Picture by Emron Yousof, found on unsplash
The heart as well as the mind is a faculty of knowing. We are made this way; it is not a flaw. It imports meaning, strength, and purpose, as well as fragility, into our existence.
It seems to me that modern studies of the human being are highlighting that its knowledge is enormously conditioned by its emotional experience and by what has been called, by James K. A. Smith and probably others, “pre-rational” processing. We are much more than thinking being. Smith argues, in fact, that we are feeling, or loving beings more than we are thinking beings. Our pre-rational inner world is a more powerful force in our lives than our “reason”. We may abandon the enlightenment idea that our highest function is dispassionate reason. Dispassionate reason isn’t even possible. We are far do situated and biological for it to be possible. This is devastating to the purported, “rational man.” This is not a problem, however, to one who has already validated and embraced the “heart” – the human’s pre-rational inner world – as a faculty of understanding.
We may allow the heart or the soul, the deepest self, the pre-rational self, to know things that the mind cannot yet make into propositional statements. That these known things elude propositional articulation does not make them untrue. Some of the most true things will never be reducible to text or language. And I submit that even the most well-articulated, “rational” person – who has a clean and coherent system of propositional beliefs – does at the same time have innumerable beliefs and assumptions that they “know” in the pre-rational aspects of their personhood – the heart.
We are made this way. If God is a good designer, then we may permit that the pre-rational aspect that he made us with is not a flaw. It does not make us less than what we could have been if we were only “thinking” beings. I suggest furthermore that if you try to shut down your heart with your mind you will only deal yourself injury and narrow your experience of life. Our pre-rational aspect must be embraced for a full experience of life to be possible.
Our pre-rational aspect makes us vulnerable. This has enormous value; vulnerability makes meaningful connection possible and openness to wonder and joy possible. Vulnerability, however, also comes with danger. An open heart can be injured – even devastated. Also, by one’s heart, a person can deceive oneself. It easily and often leads to self-sabotage and damaged relationship, including that between a person and God. The Christian could call all of that “sin”. The heart has gone wrong in all of us; this is why we tend to shut it down and run from it. The heart has gone wrong in all of us, desperately so. But the heart can be restored.
Our pre-rational aspect is not evil simply because it is vulnerable to corruption. Without the corruption, it is good. It is integral to our humanity and is included in what God called good at creation and what he aims to restore and make whole in the human being. It is a false assumption that the mind is good, and the heart is bad, or that the mind is strong, and the heart is week. Both are vulnerable to corruption and injury. Both are corrupted in every human person. God sees both, however, as restorable. The healing of the two together is a beautiful thing.
It’s not that the mind is strong and the heart is week. Scripture would say, rather, that the Spirit is strong and the flesh is week (Matt. 26:31). We should define “flesh” in this instance as destructively conditioned human nature. The Spirit, alternatively, is that power made available in Jesus Christ that redeems and heals the whole person, including the mind of rational knowing and the heart of pre-rational knowing.
When the Christian says that they know that God loves them, they hopefully refer to both faculties of knowledge.
A quick qualification: the mind/heart dichotomy is useful in our attempt to understand ourselves but so also is the recognition that the dichotomy is artificial. There really is no clean line between the two; they are integrally interconnected. They are two regions of a self with no real boundary, but for the purpose this blog, we’ll treat them separately. So, I return to the argument.
Pre-rational knowledge – what is known in the heart – silently but powerfully guides and frames what one knows rationally. In a significant way, the knowledge of the heart controls the knowledge of the mind. What one comes to know in the heart, by the experience of life and relationship, has immense power to shape the beliefs of the mind.
The reverse, however, is also true. Gradually, the mind can convince the heart. That’s why cognitive behavioral therapy has some success. Therapy like this is beneficial when what is “known” pre-rationally is not true. That’s how I would describe my experience with the tool.
