Think with your heart

I'm sure you've heard the phrase before. At least the concept. Don't think with your mind; think with your heart. You get the idea. Go with your gut. Sometimes what you think is just too rational and you need to go with how you feel.

Here, a prime example. "Maybe a baby in the womb is a human being and maybe that baby is worthy of your protection, but that's all thinking with your mind. What if that baby is a product of rape? Think about how that young woman will feel! I mean, what if it was your sister, your daughter, your dear friend? Would you really want her to go through that torment? With your mind, perhaps, but don't think with your mind; think with your heart!" See how that works? It recognizes the conflict of pragmatic, rational thinking with the feelings of real people.

Let's try a less pointed example. Isn't this exactly what the car ads are doing? They'll show you how their car is fun to drive, really cool to look at, gets your heart and adrenaline pumping and ... oh, you have to have this car! "Can I afford it?" Hey! Don't think with your mind; think with your heart!

I think we can go a step further. I would suggest that, given either option, most people would tell you that the latter, not the former, is superior. Sure, sure, thinking with your mind is all well and good ... for geeks and mathematicians, but in a world of people and sensations and desires, the best and likely most enlightened way to think is with your heart. There are the ever-present "Go for your dreams" speeches that tell you not to limit yourself (because that's a failure of thinking with your mind), but to reach for your dreams (because that's a product of thinking with your heart). The mind, after all, is so limited. But the heart ... oh, no limits at all.

I submit that this is foolishness. Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that thinking with your heart is inferior to thinking with your mind. I'm suggesting that it's not thinking. It is a nonsense statement. You see, how we feel and how we think are connected, perhaps, but not equivalent. They are different functions. If they were not, suggesting "heart" over "mind" would be pointless. They're different. It is, in fact, impossible to think with your heart, even setting aside the nonsensical physiology of it. In the vernacular, you feel with the heart and think with the mind. Neither component, heart or mind, does the other operation.

I've often wondered in the past how so many people can operate with so much cognitive dissonance. This is the answer. They have no dissonance because they're "thinking with their hearts" which is an oxymoronic concept. "I don't believe in killing in war but I'll kill to protect my family" isn't a problem because it's evaluated from feelings, not the mind. "I believe the Bible; just not everything it says" works fine when you operate on how you feel about it without thinking about it. "I'm not pro-abortion; I'm just pro-choice" only works when you don't think about it.

Biblically, we are warned that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Your feelings will lie to you all the time. The world will tug at your heart strings all they can in order to direct your attention away from the truth. Biblically, we are not told to renew our hearts. That appears to be God's job. But we are told to avoid being conformed to this world by being transformed by "the renewing of your minds". We don't really control much how we feel, but we can certainly alter how we think. The next time you want to "think with your heart", I'd recommend you think again. Feel with your heart, sure, knowing that the heart is deceitful, but think with your mind. We all have a way to go to improve our thinking, but it's something we can do. It is something we are commanded, in fact.