Is the Heart Really Wicked?

“Just follow your heart.”

You have probably heard this phrase before. Most of us have likely also heard the response many Christians give to this phrase, which is the passage about the heart being deceitfully wicked and evil. This session brought some much-needed balance to those two extremes and gave us some tools about how to have a healthy relationship with our emotional heart.

Abi began with some biblical background. She and her team did a study on the heart using the NIV translation, so some of the numbers may vary if studied in different translations, or even the original text. I didn’t take the time to see how closely these  numbers match up with other translations.

Here is what their search brought up. The verse about the heart being deceitfully wicked is probably the most well-known and well quoted verse in the Bible, but there are actually a whopping 570 times of mention of the heart. ⅔ or about 399 times the heart is used in a positive way. In the other ⅓ the heart is referenced neutrally and only 35 times is it used in a negative way. Yet somehow this one verse from Jeremiah has been way overused and has bullied many of us into believing we can’t trust our heart at all.

Joseph Garlington was referenced as having given a sermon to teach about this verse and its context. I listened to it and decided it might be helpful for some of us. If you prefer to move right on with the Living Fully Alive content, you can go ahead and skip to the next post. If not, I hope you find this summary helpful. 

Can I just say what a fun detour this sermon was? I didn’t know who Joseph Garlington was, had never heard him speak before. He has a great sense of humor, balancing it with much serious truth.

The sermon began with a reading of Psalm 84.

Psalm 84

How lovely are your dwelling places, O Yahweh of hosts!

My soul longs and even fails for the courtyards of Yahweh.

My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.

Even a bird finds a home, and a swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, near your altars, O Yahweh of hosts, my king and my God.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they can ever praise you. Selah

Blessed is the man whose strength is in you; in their heart are the highways to Zion.

Passing through the Valley of Baca, they make it a spring.

The early rain covers it with blessings as well.

They go from strength to strength, until each appears before God in Zion.

O Yahweh, God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah

Look at our shield, O God, and have regard for the face of your anointed one.

Because better is a day in your courtyards than a thousand elsewhere.

I would rather be at the threshold of the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

Because Yahweh God is a sun and a shield; Yahweh gives grace and honor.

He does not withhold good from those who walk blamelessly.

O Yahweh of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts you.

The bolded phrase has ‘to Zion’ in it, but that phrase is actually not in the original text. It would read ‘in my heart are the highways’. This would suggest we have a global positioning system in our hearts. God created us in such a way, that we can find our way to Zion. Note that it says ‘highways’ in the plural, which would debunk the idea that we can only know things one way. Can we only know things by reason or sense?

There is the Aristotelian thought also taught in seminary that it is only by logic. But there is not only sense and reason, but something Plato called the ‘divine madness’. Plato would group into this dimension dreams, visions, miracles, and all the supernatural.

There is a capacity in us to understand things that are beyond rational understanding. But the highways of the heart are not accessed by analytical thinking but by the language of the heart.

Garlington gave an example, where he was going on a trip and had this thought of packing his raincoat, but because the friend, where he was going, said the weather was nice, he decided to leave the coat at home. By the time he got there, a cold front had moved in, and he was really cold. He said to his wife, “my mind told me to take my coat”. She corrected him, “the Spirit told you, and you overwrote it with your mind.” He used this example to illustrate the point that our mind will often sit in judgment over God’s mind and he raised the question, “Do we manage the kingdom voice by our heart or our head?”

In verse two of this Psalm we read “My soul longs and even fails for the courtyards of Yahweh. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even a bird finds a home, and a swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, near your altars, O Yahweh of hosts, my king and my God.

Garlington pointed out that all animals live with an intrinsic instinct, like the birds. They know where to go, they know when to go, they listen to that directive, they don’t question it. The animals don’t need signs that tell them it’s time. They do what they do by instinct, and they will obey instincts. The Psalm points out that the psalmist longs to go where the birds already know to go. As humans we are the only creatures that can overrule our intuition with our minds. Our heart deeply wants God and wants to serve him. Everything God created believes in him. That is not to say there is anything wrong with the intellect. We are to love our God with all our mind. God does not require us to be stupid to believe him. We can exercise our intelligence, but it should serve the purpose of God rather than fight it.

