Christian Viewpoint: Can you truly be yourself if you have ‘zero feelings’?

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” sang Zoe Clark on my daughter’s car radio. The song was Zero Feelings, which reflected my emotional state that day – taking part in life, while not ‘feeling’ the appropriate emotions, writes John Dempster.

Zoe Clark’s focus is on relationships, telling us she doesn’t need emotional entanglement with significant others. People say she has a problem, but she doesn’t see it that way. “I’m self-sufficient,” she insists. “My future’s open.

“I don’t know where I’m going,” she adds. She’s free, she can act on impulse, there are ‘no strings attached’. “Life is sweet when you got zero feelings.”

I’m not sure whether to take this at face value. ‘I’ve got zero feelings. I don’t really feel things’ sounds like a general comment about her experience. My question is whether you can be truly yourself if you perpetually have ‘zero feelings’. Is the singer defiantly concealing a great emptiness?

Read more: CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: 'This was God’s house and God’s people – I was safe'

I’ve also been listening to This Part of Me, a new EP released on Spotify by Bethany Barrie, formerly of Inverness. All six songs are about emotions, and fundamentally, relationship with God.

We need this relationship, Bethany insists. “I will run into the arms of the one from whom I’m formed,” she sings.

It’s a response to divine love: “The greatest thing about us is that we are worth dying for.” Her belief in God is such that even though “sometimes I can only hear the wind … I wanna trust you in the silence”.

Far from seeking self-sufficiency, Bethany entrusts her life to the God who says ‘I’ll be your safe place’. She responds: “You can take all of my burdens and carry them all for me.” For her, ‘zero feelings’ is not ‘sweet’. She sings of the rich emotions of faith, of joy, sorrow and forgiveness, and a loveliness which ‘draws me to his presence’.

Bethany knows where she is going ultimately, but each day is an adventure. “Freedom has never felt so good,” she sings, about learning to love her enemies. This is not about God manipulating us like puppets – it’s partnership with the divine, two figures dancing together. “I never want to skip your beat,” Bethany tells God.

Two young women, with a common message: ‘You don’t know what you’re missing’. Who are we to believe? Bethany Barrie questions her reasons for believing as she does: “What if everything I thought I knew had been created by a world view?” Can we be sure our beliefs reflect reality and are not moulded by the views of those around us?

I follow the Jesus of whom Bethany sings, the Jesus who into our emotional numbness and the shadow of this time of year brings light and joy.

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