When Emotions Block Understanding: Christian Resources for NavigatingBarriers Across Moral Divides

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus admonished his hearers to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:44–45).[1] Perhaps with this admonition in mind, the Apostle Paul told the Roman church, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:14–15). Implicit in these passages is a two-­fold call to maintain a robust commitment to moral truth—we must identify our enemies, those who persecute us—while seeking to love others well. Often loving others well involves engaging with them just as they are, as Jesus modeled so well. However, this kind of engagement requires the ability to inhabit the mind of another, to see things from their point of view. One problem is that, as fallen humans, we may find it difficult to inhabit another’s mind, especially when we consider the other an enemy.[2] Our emotions, especially other-­condemning moral emotions like anger, disgust, and contempt, can block perspective-­taking and thereby disrupt love.[3] Christian love holds a high standard. We Christians are to love our neighbor (Luke 10:25–37), the person near us.[4] Those near us may be experienced as enemies when they are perceived as threatening or opposing people or things that we hold dear. Even here, Christian love sees potential friends.[5] Our goal here is to unpack the role of moral emotions in perspective-­taking, both their necessity in perspective-­taking and also their potential to disrupt it, and offer resources for mitigating the potential disruptions.

The Importance of Perspective-­Taking

Understanding the contents of another’s mind is an important part of how humans navigate the world. The 9-­month-­old infant who can follow a caregiver’s pointing finger to a desired toy is beginning to construct an understanding that others, like their caregiver, have knowledge inside their heads that can be communicated, shared, and acted on.[6] Likewise, with development and social interaction that increases insight into their own mind, the representation of the contents of other minds grows more complex, including what other people know, believe, and feel.[7] Such knowledge makes the world make sense; given what the other person knows, believes, and feels, their behavior becomes rational, explainable, and predictable. An increased understanding that the contents of one’s own mind may not match another’s mind, and that the contents of any mind could be false, expands possible actions. For example, preschool-­aged children demonstrate the ability to selectively seek out information and comfort from others according to their beliefs about what others know and feel.[8] Given the importance of this skill, it is no wonder that perspective-­taking—the process of examining a situation from another’s point of view (e.g., visual, knowledge, emotional perspectives)—is related to a number of significant outcomes (e.g., relational success).[9]

Perspective-­taking is not only important because of its psychological function in navigating the world, but for Christians is a skill to be cultivated because of clear biblical calls to take the perspective of others. For example, implicit in Jesus’s presentation of the “Golden Rule” is a requirement to consider the world from another’s perspective. To “do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31) requires considering how you would want to be treated were you in their situation. More explicitly, the Apostle Paul’s description of the Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12 includes the statement-­cum-­admonition, “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (v. 26). Further, Paul instructed the Romans, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:14–15). Commenting on this passage, John Calvin said,

A general truth is . . . laid down, —that the faithful, regarding each other with mutual affection, are to consider the condition of others as their own. He [Paul] first specifies two particular things, —That they were to “rejoice with the joyful, and to weep with the weeping.” For such is the nature of true love, that one prefers to weep with his brother, rather than to look at a distance on his grief, and to live in pleasure or ease. What is meant then is, —that we, as much as possible, ought to sympathize with one another, and that, whatever our lot may be, each should transfer to himself the feeling of another, whether of grief in adversity, or of joy in prosperity. And, doubtless, not to regard with joy the happiness of a brother is envy; and not to grieve for his misfortunes is inhumanity. Let there be such a sympathy among us as may at the same time adapt us to all kinds of feelings.[10]

Calvin’s claim that we ought to consider others’ conditions as our own is impossible without understanding others’ states of mind. Calvin read Paul as focusing primarily on feeling, or emotion, but in the context of more classical characterizations of emotion, this fellow-­feeling would implicate more cognitive forms of perspective-­taking as well. In other words, the Scriptures indicate a need for perspective-­taking in order to live as Christ-­followers.

In spite of the pragmatic and moral importance of perspective-­taking, it is a common experience for emotions to interfere with and overwhelm our ability to see from someone else’s perspective. Psychology allows us to “look under the hood” of this very human problem. Perspective-­taking includes multiple processes and several dimensions that interface with our emotional experiences. We will explore perspective-­taking processes, followed by an examination of when and why moral emotions surface. Understanding the function of these emotions can suggest potential avenues for overcoming emotion-­driven barriers to perspective-­taking. In the following sections, we present a framework for perspective-­taking, the three-­component model of empathy, followed by an introduction to moral foundations theory as a framework for understanding emotions that can block perspective-­taking, especially with respect to moral disagreements. We draw on these theories to show several ways in which emotions can negatively influence the ability to see the world as others see it and suggest several ways to overcome the barriers to perspective-­taking that emotions can create.

Perspective-­Taking in Context:
The Three-­Component Model of Empathy

Perspective-­taking is part of a larger set of processes that work together to help humans perceive, make sense of, and act in the world. Understanding how perspective-­taking interacts with this larger set of processes illuminates its importance in navigating our social worlds, but also how the system can break down in ways that impede perspective-­taking. Neuroscientist Jean Decety’s three-­component model of empathy offers a comprehensive framework that embeds perspective-­taking into a larger system informed by its biological substrates.[11] This model distinguishes between affective sharing (emotional resonance), perspective-­taking (cognitively understanding others’ viewpoints), and self-­regulatory mechanisms (maintaining appropriate boundaries between the self and other and regulating emotions). This model provides an important context for understanding barriers to perspective-­taking, which interacts with the other two elements of the model—affective sharing and self-­regulatory mechanisms—in ways that might facilitate or hinder the ability to take another’s perspective.

