The head and the heart had a conversation.
“I am more important than you,” boasted the head to the heart. “I can discern truth without your help, but you can’t feel anything without the information I provide.”
“Oh really?” asked the heart. “Tell me, what do you know about loving Madeleine?”
The head thought about it a minute, then replied. “I know it’s morally correct.”
“I see,” said the heart. “And tell me, what do you know about pain?”
“I know it’s quite inconvenient.”
“I see,” said the heart. “And tell me, what do you know of fear, arrogance, lust or greed that you did not learn from me?”
The head was silent, so the heart continued. “And tell me, what do you know of joy, courage, or contentment that I have not helped you see?”
Again the head was silent.
“You boast against me,” said the heart. “But where do you think your boasting came from?”
Jesus calls us to follow Him, but no one will ever follow Him in merely an intellectual way. We are, after all, human beings. If we want to understand the Christian faith, we must begin with the issue of our own hearts. Jesus calls us to humility, repentance, and faith, and those issues are precisely heart issues. No one understands them without first having a certain kind of heart. This may seem overly simple, but it touches us where it hurts most. It gets at our dreams and our sorrows, our pleasures and our pains, our freedom and our bondage. The heart touches us where we live in a way the head cannot.
Our hearts determine how we look at the world, at ourselves, and at God. Two women ask the same question: “Why did my baby die?” Both are in pain, both may be angry, neither understands, but behind the same question lie two different attitudes. One asks with humility; the other to attack. One openly and honestly expresses her grief and anger to God. The other bitterly accuses. The difference between the two women has nothing to do with the content of their question and everything to do with the state of their hearts.
Our hearts determine who we really are. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he,” the proverb says. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no god.’” Whatever we believe about God, we believe because our hearts have helped us believe it. We have become largely what our hearts have allowed us to become.
The heart is the soil in which the words of God must grow. Hard soil or shallow soil will not let the words grow. The shallow “Christianity” we see so abundant around us is a result of shallow hearts. Many people in the average church content themselves with outward things. They come on Sunday, maybe they read the Bible and give some money, but God wants more than that. Too often we are outwardly busy but inwardly bankrupt. We give God rituals but will not yield our hearts. Spiritually speaking, we are like a hamster on the wheel, running, running, running, but never going anywhere. For in the spiritual realm, we never get anywhere with God until we give Him the heart.
