Since a wide variety of subjects can be understood through the sheer agency of our intellect, many have come to the conclusion that all comprehensible entities can be apprehended by brainpower alone. This erroneous notion, which has permeated the fabric of our society, has also encroached upon us evangelicals and affected negatively the very essence of our judgment and expectation. Happily the Scripture is not silent in this respect, teaching us that several truths can only be understood through the agency of the heart.
Jesus expressed this reality time and again and in multifarious ways. On one occasion he told His disciples:
And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them’” (Matt. 13:14,15).
Here stands the first principle of spiritual understanding: Moral truths can only be apprehended with the intervention of the heart. A person can have an amazing intellect, diplomas on diplomas, and showing prowess in the classroom, and yet be absolutely unable to comprehend the basic divine laws and the elementary principles of the divine counsel. When Paul writes about people who are “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7), he doesn’t point to their intellectual incapacity but rather to their moral state which becomes here the real obstacle.
The ground of spiritual understanding
Moses also had noticed the correlation between obedience to God and spiritual understanding. Speaking to the people of Israel he said:
Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ (Deut. 4:5,6).
A devastating continuity
The moral confusion found in some evangelical milieus nowadays is without a doubt related to this peculiarity. And it is by no means a new state of affairs. The prophets of old had to deal with the problem recurrently, and Jesus had to face it at the very start of His ministry, and face it with His very disciples.
Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, and they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat. Then He charged them, saying, “Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “It is because we have no bread.” But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, “Why do you reason because you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up?” They said to Him, “Twelve.” “Also, when I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up?” And they said, “Seven.” So He said to them, “How is it you do not understand?” (Mark 8:14–21).
Here Jesus was referring to a specific moral truth but his disciples were not able to grasp the meaning of His words. It is precisely this disability that prompted Jesus to ask them a series of questions:
Why do you reason because you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart still hardened?”
The last question is particularly significant. It reveals that hardness of heart is utterly incompatible with moral or spiritual understanding. It affects not only the way we perceive reality, but also the way we interpret the data obtained through sight and hearing.
When the Scripture says: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9), it refers to the ability the amoral heart has to twist the truth and confuse the substance. It can actually beguile our spiritual senses to such a point that our moral perception will be utterly unreliable. Such is the fate of a hardened heart.
Hardening our heart
One of the things that can cause us to harden our heart is the hearing of God’s voice. “Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion” (Hebrews 3:7,8).
Who were they that hardened their hearts in the rebellion? Was it the Canaanites or the Jebusites, the Hittites or the Amorites? No! It was the very people of God. Nothing has really changed. Today, among all people, we evangelicals are the most susceptible to harden our heart, for we hear God’s voice repeatedly and truly. And let us make no mistake, it can be done easily and repeatedly.
When we adopt a course of action or develop attitudes contrary to God’s liking, when we depart from the path of knowledge to enter in a gray moral zone God will certainly speak to us. It is precisely then the danger surges, for a choice confronts us. If we judge that God’s counsel is inconvenient for us at the moment and turn our back on Him as if we had not heard, we are hardening our heart. God might recess for a time, but you can be sure He will return—in a different way perhaps—with the very same message. If we continue to harden our heart time and again we are going to find ourselves in a position where spiritual understanding is unattainable. It is so because when we harden our heart against one specific moral truth, moral truth as a whole becomes hard to understand. On my next post I will explain why.
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