Perspective-­taking is the cognitive dimension of empathy—the deliberate, controlled process of understanding another’s psychological viewpoint, of imagining what that person is thinking or feeling.[12] This ability varies significantly between individuals, as it relies substantially on what psychologists call “theory of mind” capabilities.[13] Theory of mind, as understood by Decety and colleagues, is the recognition that others have their own mental landscapes—their own thoughts, beliefs, and intentions that are different from our own. Theory of mind skills are required because they allow us to temporarily set aside our own viewpoints to perspective-­take, and to recognize when our own biases may be interfering with our ability to take the perspective of another.

Perspective-­taking is largely conscious and controlled; we decide to take another’s perspective. It also requires effort, which can be cognitively draining.[14] Perspective-­taking does not always require bringing to mind explicit memories, but the effort involved in perspective-­taking will increase substantially when we need to reconstruct another person’s states or processes by invoking memories. For example, we may need to recall personal details, things that have been said in dialogue, topic transitions, specific events in the person’s past, etc., in order to situate ourselves in the experience of the world the other has constructed, to think and reason from that vantage point. This kind of cognitive effort is necessary when attempting to understand someone whose moral reasoning operates from fundamentally different premises than our own, since we cannot rely on our similarities and intuitive understandings of the other, and thus simply extend and superimpose what we assume and believe onto their reasoning. This explains why mere exposure to opposing viewpoints rarely changes minds—genuine understanding requires effortfully attempting to grasp the underlying moral architecture, the underlying framework of networked beliefs and experiences that shapes views about what is right.

While perspective-­taking is largely conscious, controlled, and effortful, the second component of empathy, affect-­sharing, is a more automatic emotional response. When we “feel with” another person, we are motivated to try to understand them. However, when we do not establish emotional resonance, but instead experience moral emotions such as disgust, anger, or contempt, the motivational foundation for perspective-­taking is undermined.[15] Instead of being motivated to understand another’s perspective, these emotions produce the tendency to lash out or withdraw rather than connect.[16] This is why the relationship between affective sharing and perspective-­taking as complementary aspects of empathy has significant implications for moral disagreements.[17]

The third component of empathy—self-­regulatory mechanisms—performs a crucial supporting role in successful perspective-­taking. Self-­regulation involves maintaining appropriate boundaries during the empathic process (that is, maintaining a self-­other distinction) while managing emotional responses that might otherwise derail understanding.[18] This component allows individuals to engage with the emotions (affective sharing) and perspectives (perspective-­taking) of others, including engaging with challenging viewpoints, without becoming overwhelmed by their own emotional reactions. This, in turn, allows them to respond intentionally and purposefully (as opposed to responding out of emotional overwhelm).

In morally charged exchanges, self-­regulation becomes indispensable. When strong emotional reactions to moral differences require effortful self-­regulation, this can rapidly deplete the cognitive resources needed for perspective-­taking.[19] Some emotions, like anger, disgust, and contempt, produce self-­protective responses such as withdrawal from the conversation, dismissal of the other’s viewpoint, or defensive argumentation, further hampering the perspective-­taking process.[20] Consequently, successful perspective-­taking across moral divides depends significantly on regulatory capacities that allow cognitive understanding to proceed despite emotional challenges.[21]

Decety’s model distinguishes between the affective and cognitive dimensions of empathy, but it is important to understand that these are less distinct than the model might imply. Extensive disagreement plagues accounts concerning the relationship between emotions and thinking over the history of Western thought. One contested interpretation suggests that the Enlightenment introduced a bifurcation between affect and rationality.[22] Significant pressure may be perceived in recent philosophical and psychological literature to conceive of affect and cognition as fundamentally distinct.[23] Indeed, often affect is treated as more fundamental than cognition and as largely driving human behavior and even thought.[24] But affect and cognition are in fact interdependent.[25] The Christian anthropological tradition treats the human person as an integrated unity of capacities. Because of the Fall, these capacities do not always operate in line with one another. But they are nevertheless designed to operate in harmony and as mutually supporting. This emphasis on unity in the tradition aligns with a biblical theology of “heart,” which is the physiological organ that represents the whole person in Scripture. Both lēv in the Old Testament and kardia in the New involve both affect and cognition (e.g., Deuteronomy 5:4–6; Matthew 22:36–40).[26] Further, recent literature on the epistemology of emotions, interacting with the role of affect in psychology, has come around to the interplay between affect and cognition.[27] This means that perspective-­taking and affective sharing cannot be treated as fundamentally separate phenomena. We, therefore, emphasize that Decety’s three-­part model ought to be construed not as characterizing empathy as involving three fundamentally separate aspects, but as highlighting three aspects of a single unified phenomenon.

Understanding perspective-­taking in context, and its relationship to affective sharing and self-­regulation, provides a robust framework for addressing perspective-­taking challenges in morally charged contexts. However, to understand what makes a situation morally-­charged, we need to understand when and why moral emotions are activated. Exploring this question is central to moral foundations theory.

