“There is no gap between what God wants and what God does” - Unknown

I think few would disagree that this phrase quickly cuts to the heart of the human experience, or at least the moral one. For the person striving to be a moral individual, this is the pinnacle of their moral efforts: not only doing moral things but being a moral person.

“The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.” William Faulkner

A gap can exist, and it is implied that that gap is the difference between the morally perfect and the morally imperfect. True morality is not only doing good things, but being genuine in the act. But how does one change how they feel; close the gap? How does one become more genuine and altruistic at heart and not just in deed?

Many teach that moral and selfless actions ultimately make one happier, and that believing this is a facet of faith. While well intentioned, this is an erroneous attempt to close the gap, coddling ourselves, by disguising selfishness as altruism. Unfortunately it is oxymoronic and unfruitful to be ‘altruistic’ for oneself, and attempting to do so is dissonant at its core. (This dissonance may manifest itself as the belief that if one is sad (or even not happy) it is because they are somehow immoral, an obviously problematic paradigm.)

The self defeating and hidden assumption of this idea, however, is that emotion, including happiness, is ultimately outside of one’s control and cannot simply be chosen. (Why do moral things to be happy if you can control your emotions and choose to be happy?)

This implies that emotions are derivatives of reality, not you. Emotions give one information about the world around them.

Emotions are a result, a consequence, a reflection of moral truth.

An emotion that is created wholly within oneself is inherently, and entirely, disconnected from the world and therefore cannot be genuine. In such a case what meaning or significance would the emotion posses?

The end of all moral pursuits is love. One cannot love someone simply because they want to be a moral person. In fact, such a pursuit makes genuine love impossible. Love is the result of seeing someone deeply. No one wants to be loved unconditionally. They want to be loved on condition of who they are.

Love and gratitude are both the result of an appreciation for something outside of oneself. They are an awareness, an admiration, a respect, for something or someone that you did not create and could not/cannot foresee. They are the knowledge and value endowing emotions of seeing.

This is true of all emotions.

“Love reveals truth. It does not create the impression of truth; love does not merely endow something with a subjective truth–love is the only position or emotional disposition from which we become fully aware of the already present reality of the other person as more than a mere object among other objects in a crowded universe. Love alone reveals the full reality and value of the other person.” - Givens

Trying to generate particular emotions, rather than viewing them as derivatives of reality, is a potential definition for sin. This is to strip emotions down, separate them from the reality they reflect, and make them devoid of significance outside oneself. Many do this unknowingly, ironically while in the pursuit of a more genuine morality and its promised transactional emotional blessings. If an emotion, and not a knowledge of reality, is the goal then one is blinded to reality. One’s emotional state becomes a function of itself, not of the world. Here emotions are an echo-chamber. As the selfish or misguided’s emotional ability diminishes, and their ability to see atrophies, the method for self-causing emotion must become evermore extreme. The consequence is emptiness, a lack of emotion.

Now is a good time to read Neural Networks of Morality.

When one chooses to see they are choosing to feel but what they feel is outside of their control inasmuch as it is a genuine and moral reflection of reality as it is, not as one may want it to be. Similar to an astronomer who in the same instant they choose to look through their telescope they see something they could not have predicted.

How do you change how you feel to become more genuine in the act?

You don’t.

You can’t.

To be moral is choosing to see and then feel. Not the reverse.

You can only choose to see, and emotion is the derivative of what you see; a consequence of what you gift your attention to.

Suggesting that morality is about being happy for the sake of itself is like suggesting that astronomy is about telescopes. The goal is to see and feel and see again. In this sense, unlike astronomy, emotion is both the instrument and the discovery and the reward. The desire to pre-determine the discovery destroys the instrument, or at the least makes it obsolete, and precludes one from seeing reality as it actually is.

Emotions make us accountable to reality. They are our lens to moral truth.

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. - John 8:32