039 - Follow your heart? Maybe not.

Well, I think mainly what led to this is when I was in the classroom, I spent a decade as a fourth grade teacher and then a third grade teacher in a Christian school.

And just as you said, Robbie, how prevalent this message was and wanting to help my own students think critically and biblically through it, because it's really easy for us to fall on one of two ends of the extreme.

You know, again, go with the whole hearted Disney, follow your heart.

You know, your heart will never steer you wrong.

You know, think of like the quintessential Little Mermaid story.

You know, it was she at 15 that was right and knew that she was just destined to be a human and it was her dad, you know, who was wrong.

So we can wholeheartedly go with that.

Or we can take the opposite extreme and teach our kids that their emotions are never valid and that they should be ignored or denied or stuffed, where neither of those extremes are what is presented in Scripture, that Scripture presents something different, that we're we are created in God's image, which means we are emotional beings, and that's a good thing.

But on this side of Genesis 3, those emotions don't always point us towards truth.

So really the heart behind this was just seeing how often the children that God had placed in my care were faced with this message and how I really didn't find any resources that were helping my students think through this critically and biblically.

So just wanting to equip them, that's really where this started.

Yeah, I can understand that.

So let's target down a little bit on when you were seeing it.

Why was it bad? Why was it leading at least not necessarily to bad conclusions or sin, but confusion? I mean, what was that manifesting like?

So in really practical ways, just seeing that all of us as fallen image bearers of the Holy God, we experience really strong emotions.

And again, those emotions aren't always a bad thing.

But if we don't discern those emotions...

We're just going to strictly follow them.

And a friend of mine, Hilary Ferrer from Mama Bear Apologetics, she has this line in one of her books that she wrote that I thought was phenomenal where she says, emotions are a great check engine light, but a terrible GPS.

And so I was seeing more and more my students following these emotions like a GPS, you know, in real practical ways.

You get into an argument with someone at recess and you're angry with them and then you're not going to speak to them for the rest of the day.

And then you're going to talk to all the rest of the students about them behind their back because you're angry with them rather than looking at, OK, what was this conflict about? Was I right in this conflict? Was I wrong? Was I a combination of both? And then how do I walk forward in resolving this conflict and loving this person? In other times when students would just come in with a bad attitude, I mean, think about it.

We all wake up on the wrong side of the bed sometimes.

And without really thinking through, okay, what is it that I'm feeling? Why am I feeling this way? What should I do with these feelings? Because again, Our emotions are that check engine light.

They're telling us that something is going on and we are wise to pay attention to them.