Moral Foundations Theory:
Understanding the Architecture of Moral Differences

When we humans struggle to understand perspectives that seem morally objectionable to us, the difficulty often runs deeper than disagreement over facts or conclusions. Rather, we may be encountering fundamentally different moral frameworks—essentially different “moral languages” that organize values and priorities in distinct ways. Moral foundations theory, developed by Jonathan Haidt and colleagues, provides a compelling framework for understanding these differences.[28]

Moral foundations theory proposes that human moral intuitions arise from innate psychological systems, each addressing different challenges in social life.[29] These foundations include care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity, with a sixth foundation, liberty, subsequently added.[30] Crucially, research reveals that different individuals and cultural groups prioritize these foundations differently, creating distinct “moral matrices” through which people interpret their social world.[31] For example, although religious and non-­religious individuals are similar in their reliance on the moral foundations of care and justice, research has demonstrated that religious individuals display significantly higher binding moral foundations—that is, loyalty, purity, and authority—than non-­religious individuals.[32]

The reliance on different configurations of moral foundations between different groups (e.g., religious/non-­religious) can explain why, for some people, certain perspectives are not just incorrect but morally incomprehensible or repugnant. Haidt noted that when morality is defined solely in terms of harm, fairness, and rights (as it has been in much of recent Western philosophy), then it is difficult to make sense of the moral concerns of most people around the world, who also value morality having to do with sanctity/purity, loyalty, and authority.[33]

This is where emotions come in. Perceived violations of moral foundations activate emotions that concern the interests and well-­being of others, so-­called moral emotions.[34] Haidt described four different “families” of moral emotions. For example, the “other-­condemning moral emotions” include anger, disgust, and contempt whereas the “other-­suffering” family includes sympathy, compassion, and distress. The emotions in these families are different in their perceived causes, subjective feelings, and behavioral consequences. While care violations typically evoke sympathy and compassion for victims, violations of the foundations of loyalty, purity, and authority can trigger the other-­condemning moral emotions of anger, contempt, and disgust. These moral emotions serve as powerful guardians of our moral foundations, creating immediate visceral reactions to perceived violations.[35]

Importantly, these emotional reactions prepare and prompt specific action patterns. For example, in the case of disgust, there is an immediate psychological distancing between self and the perceived cause, a distancing that is often associated with physical distancing and avoidance. Emotions, especially moral emotions, scaffold our engagement with the world. It is this function of emotions that is particularly relevant to perspective-­taking challenges: emotions and the responses they prepare us to enact precede any cognitive processing. In other words, our emotional reactions to perceived moral violations are mobilized before we can consciously think through our moral judgments.[36]

In summary, moral foundations theory provides crucial context for understanding when specific moral emotions are experienced and why these emotions create challenges to perspective-­taking across moral differences. When we attempt to understand someone whose moral matrix differs substantially from our own, we’re not simply processing different conclusions—we’re encountering a fundamentally different architecture of moral intuitions and priorities. Although we tend to think of moral disagreements as cognitive (e.g., a matter of facts), moral foundations theory suggests that these disagreements manifest emotionally with subsequent moral judgments being driven not primarily by reasoning, but by emotional experience.[37] Given the interaction of emotional experience and perspective-­taking, positions that violate our most deeply held moral foundations trigger powerful emotional reactions capable of impeding perspective-­taking efforts. What may look like a difference of beliefs may actually represent a fundamental difference in moral, emotional experience. This foundation-­level understanding helps explain why perspective-­taking across moral divides is uniquely challenging.

Despite the challenges of perspective-­taking across moral divides, we contend that understanding the interplay of emotions and perspective-­taking points to ways of overcoming the divide. Other-­condemning moral emotions like anger, disgust, and contempt compel disengagement and antagonism. Moreover, drawing from Decety’s model where perspective-­taking intersects with affective resonance and self-­regulation, we suggest four specific ways that difficulties in affective sharing and self-­regulation can interfere with perspective-­taking in the face of strong emotional reactions.[38]

Emotional Barriers to Perspective-­Taking

Consistent with the primary role of emotions in moral judgments, the first and often most immediate obstacles to perspective-­taking occur at the affective level, where emotional reactions create powerful resistance to engaging with opposing viewpoints.[39] These emotional difficulties are compounded when the self-­regulation mechanisms designed to regulate the emotions are themselves disrupted. Here we examine four specific barriers to perspective-­taking relating to these issues: the gatekeeper role of moral emotions, identity-­protective cognition, emotional contagion concerns, and cognitive resource depletion.

Moral Emotions as Gatekeepers

Other-­condemning moral emotions—anger, contempt, and disgust—serve as rapid gatekeepers that can shut down perspective-­taking before it begins. Research has demonstrated that these emotions arise automatically and at remarkable speed, often before conscious cognitive processing occurs.[40] Rather than serving as responses to reasoned judgment, these emotions frequently precede and shape subsequent reasoning. This resistance to reasoned judgment is particularly evident with disgust, which research suggests is exceptionally resistant to cognitive reappraisal. As Rozin and colleagues found, disgust reactions persist even when subjects are fully aware that there is no logical basis for their reaction.¹

While disgust creates rigid boundaries, anger mobilizes active opposition to the perceived moral transgressor.² Anger increases certainty in one’s position, makes one more critical of others’ ideas, and reduces receptivity to advice. It is associated with less careful, less effortful, and less deliberate thinking. It should be no surprise that research has shown that when people experience anger, they cling to their own perspective and have difficulty with perspective-­taking.

