A Heart for God
"And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (Mark 12:30)
I once thought that one of the primary purposes for art as a Christian is to synchronize our minds and our emotions, so that our emotions and desires would be aligned with what we know as Christians we are supposed to do. I think there still may be some truth to that idea, but the more I have studied the above passage and similar passages in the Bible, I believe God’s word has something much deeper to say about your minds and emotions.
What exactly does Jesus mean when he uses the words heart, soul, mind, and strength? First, we must look at the passage he was referring to in Deuteronomy:
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." (Deuteronomy 6:5)
Notice that Jesus added the word mind to the passage. That was not in the original Hebrew nor was it in the Septuagint that Jesus was quoting. This addition is an important fact that will be brought up in detail later in this essay.
From here I will first examine the Hebrew words used in this passage for heart, soul, and might, and then examine the Greek equivalents used in the Septuagint version.
The Hebrew word for heart is lebh. It refers to the inner man in contrast to what is outside and visible about a person. It is the seat of desire, inclination, and will; the seat of emotion; the seat of knowledge, wisdom, and memories; the moral conscience of the person.
The Hebrew word used there for soul is nepesh. This word is usually translated as soul, self, life, person, and heart. To best describe this word I will quote a passage from "Nelson's Expository Dictionary of the Old Testament":
(Of nephesh) The real difficulty of the term is seen in the inability of almost all English translations to find a consistent equivalent or even a small group of high-frequency equivalents for the term. The KJV alone uses over 28 different English terms for this one Hebrew word. The problem with the English term "soul" is that no actual equivalent of the term or the idea behind it is represented in the Hebrew language. The Hebrew system of thought does not include the combination or opposition of the terms "body" and "soul," which are really Greek and Latin in origin. The Hebrew contrasts two other concepts which are not found in the Greek and Latin tradition: "the inner self" and "the outer appearance" or, as viewed in a different context, "what one is to oneself" as opposed to "what one appears to be to one's observers."
I relish that passage not only for the way it conveys a remarkable depth of meaning in regard to the term in question, but also in how it vividly illustrates some of the key issues we must understand if we are to accurately study the Bible. One of those issues is the fact that neither Hebrew nor Greek translate 1:1 into English. Unless you are verifying your interpretations with the original Greek and Hebrew texts, you are going to have (at best) a fuzzy idea of what the Bible says. Secondly it refers to how the Hebrew Old Testament, the Greek New Testament, and our contemporary present all have very different cultures with very different conceptualizations of the world we live in. But hearing of this difference is one thing; experiencing it is quite another. Soon I hope to convey just how mind-stretching these differences in conceptualization can be.
One common thread throughout both Greek and Hebrew is that their terms for heart and soul are both based upon two of the body's most critical functions for life: pumping blood and breathing oxygen.
The Hebrew word used for might in that passage is m’od. It does not mean physical strength, (as I once thought), but a degree, specifically an exceedingly, highly, very great degree. It is used in this passage substantively, meaning that it is an adjective being used grammatically as like a noun. In other words, even though it is used along with a list of nouns, it’s role in this sentence is actually used more to emphasize the degree of the rest of the sentence, saying that you are to love the Lord to the extreme; with as much as you are possibly capable of.
Now on to the Greek! The greek word for heart that Jesus uses is καρδια (kardia). (I might add more to this part later but for the sake of brevity kardia is similar enough to the Hebrew idea of heart to continue without using the terms innacurrately.)
The greek word that Jesus uses for soul is ψυχη (psuche). (Same with psuche. ψυχη is a fascinating word with much importance to the gospel, but it is not immediately critical to the questions at hand.)
There is a lot of overlap between heart and soul in both the Hebrew and Greek, and a sometimes the differences between the two ideas are subtle and yet very important. However, the term of ‘heart’ has more emphasis on what we would consider the mental faculties, while the ‘soul’ has more emphasis on what we would call the ‘spiritual’ faculties. (That is a gross oversimplication.) For the purpose of this study, I am more concerned with the heart, though we should still love God with all of our souls as well.
The greek word used for ‘strength’/’might’ in the New Testament version is ιςχυς (ischus). Though this word frequently is used within a context of ‘degree’, it does not have the same connotation of ‘exceedingly’ that m’od has. Along with ‘strength’, an arguable translation for the word within this passage could be ‘ability’. “Love the Lord your God with all of your ability.” The Septuagint used the word δυναμις (dunamis) which generally means ‘power’, and within this context has the same general meaning as ιςχυς (ischus).
