By heart, I mean emotions. It's not a perfect analogy, but it is just want comes to mind when I think of my emotions. They tie very closely in with my heart and what is going on there. I tend to be a pretty emotional person. This does not always show, but trust me, I know. My emotions sometimes drive me absolutely crazy. I believe God gave the ability to feel emotions for a reason. They aren't just random and without cause. I also believe that emotions can be dangerous if they are acted on rashly. I know this because I have experienced the repercussions of acting purely out of emotion. I believe within emotions, there is some truth, but it needs to be balanced with rational thought.
So...by head, I mean rational thought. I am realllllyyy good at analyzing things from a million different angles. I used to often overthink things. In the past I have blocked out emotion and instead relied only on my head to make decisions. This can also be very dangerous. To block out emotion is to deny yourself of a crucial part of your identity. I believe by relying completely on your head to make decisions, you slowly kill a part of yourself.
To make this matter even more complicated, there is that whole "gut" factor. I think you all know what I am talking about. Sometimes you just get a feeling in your gut that tells you what to do. It does not always seem rational, but it oftentimes just seems right for some reason. Where does that feeling come from? I don't know. It could be the Holy Spirit, the Enemy, or just your own self. I was talking with my mentor about all of this today and she said something about whether or not the feeling points toward God. I think that is an excellent question to ask yourself when trying to determine where that "gut" feeling is coming from.
So I've been trying to figure out where exactly I stand on all of this. Well, I guess I am somewhere in the middle. Yeah I know, that doesn't say much. I think you need to use your emotions as a guide, but you also need to balance them with rational thought. My thoughts on all of this are still forming, and I would welcome anyone else's thoughts on all of this.
My emotions and reason are sometime very much at odds. I find it quite challenging that I cannot simply reason my heart more toward God. My heart is always at battle with my head telling me I need things in this world that I do not. (2 Corinthians 12:9) Knowing (and fully believing and trusting in) a biblical truth does not always translate to my not having feelings that conflict with it. As a result I tend to become frustrated with feelings. When it comes to major decisions I often struggle to justify both logically and biblically the choice I for whatever reason feel I should take. My logical brain says that I am just doing whatever feels good, and that conflict often results in my taking no action at all.
ReplyDeleteI think American culture teaches us (at least men if not everyone) to completely dismiss emotion. Both semantics and science seem to side with logical on some level. Emotion is associated with instinct and is lower on an evolutionary scale than the ability to reason. The very words we would use to describe the most favorable between the head and the heart are slanted in favor of the brain. Rational. Logical. Reasonable. These are value judgements based not in the heart, but the head. That contributes to my confusion. I am asking my brain to serve as judge to whom is better - the brain or heart. My brain is going to be biased.
Lynn Robinson has a book specifically about the gut, and other authors like Malcolm Gladwell place a high value on intuition as well. The basic idea is that the gut, or intuition, is something that we can develop and train like muscle reflexes. For instance, a doctor that has been practicing for 30 years can sometimes feel what is wrong without having empirical justification for it. There is also a good bit of current research in the field of neuroscience that helps to explain human decision making. The neuroscience research overwhelmingly supports the idea that humans are far less logical than we think we are. In many cases our brains make a decision and then later our left brain makes up a reason for having come to that decision.
These authors do not approach this issue from a Christian perspective, but I think one can extrapolate the core idea. It would seem logical that if they are right about the gut, we can train ours through Christian disciplines. Just as a doctor or financial expert can train her gut through years of experience to react before her brain, we as Christians should be able to hone our intuition through bible reading, prayer, and instruction.
That's not really an answer to the Head, Heart, Gut question, but I don't have any answers.
-Christopher