We have all heard people complain about the biggest gap in Christianity, the gap that is allegedly responsible for all the evils among Christians, viz., the twelve inch gap between the head and the heart. In this analysis, the problem is that too many people have a “head knowledge” of the truths of Christianity, but they don’t have the “heart knowledge” that is necessary for a Christian to thrive. What is the implied solution? The church ought to focus more on the heart and less on the head—in other words, more on the emotions and less on the intellect.
Behind this explanation is the current western way of looking at people. A human being has an intellectual center (commonly called the “head”) and an emotional center (commonly called the “heart”). Granted, nobody actually thinks that the cardiac organ is the seat or origin of emotions, but it is a convenient metonymy to differentiate between two aspects of the human mind that in our estimation have little or nothing to do with each other. We speak similarly of courage as “guts,” even though nobody thinks that our courage resides in our intestines.
The real problem comes about when we think that this modern way of dividing the components of a human being is actually the biblical way of viewing humanity. Compounding the problem is the fact that the Scriptures urge people to have a change of heart, and we tend to read “heart” with our culture’s eyes rather than with biblical eyes. And thus we see the Bible’s call to a new heart as an invitation to rework our emotions and to stop our intellectual growth as unnecessary at best and counterproductive at worst.
But the Bible doesn’t distinguish between head knowledge and heart knowledge. In fact, it doesn’t use the word “head” to refer to the intellectual aspect of mankind. Instead, it uses the word “heart” to do so. It is the heart that thinks and verbalizes ideas (Genesis 6:5; Deuteronomy 9:4). It is the heart that remembers (Deuteronomy 4:9). It is the heart that meditates and contemplates (Psalm 16:7; 19:14). Most importantly, it is the heart that possesses the will (Exodus 4:21) and makes ethical decisions (Deuteronomy 9:5; Psalm 7:10). To be sure, the emotions are also found in the heart (Exodus 4:14; Deuteronomy 28:65). But the Scriptures do not separate what we in the West do. It knows that the will, the intellect, and the emotions cannot be isolated from one another, but work together to form a common mind. Thus, when we read such phrases as Deuteronomy 4:29, that command us to seek after God with our whole heart, we cannot see this as an exercise purely of the emotions, but also of the intellect, the memory, and especially the will. When Deuteronomy 10:16 tells us to circumcise our hearts, it clarifies exactly what it means: we are not to be stubborn. In other words, it is a command to exercise the will (not just the emotions) more appropriately.
But are we denying that hypocrisy can be a problem with Christians? No, we are just reframing the question. The current received wisdom is that Christians become hypocrites when they aren’t emotionally in tune enough or when they try to acquire intellectual knowledge instead of practical knowledge. And yet the Scriptures have a different analysis of the problem. As the prophet Isaiah says (29:13): “This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.” Our Lord confirms the same sentiment in Matthew 15:8. The problem isn’t that they have a high spiritual IQ and a low spiritual EQ. The problem is that they have neither, even though they mouth the words. In other words, they say the right words, but don’t understand what they are saying, let alone assent to them.
It is for that reason that the psalmist prays (19:14), “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” The process of spiritual growth begins with the mouth and the lips, but it cannot end there. He wants his words to be orthodox and the meditation—there’s that thinking again!—of the heart that follows to be proper and in full accord with what his lips are uttering. The psalmist knows that God placed His Word very near us so that it could be on our mouth and in our hearts (Deuteronomy 30:14). We learn God’s Word by speaking it often, but it cannot be something that stays only on our lips but must be apprehended by our entire mind—will, intellect, and emotions.
As the passages mentioned above indicate, the Scriptures know that learning starts with the mouth, but must settle into the heart if it is to succeed. Thus, the Scriptures have a more nuanced attitude toward rote learning than we in the contemporary West do, which universally rejects it. As we have already noted, the Bible recognizes that people can recite certain truths without understanding, let alone believing them. It knows that mouthing the words is not the same as knowing or believing them. But at the same time the Scriptures do not eschew rote learning and memorization. They know full well that the first step in learning something is to say what one does not fully understand. Consequently, the Scriptures are full of admonitions to repeat God’s words as a way to get that Word into the heart of each generation. Deuteronomy 6:6-9 outlines such a procedure: God’s Word is meant to be stored in the heart; consequently, children are to be taught these words at fixed times during the day and these words are to be as visible as one’s head and hands and doorposts. Of course, this is only the first step, with the next step being for children to understand what they have been saying. The problem arises because children (and, for that matter, learners of all ages) can resist these words and only embrace them with their lips. But the problem isn’t with the repetition of the words of the Scriptures, but with the stubborn heart that refuses to learn.
Thus, there is still a gap that faithful Christians have to address. It’s just not the emotional-intellectual gap most Christians in America
All Bible quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).
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