It’s harder than it seems to actually feel your feelings. We have found all kinds of inventive ways to avoid feelings — drugs, alcohol, sex, work, food, gambling, pornography… the list goes on and on. For Christians, however, there is another way that seems to involve less directly sinful behaviors: spiritual bypass.
Spiritual bypass happens when you use spiritual language to avoid feeling your feelings. Something like, “Well, I know that God doesn’t want me to stay angry…” or “Just cast your anxiety on Jesus because he cares for you.” We can do this to ourselves or we can encourage it in others. We rush to make things spiritually tidy and in the process makes things a whole lot worse. We can see an example of that in Job 11:13-19 when Job’s friend Zophar responds to Job’s suffering.
Instead of using spiritual-sounding ideas to bypass your feelings, sit with them. Grieve. Cry. Weep with those who weep. Job takes time to feel his feelings in many places in this book of the Bible, and chapter 14 is a good example. You can really feel his sense of hopelessness in that place. Feeling your feelings does not mean that you will remain in those feelings forever. That’s a common myth about feelings. In reality, feeling your feelings helps you process and deal with grief better. There are no easy answers, but allowing yourself to feel is a way of addressing reality head on rather than avoiding hardship or hiding behind spiritual language.