Analytical or Emotional?

In Mark 12:30 Jesus tells us the greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” This is extremely important to me and how I conduct my life, particularly when I consider loving God with my mind.

I have viewed myself as a very analytical person, my life experiences have caused me to respect facts and research above the human experiences of feelings, to my detriment. This is why I had felt for most of my life that becoming a researcher in the field of psychology would be the best fit, I like to have concrete data to validate my statements, thoughts, feelings, and actions. What I learned about myself through various research experiences was that in Jesus’ statement, he mentioned the heart and the soul before he mentioned the mind.

Our feelings and emotions also have a place at the table, and it is important and vital to consider in research, how that will affect the whole person. There needs to be a good balance between the emotional and analytical sides of human experience. There also needs to be the truth overcoming the lies, and often our emotions do lie to us. This is why I feel it is such a vital spiritual discipline to be reading the word of God each and every day so that we can constantly be renewing our minds. To be so focused and filled with what God says about us as individuals as well as what he can do about our problems, that we do not even have time to worry.

Ultimately this is why, I am taking my next steps to focus more on the emotional aspects of the humanity of pastoral counseling before I continue in the research path that I feel so called to contribute to. This way when my research is conducted it will be beneficial for the whole person, not just a series of data and facts that could be used to prove a point and win an argument. I want to bring healing and hope to those that are hurting, but it comes in the form of the truth.