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There’s nothing wrong with you spiritually right now that can’t be cured with 18 inches,” the dynamic youth communicator dramatically said. “The 18 inches that exists between your head and your heart is what is keeping you from being a truly sold out Christian.”
Am I the o
nly one who absolutely hated hearing this on just about every youth retreat I attended as a teenager? And since I’m feeling uppity today, I want to entertain the possibility that my irritation was not entirely ill-founded. This head/heart dichotomy is sub-Christian.
To be fair, if all the speaker wants to say is that it is possible that our knowledge of God is purely theoretical and abstract, then I heartily agree and need to do a bit of self-examination in response. I submit, however, that the formulation of the problem creates more problems than it reveals in the potential repenter. Let me explain.
Disjoining the head from the heart is a decidedly Greek notion of human existence. Mankind, in this view, is a body/soul constitution from the beginning and the dichotomies multiply from there inward. Even the soul can be divided up into parts. There is an inner zone where the thoughts live and another where my feelings live. The “mind” contains the thinking, the rationality. The “heart” emits the feelings, the passions.
But any good exegete of Scripture will tell you that the Bible’s understanding of the “inner zones” of humanity centers on the conception of the “heart.” In Scripture, the “heart” houses not just the feelings, but all of life. My thinking, my feelings, my believing, my committing, my loving: it all proceeds from the heart. Proverbs 4:23 comes to mind, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
So how does this help? Well, first, it rescues me from a hopeless inner struggle to feel something that I currently do not. Will someone kindly tell me just how it is that I am supposed to breach the precarious 18 inches by some willful, emotive act? It reminds me of the senseless husband who comes home to find his wife crying. “I just feel sad,” she says.
“Well, you shouldn’t feel that way.”
“Well… thanks for that. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll just feel differently. Why didn’t you come home sooner to drop that pearl of pastoral wisdom on me,” she must think.
Second, the Bible’s corrective here helps focus my spiritual journey on what I believe, rather than what I feel. The greatest problem that I have in my spiritual life is what I am presently committed to, what I am worshipping, what I am delighting in, what I am serving with my daydreams, my money, and my daytimer. In short, my problems center on my faith.
What I need is to hear the Gospel proclaimed to me over and over. I need to hear how committed God is to me, how much in Christ he delights in me. Leaving the head/heart dichotomy as an apparatus to think about my inner life reorganizes the priorities of Christian self-discipline, helps keeps first things first, and gets me off the hopeless treadmill of trying to figure out if I feel like a Christian today.
And best of all, I don’t need a yardstick to figure it all out.
Excellent post. The head knowledge/heart knowledge thing has always irritated me, and this is a good explanation of why.
Posted by: Travis Prinzi | January 30, 2006 at 06:26 AM
Doesn't the Bible recognize this head/heart distinction when it talks about those who "know to do good, but do not do it"? It talks about demons who believe in God, and yet tremble. We could listen dozens of passages that recognize this head/heart distinction as a legitimate one.
You talk about feelings, but feelings are often the result of thoughts. If we change our thinking, then our feelings change. You acknowledge this with your last paragraph that we need to hear the gospel again and again. Why? Because that knowledge will change the way that we view life if we hold hte knowledge properly.
Posted by: larry | February 01, 2006 at 07:47 AM
Larry, in the third paragraph of my post, I acknowledge that what you are saying is true. It is entirely possible to have a purely abstract "belief" in God and not have any interest in serving him. But the "head/heart" distinction places the onus of the Christian's responsibility on something other than the Biblical concept of the "heart." I would also like to *slightly* disagree with your last sentence, "...that knowledge will change the way that we view life if we hold that knowledge properly." The real key here is "hold that knowledge properly." What way is that? How can I do that if I want to really know God? Again, I know what you mean, and a few of your readers may know what you mean, but for those of us who grew up in the Evangelical Subculture, it is not so clear. Why not, as I have suggested, simply place the question in the realm of the seat of the committments, the loves, the allegiances, the loyalties, the beliefs. This is the Biblical view of the heart. Thanks for your thoughts, friend.
Posted by: Les Newsom | February 01, 2006 at 08:34 AM