Is it really just about the heart?
Yes, it probably is, but let's take a look at what that might mean.
In Matthew's Gospel, especially in the Sermon on the Mount (chs. 5-7), Jesus has a series of statements that are framed by, "You have heard it said...but I tell you...." What Jesus is doing here is expounding the Torah and redefining the ethics of the Jewish people. For example, from Matthew 5:27ff:
You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
The point is that committing adultery is the action that is a symptom of a deeper problem that lies within the sinner's heart. A similar example in Matthew 5:21ff:
You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder'. . . But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother (some manuscripts: 'without cause') will be subject to judgment...
Again, anger at your brother or sister (without cause) is actually the problem, not murder. Murder is just the outflow of what is already in your heart.
So it is right to note that Jesus is literally addressing the heart of the matter. Furthermore, Jesus says to the Pharisees and teachers of the law in Matthew 15:
Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean...
Jesus is surely concerned with the heart. And so, too, should we. But is that it? Does that mean that I can do whatever I want as long as my heart is in the right place? Of course not. But does it mean that I must sit back uncritically as my Christian brothers and sisters live out their faith in a way that seems to contradict our call? This is where I think we have the most problems. We are so afraid to 'judge' each other that we completely abstain from even questioning each other. If I say I'm a Christian but destroy the earth, would you stop me? If I say I'm a Christian but treat others as if they are not worthy of respect, would you call me out on it? If I say I'm a Christian but make or sell a product that encourages laziness, gluttony, greed, envy, lust, or is just plain idolatrous, would you be able to question me at all?
I would hope so. Because otherwise I'm screwed. Jeremiah says in chapter 17:
can easily identify with them without any need to spell out what we
are doing. The role is accepted into our identity. It may define our
identity in the measure that we feel committed to live out and defend
our identification with it. In the narrow confines of a job and of
corporate loyalty, such an individual can easily be caricatured as a
'company man,' and come under a simple censure of establishment
myopia. Where the description is more exalted and vocational, however,
the opportunity for deceiving oneself increases. A man may think of
himself as a public servant concerned with the public good. Even
though he may be party to decisions which compromise the public good,
he has a great deal invested in continuing to describe them as
contributing to the public good. To call certain decisions he makes by
their proper name would require too painful a readjustment in his
primary identification of himself as a public servant. Thus deceit can
be a function of wanting to think of ourselves as honest persons....
"[W]e will remain subject to those propensities which lead to a state
of self-deception as long as we feel ourselves to be constituted
either by the conventional roles we have assumed or by the level of
awareness we have been able to articulate."
So yes, it is all about the heart. But the heart is deceitful. That means that I must know this and make certain decisions to address it. Perhaps that means getting together with the community of believers and retelling the story of Jesus so we remember who we are. Maybe that will expose some of the lies we have been living with that drive us to attain popularity and wealth. Perhaps it means looking around at the Christians we see in the world and, in love, asking them how their hearts are. It may even mean calling out actions we think are unethical and go against the basic narrative of the Christian story. John Powell, S.J. right says, "It is for God, not for you or me, to judge human responsibility. If, however, we could not judge the rightness or wrongness of an action in itself, it would be the end of all objective morality. Let us not fall into this, that there is nothing objectively wrong or right, that it is all in the way you look at it. However, to judge the responsibility of another is playing God."
Most importantly we must see this as a conversation, not an indictment. None of us have the last word and we should be quick to remember that. When my Christian brothers and sisters are involved in something I think to be wrong, it is my duty to question. It is also my duty to listen gracefully to their response.
So what is your response? The Christian Evangelical stereotype is that we regularly play God by dispensing judgment at every opportunity. But based on last week's comments, we wonder if some of the guys on this blog tend to the other extreme -- refusing to judge the rightness or wrongness of an action because it's all about the heart. Does it have to be one extreme or the other? Do you find Hauerwas' comments to be true in your life, that your identity is so wrapped up in what you do or what you've always done that it's hard to be objective about what is truly right and wrong? I know I do.
