Musing 30

As much as I love looking at old catechisms, I think to this day Heidelberg 1 still holds a special place in my heart.

Growing up I had heard that the Westminster Catechism spoke to the mind, but the Heidelberg spoke to the heart. And I can’t think of a better way to phrase it.

The larger and shorter catechisms both feel like an attempt at a systematic theology written in socratic fashion. Meanwhile, the Heidelberg feels like a layperson speaking.

And we need both approaches in our lives. Our minds were granted by God to help us discern the truths of creation and to gain wisdom so we can apply our knowledge to live. But learning to speak from our hearts is necessary as well, especially as we learn to mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with the rejoicing.

It has often been said that there’s an 18 inch gap between the head and the heart, but that gap is also unfathomably vast. We can affirm things as “true” while biting our tongue and not really believing it to be true. We can give our friends compliments while stabbing them in the back in our hearts.

When we follow Jesus, we need both the head and heart engaged. The mind must be engaged so we can worship in spirit and in truth. Following with only our mind may mean we acknowledge Jesus as Lord, but refuse to actually war against our sins. When we follow with our hearts but not our minds, we end up being blown about by every wind of doctrine, having no anchor in the truth, and we end up worshipping an idol we named Jesus.

In our day, there is over warfare on both of these fronts. The world comes up with worldviews and interpretations of facts that are just plausible enough to detract from the faith. We are also told to follow our hearts and that no one should tell us that feeling is wrong. Nevermind the fact that our hearts are deceitful, fickle things. And so we struggle with the truth that our feelings are not arbiters of reality. While our knee jerk feelings can expose where our hearts currently are (for better or worse), they don’t, in and of themselves, impart knowledge of how we should react.

Now sometimes we do orient those feelings into action correctly. We become angry at injustice in the world, we desire to see violent criminals brought before the judge and receive their due punishment.

On the flip side, when we only engage our mind, we can distract ourselves with minutiae of a given topic and forget to help the image bearers of God who are suffering in this world,

Let us seek to have both mind and heart follow Christ and recognize that both must be sanctified so that our whole person can honor the Lord.