… and mind.
Original Insight - Sept 9th - 11th or so. After going to Midweek at Austin Baptist Church (ABC).
Quick Version from when I first thought of it, in early September, with some more insight and Spirit-led revelation since then:
The Mind is how we experience things directly in the moment. And how we choose. How we choose to react and think about what is in front of us.
The Heart is how we relate to everything around us. How we feel about it. Our relationship to these experiences, and how we feel about them, is driven by our Heart's intents & desires. Those desires and intents then shape how we choose to interact with our experiences, based on the past, what we expect to happen, and who is involved.
Or at least that's what I’m thinking. It's what both my heart and mind tell me. So what does that all mean? I don't know. I’m just praying the Spirit leads me to something intelligent.
The original insight was from the Midweek class at ABC. The entire thought was only about the separation between heart and mind. A quick attempt to understand why the book “Experiencing God in Everyday Life” separates them. It's easy enough to understand that the mind tells me what direction to turn and how to do math. You can understand the mind when it comes to more complex feelings, too. I don't feel good because I did something I know was wrong. Cheating, breaking the law, eating something your waist will regret. One can generally comprehend with the mind: poor actions = consequences. Then there is the Heart. Love is the easiest to identify, because the heart feels something different. Something the mind can't fully qualify/quantify.
That is as far as I got with understanding the heart.
I now needed to understand this word better! It was extremely important to me on this day. I’m not going to go into the depths of my inequities. You can read other posts about that. But my curiosity came from a well-known passage most Christians know.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Matthew 5:27-38
https://www.bible.com/bible/59/MAT.5.27-30.ESV
I know very well I had lustful intent in the past. I had clearly committed adultery with my eyes. There is no question about this. I want to understand where the line is between lustful intent in the heart and acknowledging another of God's children being present. How can I ever look at another woman and be sure my heart has pure motives? Most importantly, how can I be sure I am honoring my wife with my eyes?
So I did a quick word search in the Bible to understand heart better.
The Bible seems to use "heart" in an extraordinarily meaningful way. The core of its use seems to be “our inner self”. Or maybe our “whole self”. One writer, far more learned than I, argues against my view of mind versus heart. However, I believe we agree in principle that mind and heart inform each other. They are integrated parts of who we are, together “that captures the totality and unity of our inner nature”.
See: One of the Most Misused Words Today
The inner self/whole self also aligns with my initial impressions, based only on the quick word search I mentioned. See the search here on www.bible.com: https://www.bible.com/search/bible?query=heart.
That search made me wonder how many times the word is used in the Bible. It seemed to me that the frequency of the word's use may be an important measure. I’m deliberately shying away from qualifying that further, because all of God's word is important. Also, depending on the translation you use and which words you decide to exclude, the count/rank will change. You can safely say it's in the top 25-50 (ish) most-used words in the Bible. Heart is in the tier alongside Israel(ites), Lord, Father, King, Life, David, Jesus, Great, & Sons.
Here are some of the tools I looked at:
The Flerlage Twins - Does not appear to be a biblical resource. Purely analytical.
Crossway - a reasonably authoritative Christian source. And the aforementioned article.
Gemini AI - my own search and culling of common words that carry less significance.
What am I getting to? I’m simply trying to “ask the right question”. In my pornography recovery group (though it may have been somewhere else…), I heard that Jesus asked some 307 questions. He was asked approximately 183 questions. And depending on how you define a direct answer, he answered only 3 to 8 directly. Most he answered with more questions!
https://licc.org.uk/resources/questions-jesus-asked-the-power-of-the-question/
Google: “How many questions did Jesus answer directly”
I guess what I’m getting at is that I was trying to ask and answer the right question. I wasn't sure I had the answer as I was getting to this point in writing. But I think I do.
What is your intent and desire?
That is where I have to truly pit my mind against my heart.
This is why I hold that they are two very different parts of our whole. In my heart of hearts, I want nothing more than to never again notice another woman with lustful intent. I want that desire gone. I want to appreciate all women for the children of God that they are. Most importantly, I want my wife to trust that. That my intent and desire are pure and for her alone.
That is my heart.
But my mind. Or more accurately, my brain, my neurological pathways, are broken. My mind, through my choices, has been wired by years of pornography to see a woman’s body as an object. And my eyes, controlled by my mind, have been wired through my choices to seek a dopamine hit. To search for the female form.
I’m working to control my mind.
I’m working to control my mind by leading with heart. By leading with the intent and desire to seek only God in heaven and my wife on earth for satisfaction. But even with true intent and desire towards her, my mind makes every interaction something i have to measure. Something I may have to feel guilty about.
Lord, in heaven, I don't want to do that. Lord, I don't want to be guilty; I want your heart to be my heart. For your intentions to be seen in me. Lord, I pray that your desires for your creation, for me, for my wife, are fulfilled. And Lord, I pray you keep my heart pure.
In your Son Jesus’ name. Amen.