In Matthew's Gospel, especially in the Sermon on the Mount (chs. 5-7), Jesus has a series of statements that are framed by, "You have heard it said...but I tell you...." What Jesus is doing here is expounding the Torah and redefining the ethics of the Jewish people. For example, from Matthew 5:27ff:
You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
The point is that committing adultery is the action that is a symptom of a deeper problem that lies within the sinner's heart. A similar example in Matthew 5:21ff:
You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder'. . . But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother (some manuscripts: 'without cause') will be subject to judgment...
Again, anger at your brother or sister (without cause) is actually the problem, not murder. Murder is just the outflow of what is already in your heart.
So it is right to note that Jesus is literally addressing the heart of the matter. Furthermore, Jesus says to the Pharisees and teachers of the law in Matthew 15:
Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean...
Jesus is surely concerned with the heart. And so, too, should we. But is that it? Does that mean that I can do whatever I want as long as my heart is in the right place? Of course not. But does it mean that I must sit back uncritically as my Christian brothers and sisters live out their faith in a way that seems to contradict our call? This is where I think we have the most problems. We are so afraid to 'judge' each other that we completely abstain from even questioning each other. If I say I'm a Christian but destroy the earth, would you stop me? If I say I'm a Christian but treat others as if they are not worthy of respect, would you call me out on it? If I say I'm a Christian but make or sell a product that encourages laziness, gluttony, greed, envy, lust, or is just plain idolatrous, would you be able to question me at all?
I would hope so. Because otherwise I'm screwed. Jeremiah says in chapter 17:
The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
"I the LORD search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward a man according to his conduct,
according to what his deeds deserve."
Like a partridge that hatches eggs it did not lay
is the man who gains riches by unjust means.
When his life is half gone, they will desert him,
and in the end he will prove to be a fool.
The heart is wicked and deceitful. Jeremiah's words are an indictment of all humanity. I know--because it happens almost every day--that it is easy to lie to myself. I deceive myself so easily that I don't usually know that I'm doing it. In fact, unless someone helps me to see the deceit, it will go unnoticed. I submit that the deceitfulness of our hearts and our lack of attention to it has allowed us to play a sadly accommodating role to the consumeristic society that we find ourselves in. We have unquestionably (for the most part) gone along with our society so much that we no longer can see the problems in our own hearts. Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University says this:
can easily identify with them without any need to spell out what we
are doing. The role is accepted into our identity. It may define our
identity in the measure that we feel committed to live out and defend
our identification with it. In the narrow confines of a job and of
corporate loyalty, such an individual can easily be caricatured as a
'company man,' and come under a simple censure of establishment
myopia. Where the description is more exalted and vocational, however,
the opportunity for deceiving oneself increases. A man may think of
himself as a public servant concerned with the public good. Even
though he may be party to decisions which compromise the public good,
he has a great deal invested in continuing to describe them as
contributing to the public good. To call certain decisions he makes by
their proper name would require too painful a readjustment in his
primary identification of himself as a public servant. Thus deceit can
be a function of wanting to think of ourselves as honest persons....
"[W]e will remain subject to those propensities which lead to a state
of self-deception as long as we feel ourselves to be constituted
either by the conventional roles we have assumed or by the level of
awareness we have been able to articulate."
So yes, it is all about the heart. But the heart is deceitful. That means that I must know this and make certain decisions to address it. Perhaps that means getting together with the community of believers and retelling the story of Jesus so we remember who we are. Maybe that will expose some of the lies we have been living with that drive us to attain popularity and wealth. Perhaps it means looking around at the Christians we see in the world and, in love, asking them how their hearts are. It may even mean calling out actions we think are unethical and go against the basic narrative of the Christian story. John Powell, S.J. right says, "It is for God, not for you or me, to judge human responsibility. If, however, we could not judge the rightness or wrongness of an action in itself, it would be the end of all objective morality. Let us not fall into this, that there is nothing objectively wrong or right, that it is all in the way you look at it. However, to judge the responsibility of another is playing God."
