By Pastor Jon
Don’t you just love it when someone validates what has been spoken or offered because “they really spoke from the heart!” I almost have to blow my nose, I become so situationally overcome.
Okay, there is a little bit of sarcasm to start, but don’t worry, it is all downhill from here.
I am not sure about yours, but my heart does not have lips. Not. Funny. Maybe just a little? Okay, moving right along. That line was really only for “humour” value because the Bible does state, in Luke 6:45 (ESV), “out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” At the start, this should alert us to how our modern understanding of the content of heart-terminology can be less than comprehensively biblical.
And, as we will shortly explain, heart and mind, have some interchange, while bowels is often used for the depth of the person’s internal emotions, where we would probably more prefer, heart. I tend to have even less-than-little compulsion to declare, “He really spoke from his bowels,” after a particularly evocative line. That could get awkward quick. And quite smelly. “We have a spill on Aisle 13!”
We may have to file that away for corporate worship. Or the Supermarket. Hopefully neither.
Therefore, as we begin to plod the hustle in this Challenging Christianese piece, “What is really going on when we use this heart-terminology?” Is it simply about context being King, which means this reference is accordingly fluid; maybe more like culturally and appropriately vague? Are we actually saying what we really want to say when we use this heart-term? I would suggest we are not, but don’t take my words for it. We will soon share others.
In short, and you will have to accept mine for a time; I would suggest this heart-language becomes short-hand for speaking with authenticity in popular dialogue. I know; that word is not well-liked by the popular culture gutter-snoops, so let us put some lipstick on that pig, and describe this simply as, genuine.
I would also add, I think a presumptive positive use of heart instead of mind is indicative of a desire to be emotionally conversant about human connection; and maybe not only conversant, but that this would be dominant. After all, in our still post-modern predilection, there is no meaning outside the text, and so, how does it make you feel, becomes all we expect. Free your mind!
But not so fast on that draw.
Sadly, inside certain constrains of Christianity, where there has been more like open antipathy toward a more reasoned expression of the faith, there is a tendency to use heart-terminology as short-hand for the more important parts of the whole person, and not just from antic recesses of “the mind.” This is implicitly characterised as an intellectual disorder for the spiritually moribund.
This is unfortunate; not helpful, and not true to the internal conceptual process in our person.
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As we continue, we move into that elaboration on heart and mind. I have offered these words in the original RELOVUTIONARY tome, so I mostly quote, with a little addition and edition for today’s flow:
In Deuteronomy 6:4, one of the central passages in the Jewish faith, the Shema, Moses begins a significant practical passage on how Israel were to treat the words of God, which should flow out of their love for God. Read the vivid process and interaction these words were intended to have in the life of these believers in verses 6-9: “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” The term “heart” is worth noting as the Old and New Testament can use interchangeably with the mind. These terms both denote the process of internalisation and a priority of location.
Keller helpfully elaborates on this subject:
When the Bible speaks of the heart, it means more than just our emotions. It is true that we feel our emotions in our hearts (Lev 19:17; Pss 4:7; 13:2), but we also think and reason in our hearts (Prov 23:7; Mark 2:8) and even act from our hearts (Eccl 10:2). Our heart is the center of our personality, the seat of our fundamental commitments, the control center of the whole person. What is in the heart determines what we think, do, and feel – since mind, will, and emotions are all rooted there. Paul states in Romans 10:9-10 that it is not enough to grasp and assent rationally to Christian truth, though that is absolutely necessary. Saving faith is never less than intellectual assent, but it is always more than that. It combines rational knowledge with the conviction and trust of the heart. [1]
The final thought from Keller helpfully connects with this overall theme. Just as in saving faith, so in maintaining faith, so to speak.
This is important to understand and contends for more than a cut-and-paste understanding of the mind as merely impacting a physical location of the top two inches. Think internalisation where the heart thinks and the mind feels. This is not to suggest these are always, one and the same, nor that a proper ordering is unimportant, but it does suggest a dynamic interaction.
The following from James K. A. Smith adds to the previous words:
Consider, for example, the work of St. Augustine, a fifth-century philosopher, theologian and bishop from North Africa who captured this holistic picture of the human person early in the life of the church. In the opening paragraph of his ‘Confessions’ – his spiritual autobiography penned in the mode of prayer – Augustine pinpoints the epicenter of human identity: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Packed into this one line is wisdom that should radically change how we approach worship, discipleship, and Christian formation. Several themes can be discerned in this compact insight.
