1. Competence: In touch with deeper feelings (one’s own as well as others’) discerning feelings; fully acquainted with the processes of personal conversion and devotional surrender, what occasions them, and how they should be guided; master of the art of pastoral counseling;

2. Balance of finitude and infinitude:

Love of the ultimate reality coupled with appropriate, penultimate care for finite realities and finite duties; simply trustful of providence (readiness to “Let go and let God”) coupled with a readiness to do what is in one’s power; inwardly devotionally surrendered coupled with outward autonomy; at ease with the whole range of feelings and able to help others be at ease with feelings, yet not wholly subject to the sway of feelings; sensible to what is important and what is not, what is deep and what is only on the surface.

3. Selflessness: Sincere of heart; omitted to ongoing personal transformation through surrender to the providential grace of ultimate reality; possessed of a “generosity of soul” that includes and welcomes others within its circle of friendship; compassionate and sympathetic towards others; appropriately  responsive  to others’ feelings; a good listener; able to let others have their own feelings.

1. Shadow side of competence: Ready to treat all problems as solvable through devotional surrender to the providential grace of ultimate reality; unreflectively trustful of feeling; passive.

2. Incompetence: Out of touch with one’s own feelings (or “having no feelings”); fickle (inconstant, changeable, capricious); caught up with superficial feelings of devotion but not yet given over to deep surrender; distrustful of feeling or devotional surrender; of the supposition one can pursue this way on one’s own or in one’s own strength;  pastorally responsible for others but insensitive to others’ feelings (un-empathetic); lacking understanding of the processes of personal conversion and devotional surrender.

3. Imbalance: Loss of finitude: Passionate in an intense, otherworldly way that eclipses into insignificance or disvalues all mundane concerns and the importance of others’ feelings; failing to distinguish powerful feelings of ultimate reality from ultimate reality itself; wholly subject to the sway of powerful religious emotions.

4. Imbalance: Loss of infinitude: Overly sentimental and emotional; enamored with cultivating feelings for their own sake (at the expense of theological depth or breadth), with little or no connection with ultimate reality; imitating secondhand feelings and the appearance of devotional surrender, without genuineness or substance.

5. Egoism: Insincere of heart: self-centered; insensitive to the feelings and emotional struggles of others; manipulative of religious affections (whether one’s own or others’) to promote egoistic motives or material advantage.