Most importantly we must see this as a conversation, not an indictment. None of us have the last word and we should be quick to remember that. When my Christian brothers and sisters are involved in something I think to be wrong, it is my duty to question. It is also my duty to listen gracefully to their response.
So what is your response? The Christian Evangelical stereotype is that we regularly play God by dispensing judgment at every opportunity. But based on last week's comments, we wonder if some of the guys on this blog tend to the other extreme -- refusing to judge the rightness or wrongness of an action because it's all about the heart. Does it have to be one extreme or the other? Do you find Hauerwas' comments to be true in your life, that your identity is so wrapped up in what you do or what you've always done that it's hard to be objective about what is truly right and wrong? I know I do.
posted by The Dude at 9:53 PM
12 Comments:
In my opinion the "heart" has been incredibly misused by our generation's Christian culture. It's become something it never was in the Jewish culture. For us, it's become stripped down into either "emotions" or "intentions", neither of which is accurate for how it's used in the Bible.
For the Jewish culture in the first century, the heart was a complicated word, but they all knew what it meant. Let me try to explain what it meant to them.
The heart isn't something that you can change, but is rather changed by other things. The heart is the deepest part of the brain which is trained by how you live. Think of Deuteronomy where it says to keep the word around you at all times. Because it affects the heart! If you mind is trained (after all, it's a learning computer) toward something, it'll set on that something.
I feel like I'm having trouble expressing this, so let me ask a question: Does the heart follow the treasure or does the treasure follow the heart? In other words, if I put my treasure in a certain investment, then will my heart follow? Or if my heart is in a certain area, will my treasure follow that? Matthew 6:21 says that the heart follows the treasure.
The Jews saw the heart as the base or the core of their mind. And out of the heart flowed thoughts, emotions and action. Haven't you seen this in your own life? But we've really lost its meaning. We have this "heart problem", because we've turned the heart into something shallower. So we're trying to fix it in a way that won't fix it. Because you can't address the heart directly. You have to address other things, and the heart will follow.
We've turned the heart into good intentions. Your mind is trained and formed by what you value. If we value Jesus, then our heart will be right. But how many times do we really value Jesus?
And to further expound upon my last question:
How many times do we think we value Jesus when we really are valuing good morals? And is this wrong or blasphemous? How do we know the difference? The problem is time: now in the era of 60 hour work weeks and television addictions, we don't take the time to sit and meditate.
You know, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the highlighted quote from Haurewas (and all of the quote as well, really).
I find it to be so interesting that "good people" could find themselves in morally compromising situations. I think about big shot corporate executives that find themselves making decisions that will make more money (keep the board/stockholders/whoever happy) but will also result in the polluting of the environment, or the destruction of community, or the continuing (subtle) oppression of the poor. I wonder how often these men and women (but mainly I think of men... and see them in the news) are not the cold and ruthless maniacs that our knee-jerk reactions want to label them.
What I'm getting at is that I believe that arriving in those places of compromising decision (and I don't believe they confine themselves to the corporate setting) is surprisingly easy to find ourselves in. Perhaps many of the people we read about started in a position very similar to you or me. However, the gradual process of time and bad decisions in small things has eroded the knowledge of truth such that the massively compromising situation they find themselves in is not really all that surprising.
Am I making sense? I guess I feel that I'm in the time of my life where I am making these decisions. Will I choose real life, the life that Christ offers? Or will I make the minor bad decisions (that seem oh-so not-so bad at the time) that lead to choosing a path that the world says is real life, full of "success", "notoriety", and the like?
I believe these years - these years in our twenties and thirties - are formative. Heck they're all formative until the day we die, but these especially. Will I choose truth in the small things even when it's hard? What are the consequences of not doing so?
I've been thinking about this question in terms of politics this week -- it's an arena in which most of us are pretty opinionated, so I wonder if we would hold fast to the "it's not wrong if the heart is right" argument in a political discussion. Would you be comfortable saying President Bush can do whatever he wants as long as his heart is pure? Polls say most of Americans think the war in Iraq is wrong -- do we tell those Americans they have no grounds to question the war because they don't know Bush's heart?
