Understanding The Experience Of Sorrow

As is true of emotions like anger, fear, and sexual attraction, there is nothing to spiritually or intellectually gain by pretending like sadness is not a possible human experience.  Moreover, there is nothing to gain by pretending like it does not have the potential to be a deep, powerful experience that can drive people to a greater appreciation of truth and fulfillment.  The capacity for sadness is no less important than the capacity for many other emotions that are treated more favorably when shown in public.

Far from being a threat to someone's spiritual life, sadness is a normal reaction to the many trials that rational Christians should not be surprised to find themselves facing.  Every type of emotion offers an opportunity for introspection, including spiritual reflection, but sadness can have a particular ability to bring people to a point of openness, honesty, and a desire to change themselves and their circumstances.  Attempting to grapple with sadness often involves an attempt to change something about one's life in order to find relief, especially of a spiritual kind in the case of Christians.

Thankfully for many, the Bible recognizes that sorrow is not a sign of immaturity, irrationality, or sin by default.  Lamentations, an entire book of the Bible, is devoted to a sincere outpouring of emotional honesty in the desperate circumstances following the Babylonian defeat of Jerusalem.  Jesus openly cried upon seeing the body of Lazarus (John 11:35).  Jesus himself is just one of multiple Biblical figures who expressed sadness without letting it dictate his actions, and is thus an example of how acknowledging and living with genuine pain without becoming enslaved to sorrow is possible--and healthy.

It is indeed healthy to mourn and remain introspectively honest to oneself about whatever sadness one might experience.  To do otherwise is to place oneself in an even more vulnerable and painful state of mind, which can compound the anguish further.  However, the fact that sadness can make a person emotionally vulnerable does not mean that there is anything intellectually or emotionally weak about experiencing and opening up about the struggles of living with the kind of pain that can drive someone to tears.

It requires a special kind of psychological and spiritual strength to weather the trials of life while neither treating sorrow as a mark of defeat nor as something that must be constantly yielded to.  Denying sadness or its power is never a rational, helpful way to process or overcome grief.  Recognizing the role that sadness can play in leading people to better their priorities or contemplate their circumstances is a necessary part of understanding emotions.  Public displays of sorrow are often discouraged, but this does not lessen the importance of acknowledging all categories of emotion.