Sometimes It's Good to Feel Bad

Jesus wept.

That was kind of a strange thing for him to do, don't you think? We don't know how you picture Jesus, but your mental image is probably not of him wracked by sobs as tears run down his cheeks into his beard. Jesus bleeding on the cross yet forgiving his enemies? Sure. Jesus with children in his lap, smiling compassionately down? You bet. Jesus wailing loudly or shaking with silent tremors at a funeral? Not so much.

Yet that is exactly what the Bible says. Standing with Mary, the sister of his close friend Lazarus, and staring at her brother's fresh grave, Jesus is stabbed by grief and breaks down in tears (John 11:32–36). Now think about this: As God, Jesus controls the entire universe and can change anything at any time. In fact, he is going to raise Lazarus from the dead in around five minutes. Why on earth would Jesus weep when he's about to do an amazing miracle and fix the problem?

Because he's perfect. He cries at the death of his friend and is deeply moved by Mary's anguish because that is what love does when confronted with loss. Jesus is the only perfect human being who has ever lived, and that is why he does not refuse to share the pain of those he loves. Not even for ten minutes. Not even when he knows their sorrow is about to turn to astonished exultation.

Have you ever thought about grief (or anger, or discouragement) as something that could be right and important? Even if you could fix the problem? It cuts against every instinct in us, doesn't it? Yet the Bible teaches over and over again that sadness, anger, dismay, and even fear have a good and right place. Most of us are deeply uncomfortable with negative feelings and assume something is wrong with us whenever we do feel sad or mad or bad. Surely, we think, if we just had more faith, a better perspective, more strength of character, we wouldn't feel this way. Or, at the very least, we'd get over it faster.

The Bible takes a radically different view. Unlike our assumption that the most faithful people will be the most carefree and emotionally upbeat, Scripture is full of aching, grieving saints who tear their clothes and sit in the ashes when their world gets upended. The basic logic in the Bible is this: if you care about others and the kingdom and mission of God in this world, you will be and you should be full of sorrow when you or those you love are injured, suffer loss, or die. You ought to feel angry in the presence of injustice. Your heart should beat faster when your family is in danger. As counterintuitive as it seems, awful feelings like grief can actually be exactly the right feelings to have, feelings that honor God and would be wrong not to feel. Christian author and thinker C. S. Lewis put this vividly when he said:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

Indeed, God so loved the world that he made himself vulnerable to it, even to the point of losing his beloved Son, of sending him among us to take on our pains, weep our tears, and ultimately die the death we should have died. God loves, so God grieves. God cares for us, so he hates the sin that separates us from him. God is perfect, so he hurts when his beloved creation and precious people hurt each other and are hurt by the hurts of this hurtfully broken world.

Hurt, hate, grief, and fear are terrible things to taste. What is more — as you are no doubt aware — the Bible does command joy, gratitude, contentment, peace, and the like. But that is not the whole story, and the missing pieces are vital. As strange as it seems, we have to start by understanding what is good about our negative emotions if we are ever going to handle them well when they are out of order.

Negative Emotions Are Not Always Bad

The basic reason we need negative, unpleasant emotions is that we live in a fallen world. God made us to respond to things as they actually are. Human beings should be distressed by what is distressing, horrified by violence and abuse, deeply concerned (we'd call it "anxious") about the possibility of injury to someone or something we love, angry at arrogant injustices. To not feel grief when someone we love dies, to not feel discouraged when we find ourselves falling into the same pattern of sin yet again, to not be upset when our children lie or hurt each other would be wrong. Even Job, the man who lost everything in a day and still worshiped God and submitted in faith to God's control, "arose and tore his robe and shaved his head [a sign of grief] and fell on the ground" when he heard about the death of his children and the ravaging of his vast wealth (Job 1:20). You were made in the image of God himself, and that means you were made to see the world as he sees it, to respond as he responds, to hate what he hates, and to be bothered by what brings him displeasure.

That doesn't mean that godly grief or righteous anger or holy discouragement will feel pleasant! It does mean that a whole host of uncomfortable feelings can be deeply godly, right, and holy.

As if that isn't counterintuitive enough, we need to recognize the flip side of this: sometimes it's actually bad to feel good! Obviously things like cruelty (taking joy in causing pain) are wrong, but any kind of positive feeling can be warped. To be glad when someone else suffers a setback because it gets you ahead is wrong. To feel content and peaceful because you have enough heroin for another couple of days even though you're about to lose your kids is a travesty. To feel hopeful that your affair is going to stay secret is a bad thing indeed.

Seeing good in our negative emotions becomes somewhat easier when we realize God displays a whole range of negative feelings in the Bible. For example, he is described in countless places as angry or wrathful. This is hard for most of us. We feel somewhat uneasy and embarrassed by the idea that God is angry at anyone. But what kind of parents wouldn't be angry when someone was taking cruel pleasure in...