A great quote from the Matrix Reloaded says, “Your comprehension is not a prerequisite to cooperation”. We don’t have to have an answer as to “why” to everything before we obey God.

But if we listen to our heart, a lot of us will be fearful because we have been told the heart is wicked. How do we reconcile that with the other passages, where God addresses our hearts, where we are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts?

The issue arises because the Jeremiah verse is taken out of context.

Garlington gave some hilarious examples of other passages taken out of context and how we would never take those and apply them to ourselves. He suggested people often want a word from God and they flip the Bible open, circle their finger, and land on something. Imagine someone did these three things to find direction for his life.

And he went away and hanged himself.  Matthew 27:5

“You go and do likewise.” Luke 10:37

“What you are doing, do quickly!” John 13:27

All those verses are in the Bible, but we understand they are not to be taken aside from context.

In Jeremiah 17, where our famous verse comes from, the context of the heart refers to Judah. It refers to the sins of Judah. It is Judah’s heart that “is deceitful more than anything else, and it is disastrous.” This chapter is not giving a teaching about every human heart. It is specifically targeted at the heart of Judah, (and probably at anyone whose heart is like Judah’s, but it’s not a sweeping statement about all hearts).

In Solomon 5:2 we get the idea that God speaks to us when our minds are out of commission sometimes. He can talk to our hearts when we are asleep. “I was asleep but my heart was awake.”

Proverbs 27:19 speaks of the heart reflecting who someone is: “As the waters reflect face to face, so the heart of a person reflects the person.

And Proverbs 4:23 talks about guarding our heart. “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”

After Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers were worried that Joseph would take revenge on them now. But it says he spoke to their hearts. “So now, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and support you and your little ones.” So he comforted them [giving them encouragement and hope] and spoke [with kindness] to their hearts. Genesis 50:21

If we are to interact with our heart, understand it so we can guard it, how can we understand our heart, if we believe it is wicked? How do we know who to trust?

Consider the story where Abraham lied to Abimelech because he was afraid. God honored Abimelech because he knew he had a heart of integrity. Abimelech was a pagan, and he had a heart God saw good in. He didn’t tell him he had a wicked heart.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 talks about how he has set eternity in their heart, ‘He has also planted eternity [a sense of divine purpose] in the human heart [a mysterious longing which nothing under the sun can satisfy, except God] Ecclesiastes 3:11

Romans 2:14-15 speaks of the law being written on their hearts. ‘When Gentiles, who do not have the Law [since it was given only to Jews], do instinctively the things the Law requires [guided only by their conscience], they are a law to themselves, though they do not have the Law. They show that the essential requirements of the Law are written in their hearts; and their conscience [their sense of right and wrong, their moral choices] bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or perhaps defending them’ Romans 2:14-15

He would write his law on wicked and deceitful hearts? Gentiles have a heart on which the law is written. Everyone has an eternal deposit and it only takes a word to release faith and hope to wake them up to what they’ve known in their hearts.

John 1:35 shows how Nathanial had a heart that was not deceitful. Jesus called it out as he saw it and Nathaniel agreed because he was full of integrity.

Sometimes God will do things beyond the rational but it’s real. Just because we can’t explain it, doesn’t make it not real. Physicists for example talk about a lot of things they can’t see. Black holes, theories that they can’t prove except whenever they conduct experiments to do a certain thing, it behaves the way they expect it to, but they can’t actually explain it.

We believe in the invisible God, and God drops things in our heart. Our head wants to ask ‘how’ in order to believe it. Head questions will often mess things up God has planted, will crowd out the seeds God planted in your heart.