(As a side note, while Deuteronomy 6:5, Mark 12:30, and Luke 10:27 all use a word for might, Matthew 22:37 only refers to the heart, soul, and mind.)
And now to the mind. The word used in the New Testament versions of this passage is διανοια (dianoia). This would refer to all of the functions we would attribute to the brain, including both thoughts and feelings. However, (and this is an important distinction) in the New Testament καρδια (kardia) is usually used in what English would consider a more emotional context, while διανοια (dianoia) is more frequently used in what would be translated as a rational context.
(As a another side note and to clear up some possible confusion in regard to much of this translating, it is generally considered that Jesus’ primary spoken language was Aramaic, so at first glance it would look like the authors of each Gospel translated Jesus's words from Aramaic to Greek. However, aside from the addition of ‘mind’ and changing δυναμις to ιςχυς, the New Testament renditions of this quote are identical to the Septuagint translation. Though most scholars believe that Aramaic was Jesus’ primary language, there is much evidence to support that he also knew at least some greek, and it is possible that he could have quoted the septuagint during these instances. If he did not quote it in Greek then it is possible that the authors of the Gospels referenced the Septuagint in their translation of his quotation.)
I do not know Jesus' motivation for adding διανοια (dianoia) to that quote. But I do know that in some ways that change made for a more accurate translation of the original Hebrew into the current flavor of Greek than the Septuagint did. The Greeks had a much more complex conceptualization of the inner man, and simply saying heart and soul in Greek does not suggest all of the faculties of the mind as much as it did in Hebrew.
But perhaps I am worrying to much about symantics. I want to be thorough, but at the same time I don't want to be putting people to sleep. (Though I think all of this is fascinating!) Out of all of the words in that passage I am most interested with 'heart', so now I will jump to the Enlish definition and see how far things have changed. Below is a direct quote from dictionary.com on it's definition of the heart. (There were other points to this quote that I did not include because they were off of the immediate topic, such as the use of 'heart' as a physical organ.)
[ Heart ]
3. the center of the total personality, esp. with reference to intuition, feeling, or emotion: In your heart you know I'm an honest man.
4. the center of emotion, esp. as contrasted to the head as the center of the intellect: His head told him not to fall in love, but his heart had the final say.
5. capacity for sympathy; feeling; affection: His heart moved him to help the needy.
6. spirit, courage, or enthusiasm: His heart sank when he walked into the room and saw their gloomy faces.
You can see here that there is no reference to rationality and many of the other inner functions contained within the words lebh or καρδια. When our English translations of the Bible use the word ‘heart’ they are referring to a more complete summation of the inner person then we use that word to mean.
So here is what I’ve been leading up to. At the beginning of this essay I opened up by saying how I once had thought that one of the primary purposes for art as a Christian was to synchronize our minds and our emotions, but that I now questioned that idea. The reason is that from everything I’ve seen in my studies, emotion does not exist in the Bible, at least not anything like our idea of that term.
This essay is already starting to grow a little cumbersome for my intended scope so at least for now I won’t go into all of the details behind the theory, but a distinct shift in mindset can be seen traced throughout Western history. (From what little I know of Eastern history such a shift was made much earlier.) The Hebrews had a very simple understanding of the mind, a simplicity that most people of today would look down on. The Greeks in their pursuit of philosophy started breaking down the functions of the brain and took some of the earliest steps toward psycology, but the writers of the New Testament chose language that uses only some of the Greeks intellectualizing and avoids a great deal of it. Philosphy literally means “to love (or be a lover) of wisdom.” In New Testament terms, this would be worldly wisdom. The apostles used wisdom only when it glorified God, and avoided any structures of thoughts that exalted man’s intellect.
Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. (Romans 1:22-23)
I’ve seen how I myself and others around me frequently are in a state of mind where part of our brain wants to do one thing, but we don’t feel like doing it, and we either have a hard time doing the action in question or, base solely on our feelings, don’t do it at all. I am not talking about the New Testament’s descriptions of the Flesh and the Spirit, even though that issue sounds very similar, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:19) That is very important to this topic and I am going to talk more about it shortly but the phenomon I am referring to is something that happens even within people who the Bible would say do not have the Holy Spirit.
