The concept of “listening to your heart” is a popular idea expressed in many books and movies. It is basically the premise of every romantic comedy ever written: Man meets woman. They seem like a very unlikely match, (he is a book nerd and she is the head cheer leader who has been dating the obnoxious captain of the football team, or something like that.) However, their “hearts” are drawn to each other. A series of events occur that bring them together. They fall in love and spend all their time together dreaming of their future. Then some controversial scenario occurs that makes it look like one of them has been unfaithful, or they are doing something evil: He works for company that is going to buy up all the business of the small town she grew up in and run all the locals out of business. She decides to break it off. They are both heartbroken, but don’t want to admit it. Then, somehow things are cleared up and it all turns out to be a hilarious misunderstanding, she rushes to the airport to stop him before he flies back home to seal the deal. They reconcile, get married and live happily ever after.
In reality, “listening to your heart” as it is portrayed in this manner, really means that you should act on the random thoughts that pop into your head. As conscious (sentient) beings we have thoughts all the time. We have thoughts and emotions (feelings) all the time. We react in some way to everything. Thoughts can pop into our minds without us intentionally thinking about or meditating on the thing that the thought is about. I am sure we have all had those experiences when some random thought pops into our mind and we wonder to ourselves where the thought came from. Maybe a memory of something that happened a long time ago suddenly invades our mind. The question we should always ask ourselves is “What is the source or origin of the thought?” As a person who believes in the spiritual reality of life, I believe thoughts can originate with spirits that influence us, either positively or negatively. We can call it our mind, or our heart. It really doesn’t matter because they both really mean the same thing. I think it is easiest to just use the word “soul”. It is the essence of yourself as a living, thinking and feeling being.
Some would argue that feelings or emotions are issues of the heart, not the mind, but if you think about it, feelings and emotions are always associated with thoughts, so it doesn’t matter whether you say heart of mind (brain). Thoughts are always the source. It all involves our consciousness. It is foolishness to think we can follow our heart without engaging our brain, but that idea is promoted repeatedly in many psychological and religious circles
Consciousness fascinates me. It can’t be explained in simple biological terms. It means that we are spiritual beings with a life source that originates outside of ourselves. Standard evolutionary theory can’t account for consciousness in living beings. Does a single celled organism have consciousness? It is hard to think that it does, since we associate consciousness with a brain, and a brain is a whole bunch of cells, not just one, so a single celled organism can’t have a brain since a brain is a development of many cells. I can’t prove this scientifically, but I do not believe single cells have any kind of consciousness. How can they? If living things evolved in the manner taught by evolutionary theory then you must conclude that at one point whatever the thing that evolved winds up being, at one point it did not have consciousness (pre-brain) and then it became conscious (post-brain). Another thought to consider is this: If things started out as single celled organisms, and then the cell divides or multiplies, at what point in that process does it go in different directions? What causes one cell to “evolve” into one thing, and another cell to evolve into something else, and what force guides that process? How can it evolve into anything other than a clump of the same cells if all the cells are doing is replicating? All of it makes NO sense as far as I am concerned. It is obvious to any thinking person that it has to be directed by some outside (Creative) force. This is just a complicated way of saying “God.” No other explanation makes any sense. Sorry, I got off on a bit of a tangent there!
The Bible does not encourage us to listen to our hearts. It encourages us to listen to the Word of God:
Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
Matthew 4:4: “Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”.
Matthew 15:17-20: “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”
The greatest of all the commandments is found in Matthew 22:27: Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
There is a movement within the Church today, mostly among those who are referred to as charismatics, and specifically the New Apostolic Renewal that teaches a trichotomy doctrine that separates the heart from the mind and encourages people to not use their minds to discern truth, but instead to trust their hearts and shut off their analytical mind. Both relying solely on the mind (intellect) or relying solely on the heart (emotions) are out of balance. We rely on both. We are not all thoughts, nor are we all emotions. We are both.
There are two different camps of thought when it comes to us seeking to understand the part of ourselves that is immaterial, in other words, our soul and/or spirit. The evolutionists will say that we are nothing more than highly evolved flesh. They put no stock in that immaterial part of us that we refer to as soul and/or spirit. Have you ever been with someone when they died? Not to sound morbid, but I think everyone needs to experience this at least once in their lives. (I also think everyone needs to experience the wonder of seeing a baby being born.) If you are with a person when they die, you see obviously that the life force (their soul or spirit) has gone. The body is exactly the same. In the next moment, something is gone; that immaterial part of them that animated their body. If we were purely flesh and bone why can’t that hunk of flesh be fixed, like an old car being resurrected from the junk yard and brought back to life? It can’t be. The spirit, the essence of who we really are is gone.
