Poor Leaders
Emotions are powerful, but they are not reliable leaders.
We live in a culture that increasingly tells us to honor every feeling— express ourselves authentically, and never betray what we feel. There is value in learning to recognize and articulate our emotions, but somewhere along the way, feeling something became confused with having to act on it.
We are taught to express, but not always to govern. Reaction is often affirmed as authenticity, while restraint is mistaken for suppression. “This is how I feel” can quietly become “therefore, this is what I should do.” But feelings were never designed to carry that kind of authority.
Ancient philosophies such as Stoicism recognized the danger of being governed by impulse long before emotional regulation became the language of modern psychology. Even contemporary frameworks, from The 48 Laws of Power to ideas explored in books such as Unlearn, circle around a similar principle: a person who cannot govern themselves will always be vulnerable to whatever governs their circumstances.
Once again, Scripture did not borrow this wisdom. It established it.
The Bible does not teach us to become emotionless. It teaches us to become governed.
Before there were terms like “emotional intelligence”, Scripture presented maturity as something deeper than simply knowing what we feel. It speaks of the ability to govern the inner life—to restrain anger, control the tongue, exercise patience, and choose wisdom when impulse demands otherwise.
“He who is patient is better than the mighty, And he who rules over his spirit than he who takes a city.”
There is a difference between feeling an emotion and submitting to it. And spiritual maturity is the ability to respond beyond our emotions.
Why Feelings Make Poor Leaders
Feelings are reactive.
They shift with circumstance, fatigue, memory, hormones, wounds, expectations, and perception. What feels unquestionably true in one moment can feel completely different in another—not necessarily because the truth changed, but because we did.
Nontheless, feelings can reveal certain things: Anger may point toward injustice. Sadness may reveal loss. Fear may alert us to danger. Frustration may expose a boundary that has been crossed. Joy can tell us something matters deeply to us.
But those indicators are not commanders.
Feelings can give us information without being qualified to make the decision.
When emotion takes the driver's seat, perspective may become narrower. We become more concerned with immediate relief than long-term consequence and more committed to expressing what we feel than discerning what should actually be done.
Learning the Cost of Emotional Extremes
I have struggled with emotions for… most of my life.
When I was younger, overt emotional expression was often interpreted as disrespect in my household. At the same time, I was navigating “depression”, so my emotional world existed somewhere between two extremes: too much or not allowed at all.
I learned early that some emotions were safer when they remained unspoken.
In relationships, particularly with young men, my emotional responses were sometimes labeled as “madness” or instability. Over time, I began internalizing the idea that expressing myself was dangerous—that emotion itself was the problem.
So I learned another way to survive.
I learned to disconnect from it.
I became less reactive, but that did not necessarily mean I had developed self-control. Sometimes I had simply become numb.
The difference is that self-control requires the presence of something that must be governed. Numbness simply removes the feeling from the room.
What looked like composure from the outside could sometimes be emotional detachment. I could become so disconnected that empathy, grief, vulnerability, and even righteous anger became difficult to access.
My emotional range narrowed.
I lived mostly in frustration and fear, and even those I rarely expressed.
My responses followed a pattern—not predictable, but consistent.
I would remain silent.
I would endure.
I would suppress.
And eventually, when I had reached the edge of what I could tolerate, I would speak. But by then, my words were rarely coming from discernment. They were coming from overflow. From exhaustion rather than clarity.
It was the “more-than-I-can-bear” moment.
I can point to moments when silence cost me connection, and moments when emotional overflow cost me peace.
That taught me suppressing my emotions were not the same thing as governing it.
The Fruit Is the Evidence
The Most High never asked us to become people who feel nothing.
He asks us to bear fruit.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustworthiness, gentleness, self-control.”
— Galatiyim (Galatians) 5:22-23 TS2009
Fruit is interesting because it is not produced merely by knowing what we should do; it is cultivated, developing over time through surrender, obedience, discipline, and practice. Also, fruit becomes most visible when something presses against us.
Responding with love instead of offense or self-control instead of reaction does not mean the situation did not hurt. It does not mean we have to pretend that injustice is not injustice. It just means that pain does not get the final say.
Choosing the better response often costs us something. Most times it costs the satisfaction of proving that we were right. Sometimes it costs us the version of ourselves that desperately wants the other person to hurt because we hurt.
There are times even, that it costs us the story we have built around our own reaction because if “I am always justified by how I feel, I never have to examine what my feelings are producing.”
The existence of an emotion does not automatically justify the expression of it.