Mostly what I am addressing in this essay is our mindset about how emotion and reason relate (or don’t relate as the case may be). So far I have been unable to find any Biblcal passages referring to such a conflict in emotion and reason as was mentioned earlier. There may be verses I have missed, but if so they are a minority. Especially in the Old Testament where most of the Bible’s narrative passages take place, people did what they wanted to do and if they struggled with the complex psychologies of our modern day, it is not awknowledged.
But what even is emotion? The more definitions I explore, the more vague the term becomes. Here is one of the more useful definitions of the word: (taken from the American Heritage Dictionary):
[ Emotion ]
1. A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a feeling: the emotions of joy, sorrow, reverence, hate, and love.
However, even with this definition, the first half would equally describe the subconscious; a part of the mind very different from emotion. Out of all of the definitions of emotion, the idea of a mental state causing physiological changes is the most useful definition. However, that is not what most English speaking people are referring to when they describe emotion, and there probably is something more to it than the definition I gave, but I have yet to find a really solidified definition for it’s essence.
(I’m realizing that I’ll probably eventually need to rework this essay and rearrange things so that they flow better, because even though each of these paragraphs requires each other, they haven’t neccisarilly been laid out in the most logical flow. It’s sort of a catch-22 because much of this essay is working with unfinished ideas and shouldn’t be released until they are finished, but I have exhausted all of my immediate resources so that my only remaining hope is feedback, which I can’t have until I release this.)
I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for emotion in our understanding of our minds, but I am saying that this modern age has taken dissecting the human mind to the extreme, and I believe that course has led to negative side effects. We have compartmentalized our brains into so many separate parts that are all ready to fight with each other. (The Bible has much to say about being double-minded, and none of it is positive.) But simply looking at our minds that way might not be enough to support such a compartmentalization. That effect is assisted by the fact that we live in the most abstract era in history, with computers and cell phones and virtual this and synthetic-that. There is a place for abstractions, but we are falling into the same pitfall as the Greeks in the New Testament, thinking that there is somehow something more pure and perfect in the abstract when there is just as much room for sin in the abstract as in the concrete. There is something neccisary in the simple approach the Hebrews had in their view of themselves. They were not constantly psycho-analyzing their mental states (except for Solomon, and he concluded that that was vanity). All the Old Testament really focuses on is whether each individual was following God or not. Whether or not a person loved the Lord with all his being.
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." (Jeremiah 17:9-10)
We live in the world of Spock, where people think that there is this thing called emotion which is some fluttery, utterly irrational experience that can be easily detached from the rest of the inner workings of a person. What if it isn’t that simple? How much of a gross oversimplication could we be making in cutting a large portion of the mind in half and giving some of it to one function and one to the other. People don’t stop to think about the fact that a fictional character like the Vulcan Spock is simply a hypothesis based upon many presumptions about how the entire makeup of a person fits together. We have seen so many fictional examples of the proposition that such a character could exist (usually as aliens or robots) that we have automatically concluded that the suppositions they are based upon are accurate, even though never in history has such a character existed. Of course some people appear more coldy calculated and stoic than others, and yet dwelling in the world of software engineering, I have found few programers who aren’t distinctly passionate about issues like “Object Oriented vs. Procedural Programming” or “Microsoft vs. Open Source” and will debate them till blood fills the streets. (I myself am a Microsoft man, and will fight all oncomers.)
What I am trying to say with all of that is not simply that we are to love the Lord with all of our hearts and minds, but that due to our modern worldviews, the task of doing both is much harder. Not only is the world against us loving the Lord, it is pulling us away from doing things with both our hearts and minds. The devil would like both our minds and our hearts, but if he has to he’ll just take one or the other.
From now on throughout these essays I am going to try to use the term heart instead of emotion, which feels a little strange to me, (haha, feels), but when given the choice I’d rather use a term that the Bible talks a great deal about instead of one that it makes no direct reference to.
I didn’t say nearly all that I wanted to say in this essay but I’m wanting these essays to be at least somewhere close to bitesize so I’ll wrap things up; but before I do, I’d like to say a few more things about the flesh and the spirit. The New Testament talks a great deal about the inner struggle between these two forces, and Paul’s description of that struggle do look a lot like the struggle I described earlier between what we know we should do and what we feel like doing. So now we have one symptom and two different scenarios that could be causing that symptom. One scenario is where (based on the New Testament terms) our mind is in roughly the right place, but our heart is not. The other scenario is where we are torn between the sinful flesh or the Spirit of God.
In my next essay I will explore how these two scenarios relate to the symptom, and whether they can be applied to art. (Which I think they can.)