Identity-­Protective Cognition

Identity-­protective cognition builds on the gatekeeper role of the other-­condemning moral emotions, describing a coordinated set of psychological processes activated when individuals encounter information that challenges the views of their identity-­defining cultural groups (such as their religious group) and moral values.³ This defensive form of cognition extends beyond initial emotional reactions to shape the entire trajectory of information processing, with moral emotions—anger, contempt, and disgust—playing crucial roles throughout this process.

Identity-­protective cognition engages when individuals encounter evidence or arguments that challenge beliefs central to their social identity, when other-­condemning moral emotions function as both signals of identity threat and drivers of subsequent biased information processing.⁴ In other words, these emotions don’t merely initiate defensive processing, aimed at protecting one’s status within the identity group, but actively shape how information is evaluated, directing cognitive resources toward dismissing or counterarguing identity-­threatening perspectives rather than accurately understanding them.

This defensive processing creates multiple barriers to perspective-­taking beyond those described above as the gatekeeping functions of the moral emotions. First, emotions drive selective exposure and attention, where individuals preferentially seek information confirming their worldview while avoiding or dismissing contradictory evidence.⁵ Second, when unavoidably exposed to challenging perspectives, these emotions promote “motivated skepticism”—a phenomenon in which individuals apply stricter evidential standards to evidence that disconfirms their beliefs while accepting information that confirms it with minimal scrutiny.⁶ Third, moral emotions foster biased interpretation where alternative viewpoints undergo significant distortion during mental representation, creating what psychologists call the “myside bias.”⁷ Together, these interrelated processes demonstrate how identity-­protective cognition, activated and sustained by moral emotions, systematically undermines the cognitive flexibility, attention to disconfirming evidence, and charitable interpretation necessary for effective perspective-­taking across moral divides.

Emotional Contagion Concerns

A distinct affective barrier involves concerns about emotional contagion—the fear that engaging with certain viewpoints that are viewed as immoral might somehow be contaminating or polluting.⁸ This concern frequently manifests in metaphorical language about maintaining “purity” or avoiding “pollution,” particularly in religious contexts, and is related to the emotion of disgust. Research has shown that moral violations elicit the same or stronger disgust reactions as pathogens. For example, one study found research participants would rather wear clothes that had been in contact with dog feces than clothes worn by a murderer. These moral disgust reactions actually amplify over time, in contrast to pathogen disgust, which decreases over time. In sum, a reluctance to engage with perspectives that one finds morally offensive, eliciting disgust, may be related to feeling that one’s inner self may be contaminated or sullied through contact with these perspectives.

The combination of emotional contagion and identity-­protective cognition may be at play in accusations of “platforming” and in the intensity of “cancel culture.” When we avoid interaction with those with whom we disagree (no “platforming”), psychologically, purity is maintained. When we further signal through public repudiation (“cancelling”) that someone has violated a moral value, we signal to our ingroup—those on “myside”—that we have maintained that purity and loyalty to our group. These actions further amplify emotional experience and exacerbate the difficulties of understanding the other’s perspective.⁹

Cognitive Resource Depletion

Perspective-­taking across moral divides requires substantial cognitive resources that can become depleted during emotionally charged interactions. In one prevalent model of self-­regulation, social psychologist Roy Baumeister and colleagues argued that self-­regulation draws on limited resources that can be temporarily exhausted, leading to subsequent failures of regulatory control.¹⁰ This helps explain why even those committed to understanding different viewpoints may find their capacity diminishes over time. As regulatory resources deplete, the ability to regulate negative emotions, such as the other-­condemning moral emotions, decreases.¹¹ This, in turn, can impede extended perspective-­taking, even when the moral emotions are initially regulated in a way that allows for initial perspective-­taking.

Overcoming the Barriers

The emotional roadblocks to perspective-­taking we have outlined present significant challenges to understanding perspectives that differ from our own. However, Christian theology and practice offer rich resources for addressing these barriers. Drawing on both theological insights and empirical research, we propose three approaches to understanding and learning from our emotions that can help Christians navigate the emotional complexities of perspective-­taking across moral divides: (1) creating space through pause, (2) developing emotional awareness, and (3) reflecting on emotional connections.

The practices entailed in these approaches are connected to our growth into Christlikeness, because emotions are connected to our ability to love others well. While we are saved by grace through faith, we do not just wake up one day totally different, free of sin, acting in a way that reflects our renewed heart in Christ. Living as we were created to live requires whole-­person formation in the life of the Spirit. Even miraculous conversion stories such as that of the Apostle Paul involve subsequent learning, development, and formation through the power of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:1–5; 2 Corinthians 12:7–10; Philippians 2:12–13).

