done is sweep it under the rug for it to come out in an unhealthy way later. Another important aspect of understanding our emotions is that they are 100% biblical. This is one of the reasons why I read the Psalms each time I pick up my Bible. I read other books as well, but the Psalms are part of my regular pattern. The Psalms give us permission to express our emotions to the Lord. We are free to feel, and to feel intensely, strongly, and passionately. Yes, that’s right men, this absolutely applies to you. Ever read Psalm 13? To all of you who think the Bible is full of inspiration and Hobby Lobby wall art quotes, try this on for size: “Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand?” – Psalm 13: 1-2.

Not only are emotions biblical, Jesus experienced emotions. John 2 contains the well-known passage describing when Jesus chased everyone out of the temple and turned over the tables. Anyone want to guess what emotion that is? If Jesus can express it, then so can we! My favorite part of this account is how John describes Jesus making a whip to use as he drove these people out of the temple. Using my spiritual imagination, I like to picture an angry Jesus, just outside the temple. Close enough to see his Father’s house being used in an unholy way. His blood pressure is up, his face is flushed, and his eyes are hyper-focused. He takes the time to make a whip. I like to think that during the time that it took to make the whip, Jesus was praying to his Father about how to express this emotion of anger the right way. Being the Son of God, he could have snapped his fingers and a whip would have appeared. Maybe that is what happened. But I like to imagine that Jesus took his time so that the unhealthy portion of his anger was processed. It helps me feel the humanity of Jesus and his emotions to think of it this way. 

Emotions are necessary and right. The emotion is not wrong or sinful in and of itself, but it can be misdirected and we may act incorrectly in response to it. This is when emotions can turn into a sin, when they are connected to a sinful thought in our hearts and then acted out in a sinful action by our flesh. But the emotion itself is part of who we are. Men, we have to stop believing the lie that our emotions are wrong and weak. If this is your perspective, you need to heal from that. It’s time to go back into your past and find the root of that mindset, determine why you think that way, and then make a commitment to change. Our emotions were given to us for a reason. It’s time that we acknowledge that and allow ourselves to feel them without guilt or shame. They are a gift from God, who knew exactly what he was doing when He created us.