The two camps I am referring to are what is known as trichotomy and dichotomy. The trichotomy view says that man is made up of spirit, soul and body. They say that we are “spirits” who have a soul and we live in a body. Heretics such as Kenneth Copeland and Bill Johnson say this over and over, like a broken record. In the New Apostolic Renewal doctrine, it is taught that when one is born again, the spirit, the part that they say responds to God, is made pure, and the purity of our spirit is what defines us and the condition of the spirit, pure or corrupted, is what our ultimate judgment, or the lack thereof is based on, not the physical or soul. In this view the body and the soul can remain corrupt, as long as the spirit is pure. The fallacy of this doctrinal teaching is that many within the New Apostolic Renewal have fallen into moral and sexual impurity.
This trichotomy view is rooted in what is known as gnosticism. Broadly speaking, gnosticism is the idea that spirit is good, and the material is evil. Since, according to this view, the essence of who we are is spirit, but it is currently enslaved within this evil material universe, the way to freedom is to dissociate your pure spirit from the evil material world. This is the basis for many Platonic, Hindu and Buddhist teachings, but the idea is totally unbiblical. Genesis shows us that both the spiritual and material world were created good by God. He was pleased with what He had made and called it good. The evil that exists in the world is not the result of the material world being evil. The evil comes about as those whom God has created turn away from Him and embrace the sin that makes things become evil.
The dichotomy view sees spirit and soul as being the same thing. The words are used interchangeably in the Bible. Spirit and/or soul simply refer to the immaterial part of man, the life force that animates the flesh, and leaves when a person dies. Genesis calls it the breath of life. The instances in Scripture where both words are used is for emphasis, not distinction. For example, I may say, “I love and cherish my wife, my sweetheart!” I am not referring to two different women, I am simply using two different phrases to add emphasis to the same thing.
In reality we exist as holistic beings, body AND soul (or spirit). Without the soul the body is dead. It can do nothing. Without the body the soul (or spirit) can exist, but it can’t interact with the material world. That is why demonic spirits need to possess someone. They need a host to be able to interact with the material world. A disembodied demonic spirit can’t do anything but scare you. Without a body it is powerless. Demons can’t possess anyone against the person’s will. They lie and trick people into inviting them in. The host has to willingly open the door and allow them to come in. Occultic rituals or drug use are ways this can happen. There are many more ways. Willingly believing and practicing things the Scripture forbids is another. That is why it is so important to know God’s Word. There is no such thing as a person who is pure in spirit, but practices sin in their body. The whole idea of separating people into these distinguishable parts is a damnable lie. We exist as whole beings in this real, created world that belongs to God, not us. We will be held accountable (judged) by God’s standards, not our own. Again, reason to know, understand and practice what God has given to us in His Word. That is why Jesus said that it is the Word that will judge us.
In reality, this division of soul and spirit and the emphasis on “listening to the heart” this belief that a person can have a pure spirit, but a soul and body seeped in sin, is just a built-in excuse for people who make grand boasts about the purity and power of their spirit, and all the while living lives that are immoral, and making tons of money in the process teaching the heresy of “seed faith” giving. Giving to get in other words. You send them $1000 and God must send you $10,000. “Name it and claim it” or “blab it and grab it.”
Listening to the heart makes everything a matter of subjectivity not objectivity, but the Bible demands objectivity. God’s Word is the external standard by which all things will be judged. It is external because it originates outside of our subjective hearts and or minds. It originates with God, the author and creator of all things.
Do NOT listen to your heart. It is normal to have emotions, happy emotions, sad emotions, and everything in between. Ignoring your emotions is unhealthy, but being enslaved to them is just as destructive. Use your mind to think, but just as only listening to your emotions is off balance, so is only listening to your intellect. Intellectual pride is a damnable sin that leads many men to hell. Listen to and obey the Word of God. Learn the Word of God, rightly interpret the Word of God, (do not yank God’s words out of context to try to make them conform to your words and ideas. Lastly, OBEY the Word of God (not just the parts you like.) Will it be easy? NO. Is it necessary? YES. Has anything worthwhile and rewarding in your life been a piece of cake? NO, but it is the road to life. (The other option doesn’t turn out very well!)
Danny's Stump 