Posts Tagged: Psalm 51:10

“THE HEART OF THE MATTER: THE MATTER OF THE HEART”

I was listening to an Andy Stanley Your Move video early this morning.  He was talking about how good we are in selling ourselves on bad decisions.  Stanley said that the problem is our hearts.  He referred to Jeremiah 17:9, so I had a look at it.  Here is my own rather wooden translation of the verse:

“Treacherous is the heart above all things,

And incurably sick;

Who can know it?”

Now, I know that it is fashionable these days to give and receive such advice as “Follow your heart!”  Since we think of the heart as the source of feelings, we may simply mean “If it feels right, it probably is right.”

Sometimes, that may actually work, but as a principle, I have two huge problems with it.  One is related to the meaning of the word lëb in Hebrew, and the other problem is with the underlying assumption that the human heart is reliable.

From the standpoint of the Hebrew word itself, the problem, at least as I see it, is this: The Hebrew word lëb rarely has anything to do with feelings.  It has more to do with thinking.  Our modern distinction between the heart and the head may make some sense to us, but it probably wouldn’t probably make any sense to Jeremiah or other ancient Hebrew.

So, if I am correct in this, what Jeremiah is actually saying is that our thinking process is treacherous and incurably sick.

Well, of course, my thinking is not treacherous and terminally ill.  Yours, on the other hand, I do sometimes wonder about.

No, I wonder about my own as well.  I can talk myself out of doing good things, and into doing bad things incredibly easily.  My heart (a.k.a., my mind) has a great capacity to fool itself.

In on other words, the heart of the matter, no matter what the matter is, is the matter of the heart.  And the problem is that the heart of the matter of the matter of the heart is that something is terribly the matter with the heart.

Christians call this “sin.”  Sin is not simply, or even primarily, what we do.  Sin undergirds all that we do, because everything what we do flows out of the flawed heart/mind.  This is one of the reasons why merely changing our behavior rarely solves very many problems.

But the Bible also speaks of a God who can change our hearts.  Both the Old Testament and New Testament speak of this change of heart.  While we certainly need to cooperate in this change of heart (Proverbs 4:23; Romans 10:10), it is primarily something that God does in and for us (Ezekiel 11:19; 36:25-27; Romans 2:29; Psalm 51:10).

A heart/mind transplant is tricky, but God knows what God is doing.  God can get to the heart of the matter, and can deal with what’s the matter with the heart.

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