Our whole-­person formation includes those parts of ourselves that we often think of as our thoughts on the one hand and our emotions on the other. The biblical writers and Christians throughout history understood thoughts and emotions as much more interconnected than we tend to do. The Old and New Testaments use “heart” to designate the whole person and especially the source of all of our mental faculties: thinking, feeling, desiring, and willing.¹² The biblical understanding is that we think with our hearts, and not merely feel with them in the way our contemporary culture suggests. The heart is the place where you know things, where you understand and make connections, and it is what you use to discern between truth and error, using thinking, but also using emotions. This is why the book of Proverbs says, “Wisdom reposes in the heart of the discerning” (Proverbs 14:33). “Reposes” means to “rest comfortably.” The discerning heart does not reject emotions but brings them—as well as our thinking—into proper alignment with wisdom.¹³ The heart is also the place where you make choices, which is why we are told to “guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). The command to “guard your heart” acknowledges both the heart’s importance (“everything you do flows from it”) and its vulnerability. Part of guarding our hearts has to do with being vigilant about how our emotions are influencing how we respond to others.

The steps outlined below help us develop a loving mode of engagement, one that is primarily characterized by care for the other as evidenced in carefully listening to their perspective. Specifically, we focus on building our capacities to become more aware of our emotions’ powerful role in how we interact with others and their perspectives. Working through these steps not only improves our ability to understand others’ viewpoints but also enhances our own thinking and reasoning. When we can identify our emotions and understand what they’re telling us, we’re better positioned to reason well about complex topics and to respond rather than react.

As noted above, emotions occur quickly, often outside of our conscious awareness, and can interrupt perspective-­taking before it even gets started. Consequently, we recommend that these steps be practiced before engaging in difficult conversations. Consider them a way of preparing, spiritually and emotionally, for engagement.

Creating Space Through Pause

Feeling emotion is not sinful directly; it is mainly what we do with that feeling that matters. Frequently, we need space between our emotional reactions and our subsequent actions. Thus the first step in addressing emotional reactions that may hinder perspective-­taking is creating space through pausing. James encourages us to be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,” and clarifies that “human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:19–20). Pausing allows us to slow down the anger and ensure our anger is directed toward loving purposes.

Throughout the ages, Christians have experienced varying degrees of comfort with emotions, and with negative emotions in particular, often because they tend to produce sinful actions. For example, the Christian tradition has been deeply ambivalent about anger, sometimes insisting that fallen human beings are incapable of countenancing it sinlessly.¹⁴ Paul’s counsel to avoid sin when angry shows it is not always sinful (Ephesians 4:26). Jesus, in his sinlessness, experienced and expressed anger on multiple occasions. Aquinas insisted that the lack of anger can be sinful, but he also knew and cautioned against the dangers of rampant, uncontrolled, and misdirected anger.¹⁵ Pausing when experiencing an emotion enables reflective and productive (and holy) action in response to the instigator of our emotional response.

One way to pause is to take a deep breath. For example, breathe in through your nose while counting to four, hold your breath while counting to four, then breathe out through your mouth while again counting to four. Don’t let the simplicity of the deep, slow breath fool you—simple doesn’t mean easy. The pause we create through taking a slow, deep breath gives us space to identify our emotions, regulate them, and choose our response rather than react automatically. This space allows us to act in ways consistent with our calling as Christians.

Understanding the science of emotional responses provides essential context for why pausing matters so much in engaging with differing perspectives. Research has consistently demonstrated that emotional reactions occur automatically and often unconsciously, happening faster than our conscious awareness can track. This rapid emotional processing helps us respond quickly to physical threats, but in today’s complex social and intellectual environment, these quick responses can create challenges for thoughtful engagement.¹⁶

Instinctive emotional responding is not a design flaw in human nature—it is actually a sophisticated feature that helps us navigate our world efficiently. When we encounter a threatening situation, this quick response system can save our lives. When we see someone in distress, it can motivate us to help before we even consciously process what’s happening. We see Jesus’s natural emotional responses throughout the Gospels.¹⁷ A case can be made that he even experienced disgust.¹⁸ In each circumstance, he responded sinlessly. Not being Jesus, when we deal with complex contemporary issues, especially perspectives that differ from our own, these same quick responses can lead us to react in ways that hinder understanding and damage relationships.

Research shows that intentional breathing practices affect our physiology in important ways. When we pause to take slow, deep breaths, this activates our parasympathetic nervous system, which helps calm our stress response. Studies indicate this physiological state supports better cognitive function and emotional regulation. This helps explain why taking a moment to breathe can improve our ability to think clearly about challenging topics.¹⁹

Although the simple act of breathing is a great “in the moment” way to create space before your response, it is not always easy to remember. Christian meditation is one long-­term strategy to create space more easily for a loving response, even when faced with perspectives that make you want to disengage or act out in anger.

Since the early Church, Christians have practiced various spiritual disciplines to grow in knowledge and love of Christ. Pastor and theologian Richard Foster’s book about spiritual disciplines starts with meditation as a form of contemplative prayer in which “we create the emotional and spiritual space which allows Christ to construct an inner sanctuary in the heart.”²⁰ He argued that “Meditation sends us into our ordinary world with greater perspective and balance.”²¹ This space and perspective, built over the long haul, can help us become the kinds of people who pause in the moment of a difficult engagement.