A friend sent me a quote from a prominent theologian recently: "I believe George Bush when he says he is a sincere Christian, but that just goes to show you that sincerity has little to do with being a Christian."
Many of you emphasized the importance of heart/intention/motivations last week -- what do you think about this?
You can still have major screw-ups even if your "heart is right". And you should still be held accountable for those actions. The "heart" should never become a cop-out to release you from responsibility or accountability.
The Bible, specifically Paul, speaks several times of a "true" or "pure" heart. It is my belief that a "pure" heart is one we can never attain on earth, but rather when sanctification is complete.
Examining the heart is so difficult because we're so good at lying to ourselves. It's rare that I can for sure say that I did something with an unselfish heart. Because usually, there's an aspect of selfishness in everything I do. I lead ministry teams at church, yet I know part of my decision was pride-based - moving up the ladder. I worship, but I know that a part of my heart expects results from God. It's so easy to fail, especially with the heart. It's a good thing God knows it, because I don't think anyone can judge anybody's heart. You can examine your own, but that's very, very tough. And if it's not tough and grueling for you, I'd question whether you're examining your hard or your good intentions. The heart is a lot deeper than us American, Western-thinking Christians typically want to go...even though we strive for it daily.
to address matthew's last post that asked whether we can question president bush's actions without knowing his heart, i think it is important to clarify that that is a different issue than whether a christian rock band making christian music can be questioned.
of course we can question president bush's actions even without knowing where his heart is - that, i think, is obvious. but i think last week's issue was focused on someone who was doing something directly related to christian worship and left us with a tougher question.
if a christian is polluting the environment and making money doing so - clearly questions should be raised and those close to that person should call them out. i'm all for that. all of us christians need to be called out by our fellow brothers and sisters when we are not walking straight.
but look at christian musicians, or those mega-church preachers, for example. they can be making a killing off of what they do, but if they are not preaching falsely or otherwise acting sinfully outright can we automatically call them into question because they are making money? i'm leaning towards thinking we'd have less justification.
so, while i agree with this post, i don't back away from what was said last week. heart/intention/motivation would come into play on the last example i used above.
please let me know if you think i'm dancing around this point or being to lax on this issue - there are a lot of clever thoughts being thrown around on this blog and i come here to learn from you guys.
Hudson's dad,
I have to disagree with your comment that "the heart is deepest part of the brain which is trained by how you live." I would contend that the heart resembles the soul more than the deepest part of our brain; the heart is more spiritual than it is cognitive: "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26).
We've been dancing around this heart/deeds discussion for two weeks so I'm going to suggest what I think should be our central focus -- I'd love to hear your thoughts. First, we need a new heart, a transformed soul, eyes to see and ears to hear to even begin to comprehend God (Ephesians 2:8). But God hand-crafted us to do good works (Ephesians 2:10). The question, then, is: what are good works? John 14:12 says "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do." James 2:18-20 says, "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?"
Bottom line: we must strive after Jesus' heart, not a pure heart of our own. If we come humbly to Jesus first, He will transform our hearts to become like His, pure. But if I seek only a pure heart for myself, I remove all significance from the cross. It is out of a transformed heart that good works flow but they cannot be separated. Transformation must precede sanctification or else we are just striving to be "good" morally. Through the process of sanctification, we must seek and study the way of Jesus to determine His definition of "good works" and pray that our hearts would be continually refined to align closer and closer with His.
Anonymous,
"...but if they are not preaching falsely or otherwise acting sinfully outright can we automatically call them into question because they are making money? i'm leaning towards thinking we'd have less justification."
I think you have answered your own question here. Your statement, "acting sinfully outright," seems to be what we are getting at here. The problem is many of these guys think they are acting 'faithfully' but in fact are decieving themselves. I have no proof of this except the number of Christian leaders who have fallen over the years due to hidden secrets, lack of accountability, and non-questioning congregations. I will not list them, you can probably find them on your own.