I once thought that one of the primary purposes for art as a Christian is to synchronize our minds and our emotions, so that our emotions and desires would be aligned with what we know as Christians we are supposed to do. I think there still may be some truth to that idea, but the more I have studied the above passage and similar passages in the Bible, I believe God’s word has something much deeper to say about your minds and emotions.
What exactly does Jesus mean when he uses the words heart, soul, mind, and strength? First, we must look at the passage he was referring to in Deuteronomy:
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." (Deuteronomy 6:5)
Notice that Jesus added the word mind to the passage. That was not in the original Hebrew nor was it in the Septuagint that Jesus was quoting. This addition is an important fact that will be brought up in detail later in this essay.
From here I will first examine the Hebrew words used in this passage for heart, soul, and might, and then examine the Greek equivalents used in the Septuagint version.
The Hebrew word for heart is lebh. It refers to the inner man in contrast to what is outside and visible about a person. It is the seat of desire, inclination, and will; the seat of emotion; the seat of knowledge, wisdom, and memories; the moral conscience of the person.
The Hebrew word used there for soul is nepesh. This word is usually translated as soul, self, life, person, and heart. To best describe this word I will quote a passage from "Nelson's Expository Dictionary of the Old Testament":
(Of nephesh) The real difficulty of the term is seen in the inability of almost all English translations to find a consistent equivalent or even a small group of high-frequency equivalents for the term. The KJV alone uses over 28 different English terms for this one Hebrew word. The problem with the English term "soul" is that no actual equivalent of the term or the idea behind it is represented in the Hebrew language. The Hebrew system of thought does not include the combination or opposition of the terms "body" and "soul," which are really Greek and Latin in origin. The Hebrew contrasts two other concepts which are not found in the Greek and Latin tradition: "the inner self" and "the outer appearance" or, as viewed in a different context, "what one is to oneself" as opposed to "what one appears to be to one's observers."
I relish that passage not only for the way it conveys a remarkable depth of meaning in regard to the term in question, but also in how it vividly illustrates some of the key issues we must understand if we are to accurately study the Bible. One of those issues is the fact that neither Hebrew nor Greek translate 1:1 into English. Unless you are verifying your interpretations with the original Greek and Hebrew texts, you are going to have (at best) a fuzzy idea of what the Bible says. Secondly it refers to how the Hebrew Old Testament, the Greek New Testament, and our contemporary present all have very different cultures with very different conceptualizations of the world we live in. But hearing of this difference is one thing; experiencing it is quite another. Soon I hope to convey just how mind-stretching these differences in conceptualization can be.
One common thread throughout both Greek and Hebrew is that their terms for heart and soul are both based upon two of the body's most critical functions for life: pumping blood and breathing oxygen.
The Hebrew word used for might in that passage is m’od. It does not mean physical strength, (as I once thought), but a degree, specifically an exceedingly, highly, very great degree. It is used in this passage substantively, meaning that it is an adjective being used grammatically as like a noun. In other words, even though it is used along with a list of nouns, it’s role in this sentence is actually used more to emphasize the degree of the rest of the sentence, saying that you are to love the Lord to the extreme; with as much as you are possibly capable of.
Now on to the Greek! The greek word for heart that Jesus uses is καρδια (kardia). (I might add more to this part later but for the sake of brevity kardia is similar enough to the Hebrew idea of heart to continue without using the terms innacurrately.)
The greek word that Jesus uses for soul is ψυχη (psuche). (Same with psuche. ψυχη is a fascinating word with much importance to the gospel, but it is not immediately critical to the questions at hand.)
There is a lot of overlap between heart and soul in both the Hebrew and Greek, and a sometimes the differences between the two ideas are subtle and yet very important. However, the term of ‘heart’ has more emphasis on what we would consider the mental faculties, while the ‘soul’ has more emphasis on what we would call the ‘spiritual’ faculties. (That is a gross oversimplication.) For the purpose of this study, I am more concerned with the heart, though we should still love God with all of our souls as well.
The greek word used for ‘strength’/’might’ in the New Testament version is ιςχυς (ischus). Though this word frequently is used within a context of ‘degree’, it does not have the same connotation of ‘exceedingly’ that m’od has. Along with ‘strength’, an arguable translation for the word within this passage could be ‘ability’. “Love the Lord your God with all of your ability.” The Septuagint used the word δυναμις (dunamis) which generally means ‘power’, and within this context has the same general meaning as ιςχυς (ischus).