Developing Emotional Awareness

Once we have created space through pausing, the next step involves developing greater awareness of our emotional responses. Doing so is less straightforward than it would seem. Similar physiological responses accompany very diverse emotional experiences. Our cultures and upbringing also impact what emotions we experience and perhaps inhibit us from experiencing certain emotions at all.²² The Bible uses a wide variety of emotional terms to describe God and God’s people. In his Incarnation, the perfect son of God experienced anger, grief, compassion, and joy. The book of Psalms models pouring out our emotions to God—all of them. Whatever we feel about them (or don’t feel about them!), emotions are part of who we are as God’s creation.

Greater emotional awareness enables increased ability to acquire information from our emotions.²³ If we want to use our emotions wisely, drawing information from them without allowing them to thoughtlessly drive our responses, then we need to identify them accurately. Research has demonstrated that the ability to accurately label emotional experiences has a number of benefits, including greater psychological and physical well-­being.²⁴ It probably comes as no surprise that being more aware of our emotions can also help us have better relationships.²⁵ But emotions aren’t just important for our well-­being and interpersonal relationships. Perhaps most importantly for our purposes, studies show that improving our ability to identify and make distinctions between our different emotions helps us to evaluate information and situations more accurately, which in turn helps us to respond more intentionally and purposefully to information.²⁶ When we are engaging in complex conversations with others, having awareness of what our emotions are telling us can help us move forward in productive ways.

The development of emotional awareness and accurate identification is a skill that improves with practice, not an innate ability that some have and others lack. Just as learning a new language requires regular practice with vocabulary and grammar, learning to identify emotions with greater precision takes time and repetition.

When confronted with a perspective that differs significantly from our own, we should focus on the nuances and subtleties of what we are feeling. Just as there are many nuances and shades of colors, there are many variations and shades of emotions. For instance, seeing a video of a suffering child might make you feel some sadness and pity for the child, some anger at the child’s situation, and some guilt over feelings of relief that your situation is better. As you practice emotional awareness, pay attention to the subtle differences between the feelings you are having. You will probably feel several different emotions. Try to be aware of your emotional experience as it unfolds, without judgment. Don’t label an emotional experience as “good” or “bad”; instead, be curious about the variety and complexity of your emotions.

The more specific you can be about your feelings, the more productive information your emotions can give you.²⁷ In addition, paying attention to the variety of emotions you might be experiencing is more helpful than just focusing on one.²⁸

Paying attention to your body can give you more information about your emotions. We often experience emotions directly in the body. Our hearts may pound with excitement, or anxiety may cause our muscles to tighten and our hands to sweat and tremble. Emotions prepare us to respond to the environment by affecting our whole body—our heart rate, our muscles, our breathing, and more.²⁹ So one way of becoming more aware of your emotions is to pay attention to your body.

Reflecting on Emotional Connections

Once we have become aware of our emotions, we are in a good position to reflect on our emotions in order to understand what they are telling us. We are provided with many examples in Scripture of people who wrestled with deeply understanding their emotions. The psalms, for example, do not just express emotions, but also wrestle with them. For example, in Psalm 43:5, the writer asks himself, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?” This verse is a refrain that occurs three times in Psalms 42 and 43, which may have originally been one psalm. This shows the psalmist wrestling with his emotions in an ongoing way. This refrain shows both awareness of the emotion and active reflection on its source. The psalmist names his emotions in some detail, and actively questions his emotions, seeking their source and meaning. The psalmist does not dismiss his negative emotions as unspiritual, nor does he allow them to overwhelm him. Instead, he engages in metacognition—thinking about his thinking and feeling about his feelings. Paul’s letters also connect emotional understanding with spiritual growth. For example, in Ephesians 4:26, he writes “In your anger do not sin,” suggesting that the emotion itself is not wrong, but requires careful reflection. Paul places the responsibility on believers to direct their emotions toward constructive rather than destructive ends.

Our emotions are about things; they are connected to objects, situations, information, people, and so forth.³⁰ Emotions are linked to things to provide us with information about how best to act in the specific situation we find ourselves in. We can learn a lot about ourselves when we understand how our emotions are linked to our present experiences, a link that builds from our past experiences.

An emotion can be about yourself and the environment in three different but often interconnected ways. Understanding these connections helps us respond more effectively to different perspectives.

1. The immediate cause of the emotion: What triggered this feeling? For example, anger might be caused by the action of another person cutting you off in traffic.
2. The object toward which the emotion is directed: What is this emotion about? Your anger might be directed at the motorist, and you are angry at them. Often, emotions carry a positive or negative evaluation of the object toward which they are directed: your anger at the motorist, at least implicitly, carries a sense that the motorist is bad. This evaluative element of emotions is crucial for our sense of morality. In this example, the cause and object of the emotion are the same: the motorist who cut you off. But the importance of distinguishing between them becomes clearer when we consider that, instead of being angry at the motorist, you may (unjustly) direct your anger at your spouse for talking to you while you were being cut off.
3. Past experiences that might be influencing the emotional response: Your anger might also be caused or influenced less directly by past experiences. Perhaps earlier in the day, you received bad news at work that put you in a generally cross mood. Your feeling of anger at being cut off on the freeway is, in this sense, about these past experiences, too. This is one way that emotions provide a relatively unique experience; what we feel in any moment is connected to what we have felt, even if we can’t clearly identify their ongoing influence.