So why can we question Bush (or any Christian politician) so easily but not Christian artists, musicians, or preachers? It seems to me that you think we can question Bush no matter what (probably because we are a democracy), but we can't question Chris Tomlin or Rick Warren? I think I take issue with you here. I think we MUST question if it SEEMS to be out of sync with how we understand the gospel...but we must also listen...so when Rick Warren responds: 'I give away 90% of my income and don't take a salary from my church,' we can all say together, 'well done.'
If there is no response or an unsatisfactory response, like the multiple times Benny Hinn has been questioned about his wealth, I think we can safely call people like that out.
Another issue I see here is our participation in corrupt systems. I am not advocating withdrawal from all modern business. BUT, I do think that our participation in these systems must be constantly reviewed and scrutinized. So when a Christian musician is rewarded with wealth, power, and prestige, I want to know what exactly his motivations are. There are plenty of people who have recognized the dangers of wealth and popularity and sought other avenues for their art in order to maintain a consistency of ethic and a more genuine, uncompromised product.
Matt,
About that statement you disagreed with: I have read a few books on old testament culture and that's where i got that statement. I would encourage a word study on the heart and you may find the same thing. The soul/spirit and heart were two different things in the culture at that time.
And to clarify, I don't mean to push my position on anyone. I just meant to say that it's something I've researched and spent much time on in college because it was the "heart" was a common phrase in christian culture that I never understood.
dude - i think we are actually in agreement. i don't think that we should never question christian artists, but just as you wrote: "we MUST question if it SEEMS to be out of sync with how we understand the gospel." my comment regarding those who are not otherwise acting sinfully outright was trying to acheive the same thing - if we can sense something rotten there we should check it out.
and it seems this whole conversation has come around to the same point that was made last week, and that i agree with, when the dude wrote "So when a Christian musician is rewarded with wealth, power, and prestige, I want to know what exactly his motivations are."
i think we can all agree that making money, in and of itself, is not wrong. its how our heart reacts to wealth and how it desires it that needs to be under constant surveillance.
i recently started my first job as an attorney and i will be the first to confess that money, no matter how small, can have an incredible effect on one's heart.
Hudson's dad,
I have read zero books on Old Testament culture so I will certainly defer to you there, but I would still hold to my argument for two reasons:
1) I understand the importance of understanding the times, but regardless of what a particular word meant to a particular culture, we have to look at the whole of Scripture, Truth that is living and active today, right? My point here is that I don't want us to get lost in a debate about semantics…let's look for Truth. Between Ezekiel, John, Ephesians, James (and the countless other references I could have listed) there certainly seems to be a central message: 1) we need a new heart and that can only come from God, not finely tuned behavior and, 2) transformed works overflow from a transformed heart. Maybe our answer is found in Ezekiel 36 -- if the Jews saw the word "heart" as a part of the brain that is trained by how you live, we need both a "new heart and a new spirit." If that was their understanding of "heart," maybe this is representing the need for both transformation and santification that is made clear through the rest of Scripture.
2) My understanding of the Old Testament is that God uses it to set up Jesus' arrival and atonement. In pre-Jesus, Old Testament society, it was all about religion -- bringing sacrifices to the tabernacle, following God's command to practice certain purification rituals, etc. -- but there was no Jesus to atone for their sin. The law existed to point the Jews in the right direction but also to show them they had no chance at perfection on their own. So we can train and train and train but we'll never be able to whip the "deepest part of the brain" into satisfactory shape for God. If the Jews did see the heart as part of the brain, then we have to recognize that there is a very real need for a transformed spirit/soul…however you want to label it. It is only then that we can start looking to do the "good works" God created us to do.
So my entire point is this: when we are trying to think through the importance of motivation, we have to understand where that falls on the timeline of transformation and sanctification. The motivation of a heart/soul/spirit that has not been transformed is always misguided even if the actions appear to be "good." For most of us, it is the motivations of a heart/soul/spirit being sanctified that we have to closely examine in light of the ways of Jesus. It is not just about motivations because they can be deceiving -- there is Truth Jesus preached that translates to practical action and it is in comparing Truth to our motivations that our "hearts" are put through the refining fire (Zechariah 13:9, Jeremiah 23:29, John 17:17).
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