Dear Theophilus:: March 2003

The Revival of the Heart

Have you ever had your heart ripped out of your chest? This may happen for a number of reasons and in different ways, but I am not referring to the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom physical extraction. The ancients used to believe that the brain was the house of intellect and the heart was the seat of the soul. While ideas about this continue to change, especially in this modern "Century of the Brain," where all experience is localized to events in neural tissue, I would still like to speak metaphorically about a particular type of cardiac evisceration that sometimes takes place in the life of a Christian. What do we do when it seems that the core of our beliefs about the world are contradicted and challenged, and our mind seems to be staging a coup against the heart?

I recognize that some of you may not be able to relate to this experience. I praise God for granting you the gift of faith, and can happily say that you may not benefit from reading further. It was a pleasure to be a small part of your mental life for a moment, but you may now move on to better uses of your energies, and with much warmth I wish you well. For the rest of you…read on.

One can view life as a constant, never-ending attempt to make sense of the world. From birth we quickly learned that when we cry, mom and dad feed, change, or hold us, and sometimes contort their faces to amusing proportions in an effort to make us happy. Other patterns emerged as we moved from the home to the ever-enlarging spheres of social communities. In school we learned that we would be made fun of if we ate paste in front of others, and that making fun of the kid who ate paste would generate laughter and support from our peers. High school brought new challenges in learning how to engage the other half of the town's teenagers in a battle for individuality while in reality showing conformity and desiring acceptance. And all along this delicate process of adjusting your attitudes and behaviors to the reactions of others, you are also titrating them to a growing and strengthening concept of who you are.

The concept of the "self" is probably one of the most theorized and studied but least understood in all of psychology. It is felt, however, that we each carry with us a notion of who we are, and we try to keep this unified as we progress through time. There may be nothing more disturbing then when we violate a basic belief about ourselves, and we then go to Herculean mental efforts to try and resolve this contradiction. This is why college is one of the most difficult periods in life because the whole point of it (at least as far as I can tell) is to make you question every belief you ever held to be true, and to bring to the surface of awareness all that is contradictory about the world, as you knew it. If there ever was a time to "lose one's self," I would bet the farm and uncle Nester's cattle, it would be during college.

The technical jargon for this phenomenon is "cognitive dissonance." Just about everybody experiences this and deals with it in a myriad of ways. But this is not a psychological journal, and I'm sure that would be too boring for you to endure, and I should be thankful enough that you have read this far. I would like to zoom in on the application to the Christian life, however, in hopes that this may be helpful and not simply an exercise in testing your patience. You see, when we form our identity as Christians, we internalize many different tenets of the faith that become who we are. We reorganize our way of looking at the world in a number of ways. Our epistemology (how we arrive at knowledge) changes from a reliance on the world to holding a premium on scriptural authority. Our belief about the nature of human beings will ultimately understand the depravity of mankind and the necessity of a savior. Right and wrong no longer is evaluated merely by social norms but is seen in relation to whether or not it was motivated by a desire for God's glory.

Unfortunately, much of the world will not share these same views. For the most part, we can still "be in the world but not of it," without interrupting our sense of wholeness. But (here we go, finally!) have you ever been challenged to examine your religious views, and instead of answers, all you found were more questions and a deepening sense that something was wrong? Perhaps you believed that God was benevolent and all knowing, but you had to match these facts with a God who allowed millions to be slaughtered in Rwanda and Nanking. Or maybe your struggle was more personal as you knew you were supposed to be sanctified on this "Christian walk," but you continued to return to the same pornographic Internet sites whenever you were alone. Why does it seem that your co-workers are much more open-minded than the dogmatic and exclusive mindset that seems to permeate in the church circles you have known? Could it be that these questions aren't even in the junior-varsity league compared to the major mental obstacles that you have had to (or are trying to) overcome? If you could look through the window to your chest, there would be nothing beating there except the false pulsations of bitterness, anxiety, emptiness, and despair.

When the mind wages war on the heart, the natural response of the heart is to fight back. It may do so by preventing sleep, filling the mind with worries. It may suppress the appetite by telling the mind that food is no longer enjoyable to eat. It may even tell the mind that life isn't worth living anymore. These are just some of the maladaptive ways the heart chooses to retaliate. But in less severe times, it will opt for a different strategy by working with the mind to come up with ways to resolve differences of opinion. It may lead the intellect to seek out viewpoints from great Christian apologists, or if it is not strong enough, may concede to the mind and pledge allegiance to another ideological flag. It is quite possible to address the aforementioned questions of faith and answer each one, and to thus realign the Christian identity. While there is nothing wrong with this approach, it is not my purpose to do that here. As the Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tzu, once lamented, is ultimate truth arrived at by debate? "If you prove me wrong, then I can get someone who may argue better than you and prove you wrong. Does that prove that I am now right?" I do not believe that the ultimate assurance of the heart may be derived solely from the wisdom of man.

This is beginning to sound less attractive to many. And if I am right, it naturally should. If there is such a powerful force within us that seeks to make sense of the world, than nothing less than a cognitive "way out" of these contradictions will satisfy. But may I so boldly suggest that you let the entertaining of this discourse be the final cognitive effort to preserve the heart of faith. You see, as long as you allow the existence of God and his attributes flourish or perish at the hands of human understanding, you will be perpetually on the brink of disbelief.

For a long time, the sense of the self has been evolving and has been shaped by life's experiences. It most assuredly will continue to do so. But one of the liberating discoveries of the Christian comes when we realize that our relationship with Christ does not depend on reasoning, but comes rather from the heart of faith. In fact, Paul points out that the "message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate'" (1 Corinthians 1:18-19). I am not arguing for a stupefaction of the Christian mind; rather great assurance and confidence can be found in knowing that God's truths were not meant to be hammered out on the anvil of human reasoning. He instead chose to reveal them to us so that a relationship would not depend on our intellect. "(S)ince what may be known about God is plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:19-20).

No longer do you have to place your "self" on trial in the courtroom of human values and wisdom. No longer does the heart have to be subject to the whimsy of the mind. We have a God who created us with both minds and hearts, and has chosen to reach us at the level of faith. He gives us His holy word to strengthen this faith. When the empty heart is revived with the spirit of God, the mind begins to reorganize, to finally understand, and to obey the heart. Most of the Christian life is spent trying to recapture this truth. Let us be a people who proceed boldly in faith, disciplining our minds with the heart of Christ.