Healing Spiritually And Emotionally-Are They Different Or The Same?

[Duncan]

"Becoming clean from sin is being healed spiritually "

 

it says that in "Preach my Gospel" under the section 'The Gospel of Jesus Christ'. So, my question is is if we can be healed spiritually i.e being forgiven from sin is that the same as being healed emotionally so that you don't want to sin anymore? Is it possible to be cleansed from sin but not healed emotionally, if so, then what difference does being cleansed spiritually make if you don't actually change anything?

Edited February 21, 2015 by Duncan

[Calm]

I think they are two different things that interact with each other, desiring to be clean in one way will likely lead to a desire to be clean in the other. Wallowing in sin will lead to emotional damage as well.

Our emotions are very tied up with the natural man and thus I can see a healed spirit where the emotions are still reaching that point.

Edited February 21, 2015 by calmoriah

[JLHPROF]

I agree with Cal.  Emotions are mortal - driven by hormones & chemicals & the way we're programmed.  The spirit is a little higher than that.

Edited February 21, 2015 by JLHPROF

[Kenngo1969]

 ... Emotions are mortal - driven by hormones & chemicals & the way we're programmed.  The spirit is a little higher than that.

Hmmm.  I wonder.  I agree with you broader concept that, generally, things spiritual are on a higher plane than things mortal.  And there's certainly nothing Godly about unrighteous anger, or about pride, lust, greed, envy, hatred (except hatred for sin), and so on. On the other hand, it is humans who dichotomize the spiritual and the temporal.  If the Lord makes any such distinctions, He does so in far fewer cases than we do. Indeed, that may understate the case: He says that all things are spiritual unto Him (see Doctrine and Covenants 29:34, emphasis mine).  He also says that "the spirit and the body are the soul of man" (Doctrine and Covenants 88:15, emphasis mine).  I take this to mean that there has to be something about a body that is integral to a soul: it's not simply an "artifact" of mortality, like a suit of clothes, to be put on when one is born into mortality and then forever cast off when one leaves mortality.  

 

As troubled as we might be by many bodily appetites, passions, and other physical attributes, we're not ascetics who believe that the body is something that will limit us until we're finally able to cast it off for good.  And surely there is some significance (although I admit that I am ill-equipped to plumb the full implications of this proposition) to the fact that while, to the best of my knowledge (and I welcome correction if I am wrong), the rest of Christianity apparently believes that spirits will permanently cast off the physical bodies in which they are housed and that the spirits themselves will sleep until they are resurrected (Christ being the lone exception to the rule that resurrected spirits apparently will not be housed in physical tabernacles), Mormon Christianity, by contrast, believes that no reawakening of our spirits, as entities which existed before being housed in mortal tabernacles, will be necessary, and that resurrection involves uniting our spirits with glorified, immortal, perfected physical tabernacles.

 

As bothersome as emotions might be when things go haywire biochemically, or as unpleasant as even many emotions naturally felt by mortals are, life ... whether mortal/temporal life or life as a spirit ... would lack texture and dimension without them. For example, is love a feeling, or is it a verb ... is it less something one simply feels than something one does?  I think it's both: what one feels for another motivates the positive things he does for that person, and the more one does for someone else, generally, the more he is apt to love that person, and love is God's central attribute.  But the "flip side" of that coin is that the more we love someone, the more likely we are to be emotionally impacted (perhaps negatively, and this includes even God) by what they do.  Even the resurrected Christ reported being spiritually "troubled" by the House of Israel's wickedness (see 3 Nephi 7:14), and Enoch marveled that God wept over the wickedness of the people in Enoch's time (see Moses 7:28).

 

And even a human emotion we think of as negative can have positive consequences, depending on our response to it.  We may say, for example, that the anger we feel is different than any anger God might feel.  However, anger engendered by the dire situations in which they often have found themselves has kept more than a few police officers and soldiers alive: it motivates them to take actions that are necessary to defuse, insofar as possible, such dire situations and to save themselves and others.  For that matter, the same is true of people outside of those roles who find themselves in situations where, if they were to fail to act, they (or others) would be victimized (or would be further victimized).  At the moment, I'm disinclined to hunt for data to support this contention, but in terms of physical response, I think that the general scientific consensus is that there is little (if any) difference between the emotional arousal brought on by anger itself and the emotional arousal brought on by the "fight-or-flight" response.

 

In sum, ff course I can't say how it will feel to experience any emotion as God experiences it, but the issue isn't as cut-and-dried as blanket statements that "God doesn't experience emotion (or doesn't experience it the way we do)" or that "God experiences only positive emotions" (both statements in quotations marks mine) make it out to be.

Edited February 21, 2015 by Kenngo1969

[CV75]

"Becoming clean from sin is being healed spiritually "

 

it says that in "Preach my Gospel" under the section 'The Gospel of Jesus Christ'. So, my question is is if we can be healed spiritually i.e being forgiven from sin is that the same as being healed emotionally so that you don't want to sin anymore? Is it possible to be cleansed from sin but not healed emotionally, if so, then what difference does being cleansed spiritually make if you don't actually change anything?

I think our spiritual makeup is integrated with all the other aspects of our makeup, so its healing can have a positive effect on our bodies and minds, just like a healthy mind can help its body stay well, and a healthy body can help its mind stay well. But this is a life of testing so we will be challenged to some degree or another by the failings of our spirits, bodies and minds. In the resurrection, the immortal mind and body will be as able to enjoy as much glory as the spirit that is inseparably connected with them can endure.