Question: does how you feel before or after being with someone pertain to the words of Jesus when He said, “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:16)?
The answer, it would seem, is “yes.” This can be very complicated. We can project our own emotional state onto a situation and circumstance, such as being around a person.
But in general, if there is anxiety, confusion, a simple feeling of discomfort, never mind a result that tends toward anger, and this has occurred repeatedly, the answer seems clear.
While in Matthew Our Lord was specifically speaking about discerning false prophets, the principle of “fruit” is widely applied in theology and psychology to evaluate the health of a relationship and the character of the people in it.
If you talking botanically, a healthy tree usually does not produce bad fruit and a diseased one would not be expected to yield good apples.
But what’s “rotten” and what “healthy” in the ethereal flow of emotions?
If we apply this to relationships, how you feel before and after an interaction is essentially the harvest you are reaping from that person’s branches. Or, whether their fault or not, a person can have a spirit “attached” to him or her.
When one feels drained, agitated, confused, anxious, diminished, or sullied, it’s not a great indication of spiritual health. Does a person build up or tear down?
Galatians 5:22–23 defines “good fruit” as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
If being with someone nourishes these qualities in you, the fruit is good. You feel calm, encouraged, strengthened, more hopeful or spiritually focused, respected, uplifted, clearer in thought, not the focus of unspoken detraction.
Bad fruit is obviously the opposite. If a person’s presence consistently produces “thorns”—strife, insecurity, or exhaustion; a feeling that your spirit is under subtle or perhaps even overt attack, that the person is detracting by how you feel about yourself and your situation—the biblical principle suggests that the source (the relationship or the person’s current state) is unhealthy.
What about leading up to a meeting? Is your interior, your spirit, unsettled? Is it a weather vane?
Often, indeed. Feeling dread or anxiety before meeting someone can be discernment, sometimes a reaction to “fruit” you’ve found to be bitter in the past, a predictive response based on the “crop” that person usually brings to the table. But a “gut” feeling is often more valuable than an intellectual one.
In modern psychology, bad fruit is often called an “emotional wake.” Just as a boat leaves a wake in the water, every person leaves an emotional wake behind them. In some cases, water skis or a massive cargo ship may be more like it.
You get rocked, sometimes massively, often with great clamor quickly.
A positive wake? You’d feel energized and calm. The “fruit” has nourished your spirit where a negative wake makes people feel judged, exhausted, confused, or envied. Jealousy has a particular power, though it often comes with the stealth of an undercurrent. Let’s face it: some folks can seem “toxic” to the spirit.
The spirit knows more than a theologian or psychologist. It detects hidden anger, pride or manipulation, spiritual imbalance, or simply a worldview detached from Grace.
The answer?
Another thing Jesus taught: love and forgiveness. Yes, difficult; one feels angry when a person upsets us, when their very presence has a negative, toxic effect. But this is made all the worse if we hover over the negative aspects instead of sending forth the hedge of prayer.