Tying your emotion to its object and causes (both immediate and in the past) is essential for thinking and acting well. When you don’t understand the causes and objects of your emotions, your emotions may spill over into other areas, affecting your judgments about things unrelated to your emotions (e.g., outsized anger at the highway driver stemming from the bad news you received at work).³¹ Knowing what your emotions are about can empower you to correctly incorporate your emotions into your thinking, judging, and acting.

After identifying what our emotions are about, we should consider what they are preparing us to do.[efn_note-Vacek, Love, Human and Divine, 10–16.[/efn_note] Think about your main emotion. What do you feel like doing in response to this emotion? It can be helpful in this step to pay attention to your body. Small, unintentional movements can give you clues. For example, if you feel angry, you may find yourself clenching your fists, preparing yourself to punch someone. Even if you would never punch someone, your body’s reaction is a potential source of information about what the emotion you’re feeling is preparing you to do.

After identifying these action tendencies, consider whether there are some ways of acting on this emotion that are helpful or unhelpful in your current circumstances. For example, if you are trying to take the perspective of another, are some courses of action more consistent with your values and commitments as a Christian? Are there some courses of action that are not consistent with your values? This reflection helps interrupt automatic responses driven by moral emotions and creates space for responses more aligned with Christian values of love, humility, and seeking understanding.

Summary and Conclusion

Perspective-­taking across moral divides represents one of the most challenging yet essential tasks for Christians seeking to love their neighbors as themselves. As we have shown, other-­condemning moral emotions—anger, disgust, and contempt—create powerful barriers to understanding perspectives that violate our deeply held moral foundations. These emotions operate rapidly and often unconsciously, triggering defensive responses that can shut down perspective-­taking before it begins. Yet the biblical call to love our enemies, rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep demands that we find ways to navigate these emotional challenges. The practices we have outlined—creating space through pause, developing emotional awareness, and reflecting on emotional connections—offer concrete resources drawn from both Christian tradition and psychological science for addressing these barriers. These are not techniques for eliminating moral emotions, which serve important functions in our moral lives, but rather practices for preventing these emotions from blocking the understanding necessary for genuine love.

As Christians continue to engage with an increasingly polarized world, developing these capacities becomes not merely a psychological skill but a spiritual discipline essential to faithful witness. By learning to recognize and work with our emotional responses rather than being controlled by them, we create possibilities for the kind of perspective-­taking that can bridge even the deepest moral divides.

[1]. New International Version. All biblical quotes and citations are NIV unless otherwise noted.

[2]. Jean Decety and Jason M. Cowell, “Empathy, Justice, and Moral Behavior,” AJOB Neuroscience 6, no. 3 (2015): 3–14, https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2015.1047055.

[3]. Jeremy A. Yip and Maurice E. Schweitzer, “Losing Your Temper and Your Perspective: Anger Reduces Perspective-­Taking,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 150 (2019): 28–45, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2018.07.003.

[4]. Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 111.

[5]. Paul J. Wadell, Friendship and the Moral Life (University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 153–156.

[6]. Michael Tomasello, “How Children Come to Understand False Beliefs: A Shared Intentionality Account,” PNAS 115, no. 34 (2018): 8491–8498, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1804761115.

[7]. Jeremy I. M. Carpendale and Charlie Lewis, “Constructing an Understanding of Mind: The Development of Children’s Social Understanding within Social Interaction,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27, no. 1 (2004): 79–96, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X04000032.

[8]. David M. Sobel and Tamar Kushnir, “Knowledge Matters: How Children Evaluate the Reliability of Testimony as a Process of Rational Inference,” Psychological Review 120, no. 4 (2013): 779–797, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034191.

[9]. Sanneke de Haan et al., “Expanding Perspectives: The Interactive Development of Perspective-­Taking in Early Childhood,” in The Implications of Embodiment: Cognition and Communication (e-­book), ed. Wolfgang Tschacher and Claudia Bergomi (Imprint Academic, 2011), 129–150; Camille J. Reid and Nickola C. Overall, “The attenuating effect of perspective taking on negative behavior in relationship interactions,” Journal of Family Psychology 38, no. 5 (2024): 763–774, https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0001222.

[10]. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, trans. John Owen (Baker Books, 2003 [1539]), 469–470.

[11]. Jean Decety, “Dissecting the Neural Mechanisms Mediating Empathy,” Emotion Review 3, no. 1 (2011): 92–108, https://doi.org/10.1177/175407391037466.

[12]. Jean Decety et al., “An fMRI Study of Affective Perspective Taking in Individuals with Psychopathy: Imagining Another in Pain Does not Evoke Empathy,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7, no. 489 (2013): https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00489.

[13]. Jean Decety, “The Neurodevelopment of Empathy in Humans,” Developmental Neuroscience 32, no. 4 (2010): 257–267, https://doi.org/10.1159/000317771.

[14]. C. Daryl Cameron et al., “Empathy is Hard Work: People Choose to Avoid Empathy Because of its Cognitive Costs,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 148, no. 6 (2019): 962–976; Rick Dale et al., “Interacting Timescales in Perspective-­Taking,” Frontiers in Psychology 9, no. 1278 (2018): https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000595.

[15]. Jean Decety and Jason M. Cowell, “Empathy, Justice, and Moral Behavior,” AJOB Neuroscience 6, no. 3 (2015): 3–14, https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2015.1047055.