(As a side note, while Deuteronomy 6:5, Mark 12:30, and Luke 10:27 all use a word for might, Matthew 22:37 only refers to the heart, soul, and mind.)
And now to the mind. The word used in the New Testament versions of this passage is διανοια (dianoia). This would refer to all of the functions we would attribute to the brain, including both thoughts and feelings. However, (and this is an important distinction) in the New Testament καρδια (kardia) is usually used in what English would consider a more emotional context, while διανοια (dianoia) is more frequently used in what would be translated as a rational context.
(As a another side note and to clear up some possible confusion in regard to much of this translating, it is generally considered that Jesus’ primary spoken language was Aramaic, so at first glance it would look like the authors of each Gospel translated Jesus's words from Aramaic to Greek. However, aside from the addition of ‘mind’ and changing δυναμις to ιςχυς, the New Testament renditions of this quote are identical to the Septuagint translation. Though most scholars believe that Aramaic was Jesus’ primary language, there is much evidence to support that he also knew at least some greek, and it is possible that he could have quoted the septuagint during these instances. If he did not quote it in Greek then it is possible that the authors of the Gospels referenced the Septuagint in their translation of his quotation.)
I do not know Jesus' motivation for adding διανοια (dianoia) to that quote. But I do know that in some ways that change made for a more accurate translation of the original Hebrew into the current flavor of Greek than the Septuagint did. The Greeks had a much more complex conceptualization of the inner man, and simply saying heart and soul in Greek does not suggest all of the faculties of the mind as much as it did in Hebrew.
But perhaps I am worrying to much about symantics. I want to be thorough, but at the same time I don't want to be putting people to sleep. (Though I think all of this is fascinating!) Out of all of the words in that passage I am most interested with 'heart', so now I will jump to the Enlish definition and see how far things have changed. Below is a direct quote from dictionary.com on it's definition of the heart. (There were other points to this quote that I did not include because they were off of the immediate topic, such as the use of 'heart' as a physical organ.)
[ Heart ]
3. the center of the total personality, esp. with reference to intuition, feeling, or emotion: In your heart you know I'm an honest man.
4. the center of emotion, esp. as contrasted to the head as the center of the intellect: His head told him not to fall in love, but his heart had the final say.
5. capacity for sympathy; feeling; affection: His heart moved him to help the needy.
6. spirit, courage, or enthusiasm: His heart sank when he walked into the room and saw their gloomy faces.
You can see here that there is no reference to rationality and many of the other inner functions contained within the words lebh or καρδια. When our English translations of the Bible use the word ‘heart’ they are referring to a more complete summation of the inner person then we use that word to mean.
So here is what I’ve been leading up to. At the beginning of this essay I opened up by saying how I once had thought that one of the primary purposes for art as a Christian was to synchronize our minds and our emotions, but that I now questioned that idea. The reason is that from everything I’ve seen in my studies, emotion does not exist in the Bible, at least not anything like our idea of that term.
This essay is already starting to grow a little cumbersome for my intended scope so at least for now I won’t go into all of the details behind the theory, but a distinct shift in mindset can be seen traced throughout Western history. (From what little I know of Eastern history such a shift was made much earlier.) The Hebrews had a very simple understanding of the mind, a simplicity that most people of today would look down on. The Greeks in their pursuit of philosophy started breaking down the functions of the brain and took some of the earliest steps toward psycology, but the writers of the New Testament chose language that uses only some of the Greeks intellectualizing and avoids a great deal of it. Philosphy literally means “to love (or be a lover) of wisdom.” In New Testament terms, this would be worldly wisdom. The apostles used wisdom only when it glorified God, and avoided any structures of thoughts that exalted man’s intellect.
Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. (Romans 1:22-23)
I’ve seen how I myself and others around me frequently are in a state of mind where part of our brain wants to do one thing, but we don’t feel like doing it, and we either have a hard time doing the action in question or, base solely on our feelings, don’t do it at all. I am not talking about the New Testament’s descriptions of the Flesh and the Spirit, even though that issue sounds very similar, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:19) That is very important to this topic and I am going to talk more about it shortly but the phenomon I am referring to is something that happens even within people who the Bible would say do not have the Holy Spirit.