Some things known pre-rationally may indeed be false, maladaptive, and harmful. Note for example that the experience of abandonment or that of shame may have taught your heart something that is hard to articulate, and harder even un-learn. It is something the heart believes deeply though it is not true. With this in your heart, your mind which “knows” theoretically that you are lovable and valuable – and though you may have it written on your arm and on a sticky note by your bedside – still, your heart will define your experience and you will still fear. You will still hide. You will still shut down. You will still anxiously seize love offered and distrust it at the same time. In instances like this, you may easily call yourself “trapped” or “sabotaged” by something within you that you cannot seem to unlearn.
On the other hand, something that you know in your heart that is true and good can carry you with hope and profound resilience through experiences and alternative beliefs. If your parents affirmed your value by their persistent love, then you might know your value in a way that may uphold your confidence through rejections and failure. If you have lived a life with a faithful spouse, you “know” you can trust them pre-rationally. That knowing is much stronger than what would be built if they rationally explained their trustworthiness to you. That which is known in the heart has greater weight than what is known only in the mind. If what is known in the heart is affirming of your value or your loved-ness, your dignity is more likely to last through deteriorating experiences.
There is much that you must know in your heart before you can put the weight of your personhood on it.
If by radical single experience or by long-term gradual experience, or both, you know that God forgives you and affirms you, then your sense of being loved and dignified and safe and free will outlast every experience and every alternative belief that diminishes you or suggests distance between you and God.
Every serious disciple of Christ develops this pre-rational knowing over time and has had seasons when they do not know it as deeply as they would like. Doubt and question are real and normal. There are seasons when that knowledge, at whatever depth it has reached at the time, is tested. The testing of life has convinced the heart of some that God is unreliable or unreal. For others, however, the testing of life has deepened their pre-rational (and rational) knowing that their God is good.
Thomas Obediah Chisholm had lived with debilitating illness for decades when he wrote the sweet and sincere lyrics of “Great is They Faithfulness.” For him, a life of some significant suffering was also a life in which God had convinced him that he was good. Chisholm knew this deeply. He knew it in his heart.
I’ve endured some illness myself and chronic pain. I’ve also endured some trauma that took me to very dark places. But the torch God gave me in the deepest places was sufficient to teach my heart that I am not abandoned, alone, unlovable, or forgotten. And now I know pre-rationally, that God is strong enough to save, generous enough to forgive, and invested enough in me to uphold me through anything.
On the other hand, I have believed a great deal in my heart that was/is erroneous and injurious. This set of assumptions, for example, is an attempt to articulate what my heart believed for some time:
– God is not resourceful enough to love people without their being productive for him.
– For moments I have been approvable because, unlike most Christians, I have transcended and been very righteous and gracious and attracting.
– Most of the time, however, my fear and pride and sin make me ineffective just like most Christians.
– The net worth of myself and my Church is abysmal, when our global impact is considered against what it should be.
– I’ll get to heaven, but Jesus will be distraught when I get there.
– God’s forgiveness gets me to a clean judicial standing before God, but it can’t really get me to a place where God is actually pleased with me. I’m permitted in the lobby but not the living room.
– I can slow down and give myself grace after the crises of my person, my Church, and my world, have been resolved.
– My awkwardness, ignorance, immaturity, and naiveté are ultimately inexcusable because they compromise my “witness” (as I understood the idea of witness), which is already pathetically low.
– There is too much to be done. Slowness is not an option. Rest is ineptitude. Pacing is unrealistic. Healing is unaffordable.
– I can relax after I die.
All of these are things my heart believed for some time. I’ve articulated most of it only very recently. For the majority of my youth, these were un-articulated pre-rational fungi festering in my heart. They consumed me though I did not know rationally that I “knew” these things pre-rationally. I would not have said that I believed these things. I didn’t rationally but I did pre-rationally. They came to fore when in the end they unraveled me and rendered me psychospiritually destitute. I’ve needed to unlearn them all, slowly.