Augustine opens with a design claim, a conviction about what human beings are made for. This is significant for a couple of reasons. First, it recognizes that human beings are made ‘by’ and ‘for’ the Creator who is known in Jesus Christ. In other words, to be truly and fully human, we need to “find” ourselves in relationship to the One who made us and for whom we are made. The gospel is the way we learn to be human. As Irenaeus once put it, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Second, the implicit picture of being human is ‘dynamic’. To be human is to be ‘for’ something, directed toward something, oriented toward something. To be human is to be on the move, pursuing something, ‘after’ something. We are like existential sharks: we have to move to live. We are not just static containers for ideas; we are dynamic creatures directed toward some ‘end’. In philosophy we have a shorthand term for this: something that is oriented toward an end or ‘telos’ (a “goal”) is described as teleological. Augustine rightly recognizes that human beings are teleological creatures.
A second theme worth noting is Augustine’s locating of the center or “organ” of this teleological orientation in the heart, the seat of our longings and desires. Unfortunately, the language of the “heart” (‘kardia’ in Greek) has been co-opted in our culture and enlisted in the soppy sentimentalism of Hallmark and thus equated with a kind of emotivism. This is not what the biblical language of ‘kardia’ suggests, nor is it what Augustine means. Instead, think of the heart as the fulcrum of your most fundamental longings – a visceral, subconscious ‘orientation’ to the world. So Augustine doesn’t frame this as merely an intellectual quest. He doesn’t say, “You have made us to ‘know’ you, and our minds are ignorant until they understand you.” The longing that Augustine describes is less like curiosity and more like hunger – less like an intellectual puzzle to be solved and more like a craving for sustenance (see Ps. 42:1-2). So in this picture, the center of gravity of the human person is located not in the intellectual but in the heart. Why? Because the heart is the existential chamber of our ‘love’, and it is our loves that orient us toward some ultimate end of ‘telos’. It’s not just that I “know” some end or “believe” in some ‘telos’. More than that, I ‘want’ something, and want it ultimately. It is my desires that define me. In short, you are what you love.
We could add that the inherent hunger for this telos is confirmed through the religious motivation to worship that either runs to God or into idolatry. [2]
There is much more to these words, but they should indicate how our use of heart-language can easily ruin the true depth of meaning that the seat of our person is daily preaching.
Returning to our passage from the Torah, the various descriptions in Deuteronomy affirm the comprehensive manner or process of how this should take place. Thoughts about God were intended to invade every space of human interactions. Avenues were enlisted to encourage this pursuit. This means our thinking should not be one division in our labour, but the means to create and foster all of our labours.
I hope, as you have read through, that your understanding of heart has been both expanded and contracted. That would be a beautiful beating within. And, as you consider terminology about speaking from the heart, this has become positively influenced through the mind, as these longings find intelligent expression.
Yet, there is more.
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Now tie-in these with others from 2 Chronicles 19:3 about the generally well-ascribed King Jehoshaphat: “Nevertheless, some good is found in you, for you destroyed the Asheroth out of the land, and have set your heart to seek God.” Before you get too excited, these are the glass half-full of the previous glass getting empty of verse 2, which declare: “But Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? Because of this, wrath has gone out against you from the Lord” (Emphasis Mine).
I think this example highlights both perspectives on this potential heart-language. As verse 3 affirms, Jehoshaphat had set his heart to seek God, which was a good. But, it was not enough. His actions had spoken louder in verse 2. In other words, he needed more than setting his heart to seek God, to please God. And in the same token, we need more than thinking that speaking from the heart is enough, especially in popular parlance, because faith comes from hearing the Word of God, and not just feeling affirmed about a subject!
In light, we should inform the Dictionary of our Christianese, as it too often becomes a thoughtless spiritual utterance that actually does not say very much; is not relevant to full biblical intelligence, nor really that culturally conversant in a redeeming sense.
On another angle, but with the same emphasis, I love these recent words from Keller on social media: “Jesus’s purpose is not to warm our hearts but to shatter our categories.” How does that happen? Through the intelligence and into the depth of a person. Anchoring this in heart-language would be deceptively incomplete. It can be similar to language about inviting Jesus into your heart. Really? The Gospel is His salvation-takeover-project, where He rightfully becomes Lord of your entire personal estate. If there is any inviting into the heart, it is so He can put a stake into it, declaring, Owned!
With all this in mind, I think better to shelve this way of framing reality; use more words, and really say what you mean, not only because we should want to communicate clearly, but as a way of modelling truth to a Christian community, and into a watching world.
What Say You?
For the Fame of His Name
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[1] Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balance, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City, page 58 [Zondervan, 2012].
[2] James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, pages 6-8 [Brazos Press, April 5, 2016].