How our emotions affect our reasoning, and how we can learn to use both reason and emotions to make better decisions.
Disgust is the emotion that helps us decide what’s safe to eat or how we can feel like we belong in our community. It also contributes to our understanding of holiness. But the Bible calls us to hospitality, and sometimes disgust and hospitality can be in opposition, especially when it comes to those who may be different with regard to gender and sexuality. In Christian circles, disgust has been actively recruited to motivate rejection of policies, practices and people who represent the “other” with regard to sexual and gender diversity.
Dr. Heather Looy, Professor of Psychology at The King’s University in Edmonton, explains the science and psychology of our responses to difference. As humans, our survival depends on making snap decisions about the safety of the strangers we meet, and as parents, we teach our children to distinguish between cats and cows. But the Bible calls us to hospitality and Jesus shows us a path that transcends the conflicts between holiness and hospitality.
This two-part series is called “It’s emotional. Holiness, Hospitality, Disgust and Empathy.”
Part 1 of It’s emotional. Holiness, Hospitality, Disgust and Empathy
Part 2 of It’s emotional. Holiness, Hospitality, Disgust and Empathy
(The depiction of The Trinity, by Medieval Russian artist Andrei Rublev, portrays three winged figures at a table, embodying both holiness and hospitality.)
Or listen on Spotify:
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Reading the Rainbows is a podcast on understanding diversity created by Dr. Heather Looy.
How do we navigate the bewildering and rapidly-changing rainbows of sexual and gender diversity, and the rainbows of responses to this diversity? In the podcast, Looy guides us through the research and the stories in a spirit of curiosity, compassion, humility, and hospitality. The goal is to provide accessible and digestible information to support our own journeys through this landscape.
You can find the rest of the series here Reading the Rainbows or wherever you listen to podcasts.