our enemy's trap

St Ambrose talks to us about how our ancient enemy traps us today in A Year with the Church Fathers. And it's interesting reading it, because it sounds like something written today, not hundreds of years ago. "The devil loves it when we get all emotional." He uses our passions against us.

That's not to say that passion is bad. We SHOULD get emotional about things, but in the right way. While love is more than a feeling, it DOES include feelings. We should love people (the verb) even when we don't feel like it. But the strong emotions that usually accompany our relationships gives us great motivation and energy to work for their good.

But we should keep a close eye on our emotions. The overpowering love you have for your child can easily be twisted into sin, if you allow your desires to see your child succeed translate into wanting to see all of the other children fail, or at least not do as well as your child. Your love for your country can be manipulated into hatred for the foreigner. Your love of your possessions can turn into selfishness and apathy toward those who have less. Your love for your family and be warped into racism toward those who are not "one of yours."

So while our emotions are not bad things, we need to make sure we keep them in check. If we let our emotions lead us "by the nose", they will usually lead us where we shouldn't go. Of course, one thing we can do about that on a regular basis is to submit our feelings to God, and ask Him to grow in us the emotions that He wants us to have. And then let Him "operate" on our hearts, giving us love where we need it, and removing the envy and apathy and racism and selfishness that so easily grows up in our emotions.

God, thank You for giving us emotions. Please help us to keep an eye on them.