Proverbs 14:10 says that the heart knows its own bitterness. Knows reasons that reason never knows. In other words, the heart knows or understands things we can’t comprehend or understand from an analytically thinking brain place.

He was sharing about a ministry time, when he wanted to minister from the mind but Holy Spirit hijacked the ministry time and brought about heart healing. The way it went was, they would sit and listen to see what God would do and his wife would get the picture of a balloon. He was going to dismiss it, but it had meaning for the one they were ministering to, a symbol of a painful event in the past. So they followed it to the pain and processed it. Then they were listening again, and the wife got a picture of a washing stick, which again, to keep it short, pointed to a significant and unresolved pain from the past. Several more pictures came up that triggered emotions and memories they walked the person through. Garlington felt bad because he didn’t think they had gotten anywhere, he considered those things detours, not the actual thing they came together to do. Which was to pray for healing for a severe skin condition this person had. She went home and shared that the next day, when she pulled her hands out of the dishwater, they were completely healed. He shared this example to explain how God was speaking with heart language and heart pictures, because the heart knew where the bitterness was, but would not have accessed it through logic, it needed the picture language of the heart. This also shows that physical issues can have heart roots. If the heart was wicked as a rule, why would God speak to the heart to bring healing?

Within us is a sense of wisdom that isn’t in the mind, it’s the hidden man of the heart, the eyes of the heart, or other terms used.

God tells us he removes our stony heart and replaces it with a heart that is soft. Our heart is not like Judah’s heart.

Garlington walked the audience through a declaration: “I have a great heart. I do not have a heart that is evil and wicked. God speaks to my heart. I listen to my heart.”

If we had a wicked heart, how could we ever trust anything we hear? How could we ever prophecy anything if we are afraid it might come from the wicked heart?

He concluded the sermon by pointing out how it is our job to see. We don’t have to always have the interpretation. Sometimes it is enough to see and guard what we have seen by watching over the word or picture until it is performed by God. If it doesn’t make sense, just guard it, treasure it and release it to God to bring about.

There are places where God wants to take us, but the road-map is in the heart and can’t be gotten to with the brain.

Garlington proceeded to sing the following song over the congregation.

“He will embrace the broken and humble heart. Give up and he will fill your heart with perfect peace. Find your place of sweet release, humble yourself under God’s mighty hand, and he will lift you up and steady you. What God wants is truth in the inward place, a contrite spirit, broken heart.”

The audience was encouraged to learn how to live with a heart that is continuously broken. Discovering if you are constantly in touch with what God is saying to you. It will provoke in you tears, weeping, crying sometimes for no reason, because God is going even deeper into that place where he has set eternity.

Garlington closed with the story of Joshua before he goes to Jericho. He sees the angel of the Lord, and he walks right up to him, and asks him, “Are you for us?” God is not for or against us he is for God. If there is something in my heart he needs to address, he wants to address it. Joshua takes his shoes off in the account and bows down. A picture of humbling, of acknowledging his own brokenness and lack of holiness. The angel says, “See, I have given you the city”, after the proper position of the heart has been reached. Some things you can’t see standing up. Bow way down. Find space in your life where you can regularly get down, where few have gone, and see what few have seen. See with the eyes of the heart not physical eyes. Say yes at the beginning of the day from your head place, because your heart already says yes, coming into agreement with him. Say yes in your head. Our heart really does matter. I quote “When I was born again, whatever hope I had for having a deceitful heart that is desperately wicked above all else, is gone. I now have a heart that can believe that mountains will move in the name of Jesus, that blind eyes can open, that Jesus is the same forever, that what he said he still says, and what he did he still does, and he still is the same he always was.”

I hope this summary has given you a better understanding of how to interpret this Jeremiah verse about the heart. Personally, I feel like this sermon reminded me of the lesson where Abi and Justin were teaching us how we have to meet emotion with emotion before we can get to logic. It was in the validation lesson. I see some connections between that teaching and this one. See you on the next post where we dive into what science has discovered about the heart.