Head verses Heart

All day I’ve been mulling over the contrast between the head and the heart in disputable matters of the church and life in general. It seems the popular and more comfortable choice today is to say that love surpasses all and that the heart should be our sole motivation citing 1 Corinthians 13. Yet, Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is deceitful above all things. So love must be the solution, but not necessarily the emotional fuzzy squishy comfortable love.

Love stops a toddler from running into a busy street. Love grabs a child’s hand before they touch an iron. Love grounds a teenager from the Xbox. Love in its nature sets boundaries. One could say love employs justice. This tells me that love also uses the head in decision-making.

But a head without a heart would never take a moment to consider the plight of a stranger. A head without the heart would probably rely on past experience or simply the functionality in decision-making. A head may lack hope if the heart is not engaged.

Perhaps, this is why Jesus calls us to love God with everything we’ve got: our heart, our soul, our strength, and our mind. Not making one more important than the other, but expecting each to work together to love completely.

Stories worth reading

I visited a tiny, one room library that was more than one hundred years old today. And while one hundred years isn’t really old compared to libraries in other parts of the world, it struck me while I breathed in musty air and admired the artistry that often embellishes antique books, how many ideas and stories are housed in that tiny place now silenced waiting for the yellowed pages to be carefully turned again. I recognized a few authors, but most I didn’t. I opened several, read a few lines, and tried to connect my limited memory of American History with the copyright dates.

A century is more than enough time for a country to radically change. Within a century families see great, great grandchildren born and with them ideas, theories, doctrines all aptly developed and soon considered old fashioned after what seems just a few moments.

My grandparents were born more than a hundred years ago, and I wish I could sit and understand them more now as I witness how quickly our life pages yellow with age.

Truly, the ideas, dreams, and stories found within mankind don’t really change at all. Sure technology advances and architecture ebbs and flows like fashion, but love is the same, justice is still required, family is still paramount to the health of a community, and the value of a person to those who love them is still immeasurable.

Our lives are merely a vapor, and it is our duty to live them well. Not for our own selfish pleasures, but lived so that when all that remains of us is a yellowed memory on a shelf, the pages of our life still speak in truths understood to the readers hundreds of years later. Did we love? Did we speak for justice? Did we live a story worth reading?

The days the discourse died

We’ve retreated to our corners, digging our heels into our opinions.

We ready our scripts for a fight

to prove we are right.

We seek approval and justification of our side solely from those who read the very same lines.

These are the golden awards we receive; having the most people who agree with us surrounding us.

Congratulations.

We hold pep rallies and rejoice in our common mind.

We rest in the comfort of being surrounded by an army of people who won’t question.

We must be right because that guy with the YouTube channel says so. We share it and feel the ego boost because of that guy.

We dismiss any questions.

We mock any disagreement.

We label any conflict as negative or uneducated.

We ready for battle to squelch discussion.

We shrink with bitter wounds because of what someone interjected.

We slaughter the opposition by plugging our ears and throwing words of mud to label them.

We are weak

because we won’t listen.

We are weakened

because battle-lines shatter community.

And we lose our footing as we fear the challenge of opposing thought. So we conveniently vilify views.

Our arguments cemented- only practiced to slay the opponent- fall flat at our avoidance of the stretching of our minds. Our opinions are meant to be heard not challenged. Our minds are meant to be made up.

Learning is shunned because of our rightness.

Transformation and unity are words of ages gone by. They are the dead religions of the past. Communication is only fruitful when everyone at the table agrees.

These are the days the discourse died.