Mostly what I am addressing in this essay is our mindset about how emotion and reason relate (or don’t relate as the case may be). So far I have been unable to find any Biblcal passages referring to such a conflict in emotion and reason as was mentioned earlier. There may be verses I have missed, but if so they are a minority. Especially in the Old Testament where most of the Bible’s narrative passages take place, people did what they wanted to do and if they struggled with the complex psychologies of our modern day, it is not awknowledged.
But what even is emotion? The more definitions I explore, the more vague the term becomes. Here is one of the more useful definitions of the word: (taken from the American Heritage Dictionary):
[ Emotion ]
1. A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a feeling: the emotions of joy, sorrow, reverence, hate, and love.
However, even with this definition, the first half would equally describe the subconscious; a part of the mind very different from emotion. Out of all of the definitions of emotion, the idea of a mental state causing physiological changes is the most useful definition. However, that is not what most English speaking people are referring to when they describe emotion, and there probably is something more to it than the definition I gave, but I have yet to find a really solidified definition for it’s essence.
(I’m realizing that I’ll probably eventually need to rework this essay and rearrange things so that they flow better, because even though each of these paragraphs requires each other, they haven’t neccisarilly been laid out in the most logical flow. It’s sort of a catch-22 because much of this essay is working with unfinished ideas and shouldn’t be released until they are finished, but I have exhausted all of my immediate resources so that my only remaining hope is feedback, which I can’t have until I release this.)
I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for emotion in our understanding of our minds, but I am saying that this modern age has taken dissecting the human mind to the extreme, and I believe that course has led to negative side effects. We have compartmentalized our brains into so many separate parts that are all ready to fight with each other. (The Bible has much to say about being double-minded, and none of it is positive.) But simply looking at our minds that way might not be enough to support such a compartmentalization. That effect is assisted by the fact that we live in the most abstract era in history, with computers and cell phones and virtual this and synthetic-that. There is a place for abstractions, but we are falling into the same pitfall as the Greeks in the New Testament, thinking that there is somehow something more pure and perfect in the abstract when there is just as much room for sin in the abstract as in the concrete. There is something neccisary in the simple approach the Hebrews had in their view of themselves. They were not constantly psycho-analyzing their mental states (except for Solomon, and he concluded that that was vanity). All the Old Testament really focuses on is whether each individual was following God or not. Whether or not a person loved the Lord with all his being.
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." (Jeremiah 17:9-10)
We live in the world of Spock, where people think that there is this thing called emotion which is some fluttery, utterly irrational experience that can be easily detached from the rest of the inner workings of a person. What if it isn’t that simple? How much of a gross oversimplication could we be making in cutting a large portion of the mind in half and giving some of it to one function and one to the other. People don’t stop to think about the fact that a fictional character like the Vulcan Spock is simply a hypothesis based upon many presumptions about how the entire makeup of a person fits together. We have seen so many fictional examples of the proposition that such a character could exist (usually as aliens or robots) that we have automatically concluded that the suppositions they are based upon are accurate, even though never in history has such a character existed. Of course some people appear more coldy calculated and stoic than others, and yet dwelling in the world of software engineering, I have found few programers who aren’t distinctly passionate about issues like “Object Oriented vs. Procedural Programming” or “Microsoft vs. Open Source” and will debate them till blood fills the streets. (I myself am a Microsoft man, and will fight all oncomers.)
What I am trying to say with all of that is not simply that we are to love the Lord with all of our hearts and minds, but that due to our modern worldviews, the task of doing both is much harder. Not only is the world against us loving the Lord, it is pulling us away from doing things with both our hearts and minds. The devil would like both our minds and our hearts, but if he has to he’ll just take one or the other.
From now on throughout these essays I am going to try to use the term heart instead of emotion, which feels a little strange to me, (haha, feels), but when given the choice I’d rather use a term that the Bible talks a great deal about instead of one that it makes no direct reference to.
I didn’t say nearly all that I wanted to say in this essay but I’m wanting these essays to be at least somewhere close to bitesize so I’ll wrap things up; but before I do, I’d like to say a few more things about the flesh and the spirit. The New Testament talks a great deal about the inner struggle between these two forces, and Paul’s description of that struggle do look a lot like the struggle I described earlier between what we know we should do and what we feel like doing. So now we have one symptom and two different scenarios that could be causing that symptom. One scenario is where (based on the New Testament terms) our mind is in roughly the right place, but our heart is not. The other scenario is where we are torn between the sinful flesh or the Spirit of God.
In my next essay I will explore how these two scenarios relate to the symptom, and whether they can be applied to art. (Which I think they can.)
Labels: God and Art
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