Whoopi Goldberg made me think about emotions while people made fun of her for days on X. I didn’t think much about what she said. It was nonsense. But I did think about why she believed what she said. She felt something deeply that got her mocked online for a few days. It’s not that her feelings weren’t genuine. It is because she believes falsehood. And we’ll get to that in a moment.
Emotions and feelings are not small matters. Anyone that has deeply felt sorrow or anxiety would agree that this is the case. But feelings aren’t always good and right. They are not always in accordance with reality.
Feelings in the Bible
I love the Book of Psalms. I often tell our church that, in the Psalms, we get to see a God inspired look at people dealing with the inner workings of the heart. And these inner workings teeter between the extremes and everything in between.
It would be difficult to find depression deeper than what is written in Psalm 88. And it would be difficult to find joy that is higher than Psalm 100. Feelings are deeply felt and we get to see them. And for many years people have sung them.
But the Psalmist does not treat feelings as we do today. The Psalmists don’t act as if his emotions are correct. For the Psalmists emotions are good, but not always right. Emotions are not the standard of truth.
And sometimes feelings and emotions must be told to get in line with the truth. You can feel things in a way that are out of accordance with truth. It’s not that your feelings are wrong. It’s that you don’t view reality correctly, therefore your feelings are wrong.
This is where Whoopi Goldberg is a good example. For she believes that it is just as dangerous to be a black person in America as a woman without her head covered in Iran. See below.
Now, this is obviously untrue. A new law passed in Iran in 2023 states that any woman without her head covered faces up to 15 years in prison for it. There is even a provision that allows the death penalty for it.
We could just stop right there and say, “Whoopi’s nuts.” And move on. That’s what most people seem to have done. But I think there’s benefit in digging further.
Is Whoopi Lying?
Maybe. I mean it’s possible. But I don’t think she is. I think she earnestly believes this. And I think that because of that she has real anxiety over it.
This is what happens when you misinform yourself or are misinformed. Your emotions line up with the misinformation.
My son was stung my a wasp one day. And since that time, he has been terrified of every flying creature. His fear is real. But that doesn’t mean that the butterfly is going to hurt him. His understanding of reality is misaligned.
It seems to me that Whoopi has gone through something similar. She really thinks that America is horribly racist. And so, she really thinks that America is as bad toward black people as Iran is to women. And so, her emotions line up with that belief.
You’ve Seen This Before
Lesson were learned during Covid. A lot of them. But one of them is just how much misinformed people can have emotions that are not aligned with the truth.
People were told, by sources they trusted, that they’d die without the vaccine. They were told, even if they’d already had the virus, that they would spread it to others without the vaccine.
Our family did not get the shot. We’d already had the virus before the vaccine came out and decided to forego the shot. The logic was solid. We had nature’s vaccination already and survived it. And there’s always a risk to injecting a foreign substance into the body. So we made the decision to forego the shot. But the fear that was stoked around Covid and the vaccine made us seem insane to others.
It is surprising to me as I consider the many scoldings and warnings I got from people for not getting the shot. I argued with people and some people were quite angry with me. And remember, this happened to a lot of people.
People were fired all over the country for refusing. Even after evidence came out that it had potential life threatening side effects people were still ostracized, fired, and looked down upon.
Were these emotional reactions based in truth?
Obviously not.
Were the emotions real?
Absolutely.
But they were not based on truth.
Similar examples could be found in other areas. The George Floyd riots are a pretty good example of this. The Fall of Minneapolis was a powerful documentary that discussed the deception and the reaction to the deception. But how many people fell for that one? How many cities buildings burned to the ground because of false beliefs?
I know these aren’t the only ones. They are just recent enough and big enough that we can all remember them. I’m sure that you can come up with a few.
But the point is quite simple. The people really believed and many still believe the lies that were told. And their emotions fully went along with their false beliefs.
What Whoopi Believes
Whoopi has been programmed to believe that America is a horribly racist country. And this programming has made Whoopi believe that America is worse for black people than Iran is for women. And I am sure that she really believes what she said. But it just doesn’t fit with the numbers.
The numbers are murky, but in 4 months of 2023, 800 women were jailed or fined for wearing the hijab. And some news organizations say that since 2022 30,000 women have been punished for not wearing the hijab. This is an astounding number.
That far outstrips anything happening here in the United States. But it doesn’t stop her from feeling like it does.
Concluding Thought
The thing that I’d like to leave any reader with is that we can’t trust our feelings. They are not good guides. Our feelings are not bad, in and of themselves. But they can be misguided.
And what do we do in that situation?
We don’t live in the lies. We tell ourselves the truth.
R. Dwain Minor
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