I wrote recently about the problem of head and heart, about how what we believe (head) sometimes doesn't quite get to the heart as it should and we react in ways opposed to what we believe. There is another reality I perceive. We humans often find ourselves in a disagreement between mind and emotion. Think about it. (Get it?) Some people tend more toward the intellectual. They like ideas, facts, reason, that sort of thing. They can recite chapter and verse for what they believe and are rigid. Others like emotions. They think the only good worship is emotionally driven. They think the only good Christian is the one passionately in love with Jesus. All you thinkers out there are mucking up the works. Can't we just feel good about God?
Rationally, the problem is to be expected. Jesus told one of His questioners, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matt 22:37). Love God with everything ... including your mind. Many Christians today think that's wrong. They despise intellectualism as if it is non-spiritual. The right spirituality is to just let the Spirit move you. But God said, "Come now, let us reason together" (Isa 1:18). When the Pharisees asked Jesus for signs, He gave them a thinking example. "When it is evening, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.' And in the morning, 'It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah." (Matt 16:2-4). "You can think," He told them. "Think this through for yourself." On the other hand, the Scriptures are full of emotion. Nehemiah told the people, "The joy of YHWH is your strength" (Neh 8:10). "These things I have spoken to you," Jesus said, "that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (John 15:11). The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, etc. (Gal 5:22). We are supposed to "Rejoice always" (1 Thess 5:16). And so on. So when Jesus told His interrogator to love God "with all your mind," He also included "with all your soul."
I've known very few people in my life that seemed to master this fusion. Perhaps a John Piper type can do it. To meld right-thinking with right-feeling seems to be very difficult for us. When Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica, he warned about those who "refused to love the truth" and who "had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess 2:9-12). These got both sides wrong. They refused to believe the truth and they refused to love the truth. They refused to obey righteousness and took pleasure in unrighteousness. Mind and emotion. We need to engage both in our love for our Savior. And that seems a difficult thing to do because we generally tend toward one or the other. Either we think too much and miss the emotional rapture of knowing Christ, or we feel too much and miss the truth of knowing Christ. Our command is to love God with both soul and mind.
3 comments:
Absolutely agree with how difficult this is. One thing I've heard that makes a lot of sense is that Christianity is the only worldview that has an explanation for how everything works and fits together because we follow the revelation of the God who created everything (I probably didn't explain that well). The explanatory power of Christianity is much more holistic than any other worldview. Christianity also is holistic enough to engage both our intellect, and our emotion completely. Too many believers focus only on one aspect or another, and by doing so miss out on a more full relationship with God and with others.
Sproul and Luther and Piper and many more have said that you can't love Who you don't know. It's all well and good to love God with emotional fervor, but if you don't know in your mind Who that God is, all that emotion is going to be misplaced and misdirected. When I was younger, I was very emotional. Over time I came to see my emotions were too erratic and overcorrected to more of a logical/rational slant. But I found lately that the more I know about God, the more I feel warmly toward Him. I can feel myself settling into a balance of heart and mind, allowing my mind to keep my heart in check, but letting my heart keep me wanting to know more about Him that I love.
John 4:24 states we are to “worship God in spirit and in truth”--this tells me (among other things) that I have both emotional and intellectual faculties and that God’s Word informs both; neither aspect should dominate or nullify the other but work synergistically. Clearly this concurrence of “head and heart” was uniquely endowed to men and women when we were created by God in His image. Indeed, I believe that God, in His wisdom, as part of “male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27), designed men’s and women’s brains with slightly different “emotional intelligence” functionality; this allows spouses to better complement each other as a couple and as parents and also leads men and women in general to pursue a knowledge and worship of God in beautifully unique ways--thereby enriching the Body of Christ.
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