[16]. M. E. L. Hall, Erin I. Smith, and Nicole F. Chang, “The Neglected Role of Moral Emotions in Understanding Christians’ Perceptions of Science,” unpublished manuscript.

[17]. Jean Decety and Jason M. Cowell, “Friends or Foes: Is Empathy Necessary for Moral Behavior?,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 9, no. 5 (2014): 525–537, https://doi​.org/10.1080/21507740.2015.1047055.

[18]. Jean Decety, “Dissecting the Neural Mechanisms Mediating Empathy,” 92–108.

[19]. Roy F. Baumeister and Kathleen D. Vohs, “Self-­Regulation, Ego Depletion, and Motivation,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 1, no. 1 (2007): 115–128, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-­3514.74.5.1252; Jacquie D. Vorauer, Verena Martens, and Stacey J. Sasaki, “When Trying to Understand Detracts From Trying to Behave: Effects of Perspective Taking in Intergroup Interaction,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96, no. 4 (2009): 811–827, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013411.

[20]. Gerben A. van Kleef and Gert-­Jan Lelieveld, “Moving the Self and Others to do Good: The Emotional Underpinnings of Prosocial Behavior,” Current Opinion in Psychology 44 (2022): 80–88, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.08.029; Catherine Molho, Joshua M. Tybur, Ezgi Güler, Daniel Balliet, and Wilhelm Hoffmann, “Disgust and Anger Relate to Different Aggressive Responses to Moral Violations,” Psychological Science 28, no. 5 (2017): 609–619, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617692.

[21]. Hall, Smith, and Chang, “The Neglected Role of Moral Emotions in Understanding Christians’ Perceptions of Science.”

[22]. Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Hackett Publishing, 1993), 9–12. Others dispute this interpretation, see Sarah Coakley, “Introduction: Faith, Rationality, and the Passions,” in Faith, Rationality and the Passions, ed. Sarah Coakley (Wiley, 2012), 10–24. Whether the interpretation holds of various historical thinkers, the enmity between emotion and rationality may certainly be perceived in popular portrayals of “blind” emotion and “cool” rationality.

[23]. Some of the tensions are briefly summarized in Matthew A. LaPine, The Logic of the Body: Retrieving Theological Psychology (Lexham, 2020), 1–6.

[24]. For example: Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon Books, 2012). Social scientists and many philosophers (following Hume) propose that affect is more fundamental. Contemporary conservative theologians have tended to make thinking and cognition more fundamental. See LaPine, The Logic of the Body, 23–40.

[25]. Jason McMartin and Timothy Pickavance, “Affective Reason,” Episteme 21, no. 3 (2024): 819–836.

[26]. Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (W.W. Norton, 2018), see especially Vol. 1, 641, commenting on Deuteronomy 6:5; Johannes Behm, “καρδιά” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. 3, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey W. Bromiley, (Eerdmans, 1964), 605–614; LaPine, The Logic of the Body, 357–363.

[27]. Brian S. Ballard, “The Epistemic Significance of Emotional Experience,” Emotion Review 13, no. 2 (2021): 113–124, https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073920957082; Jason McMartin and Timothy Pickavance, “Affective Reason,” Episteme 21, no. 3 (2022): 819–836, https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2022.45.

[28]. Jesse Graham et al., “Moral Foundations Theory: The Pragmatic Validity of Moral Pluralism,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2013): 55–130, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-­0-­12-­407236-­7.00002-­4; Haidt, The Righteous Mind.

[29]. Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, “When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals may not Recognize,” Social Justice Research 20.1 (2007): 98–116, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11211-­007-­0034-­z.

[30]. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind; Ravi Iyer et al., “Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-­Identified Libertarians,” PLoS One 8, no. 8 (2012): e42366, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0042366.

[31]. Jesse Graham et al., “Mapping the Moral Domain,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101, no. 2 (2011): 366–385, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021847.

[32]. Jordan P. LaBouff, Matthew Humphreys, and Megan J. Shen, “Religiosity and Group-­Binding Moral Concerns,” Archive for the Psychology of Religion 39 (2017): 263–282, http://doi.org/10.1163/15736121-­12341343; Tomas Ståhl, “The Amoral Atheist? A Cross-­national Examination of Cultural, Motivational, and Cognitive Antecedents of Disbelief, and Their Implications for Morality,” PLoS One 16, no. 2 (2021): 98–116, https://doi​.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246593.

[33]. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind.

[34]. Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment,” Psychological Review 108, no. 4 (2001): 813–834, https://doi​.org/10.1037/0033-­295X.108.4.814.

[35]. Jonathan Haidt, “The Moral Emotions,” in Handbook of Affective Sciences, ed. Richard J. Davidson, Klaus R. Scherer, and H. Hill Goldsmith (Oxford University Press, 2003), 852–870.

[36]. Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail,” 813–834.

[37]. Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and It’s Rational Tail,” 814–834.

[38]. Jean Decety, “Dissecting the Neural Mechanisms Mediating Empathy,” 92–108.

[39]. Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail,” 813–834.

[40]. Emily Balcetis, “Where the Motivation Resides and Self-­Deception Hides: How Motivated Cognition Accomplishes Self-­Deception,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, no. 1 (2008): 361–381, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-­9004.2007.00042.x; Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail,” 813–834.

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