Some study and rational pursuit of truth has helped, but even more necessary for the unknowing has been simply getting to know God better over a season of grace and healing. The experience of this season of relationship with God and caring people has slowly convinced my heart that my life is safe, that God is not cruel or cruelly bound by circumstances, and that he does in fact love me deeply.
I know, only because I know God a little better, that crisis is not the ultimate state of things, but rather is redemption and new creation. I do not have the rational capacity to understand how God is redeeming the present state of things, including the injuries and injustices of his Church. I cannot know rationally how things will be restored, but I know pre-rationally that it will be so. As a result of this grown security, I no longer throw myself frantically at the crisis but rather apply myself faithfully and humbly, according to my actual capacity, to the redemption of things – which includes my personal healing.
By Christ, somehow, the death I and my earth have known on every level, will find its place in the context of life. By Christ, the deaths I have died have been precisely the points at which I was given everlasting life. I know in my heart that my life is immutable fire because my life is Christ.
In the story arch being written by the God I am getting to know, there is space for rest, grace, healing, patience, and pacing. Slow is not equal to ineffective or lazy. Slow may actually be more faithful than rapid (How often does God say, “be still?”). Better a slow witness that is secure than an explosive witness that is unsure.
I notice that in my description of what I know pre-rationally, I’ve reached into mystic language. I wonder if that is inevitable; perhaps, when reduced to language, the deepest things known can only ever be rendered with mystic vocabulary or metaphor.
In any case, here are the points: The heart is the person’s faculty of pre-rational knowing and it has enormous power to affect one’s experience of life. Much that I “knew” pre-rationally in my youth was malignant to the point that it destroyed me. What I’ve been given to “know” pre-rationally through acquaintance with a patient, kind, and capable God in a season of grace, rest, and healing, has grounded me in a way that I did not know was possible in my zealous but insecure youth. If you’re like me, your heart can destroy you. But since God is God, your heart also can be the avenue through which he convinces you that you’re safe and that belong to the renewing of all things.
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My related tips:
– Be willing to admit that you do not understand your full inner world and willing to admit pre-rational beliefs are probably hijacking your life in some way.
– You don’t fix it by smashing yourself with truth, even spiritual truth. God fixes it by immersing you in truth over time.
– If God leads you into your heart, go with him even if it’s terrifying and even if what you discover causes you grief.
– Don’t go there without him. That would be counterproductive. You need to know you are forgiven and safe when you face your hidden dragons.
– Feel what you must feel and do not berate yourself for needing to grieve.
– Relax into the hands that created you, which can recreate you, and which are strong enough to gently hold all of you right now, even with all your injury and error, all your destitution and corruption.
– Don’t run from your heart but don’t force entry either. You’re ready when your ready.
– Be humble and willing to discover. Partial self-awareness can be held arrogantly and can by that arrogance undercut more complete awareness. Only God sees all of you. Self-deception may be the greatest way that we antagonize both God and our true selves. Pride is the overt elevation of an aspect of ourselves. Humility is the learned skill of seeing yourself as you truly are. And who are you?
My affirmations:
– If you are human, you seen and loved by God. This love is cherishing, hoping, desiring love, the intensity of which all human love is only a fraction. This is love willing to take in the whole person, even with their error and injury. God does not despise the broken-hearted even if the broken-hearted hates himself for how he is diminished by his pain. God does not reject the sinner even with complete recognition of the cost of that person’s sin. If you are human, you are passionately loved, despite what within you needs correction and healing.
– If you are in Christ, Christ is in you, and you will outlast all of your pain, sin, and death. You are undiminished, cherished, dignified, and glorified, even with your history, with your error, your maladies of any kind, and even with the crosses you bear.
– The narrative of our reality is a good one, because God is good and competent. Death and darkness are real but so are resurrection and light. God wields the later against the former and he is infinitely strong and creative. We can relax and trust.