Head and Heart: What God Has Joined, Let No Man Separate

In the Bible, the heart is not just where people have emotions. It’s also where they think. In a good translation of Scripture, you will often hear about the thoughts of the heart. It’s a holistic way of talking: it unites thoughts and feelings in a single whole by putting them together in the same place, rather than cutting them apart and locating them in different compartments—thoughts in the head, feelings in the heart. The Bible evidently wants us to realize that our thinking and feeling always go together.

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One consequence of this biblical habit of speech is that Scripture never tries to find a way to bring head and heart together. There would be no point to it. We already think, feel, desire, and understand in one and the same place. Call it the heart—though you can also call it the spirit or soul or indeed mind or kidneys if you wish.

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What I am suggesting is that we never have to make the effort to bring our thoughts and feelings together because they were never separate in the first place. The problems we have about head and heart today, both in education and Christian discipleship, arise mainly from bad habits of speech. We talk as if our thinking originates in a place different from our feelings, and that makes it hard to notice what’s really going on in our hearts. We overlook the way our thinking is always affected by our feelings—sometimes driven by them—and also the way our feelings are stirred up by our thoughts. If we adopted more biblical habits of speech, we would have a better understanding of ourselves, our hearts and minds, and our moral lives.

More on this at Modern Reformation: The Thoughts of the Heart

📍 MILESTONE: May 27, 2024 marks 50 years since the martyrdom of Anna Strikwerda, a nurse at an OPC-sponsored missionary hospital in Eritrea. You can read about her story in this month’s New Horizons magazine. See if you can spot the name of a certain Covenant member who also served in Eritrea around the same time.

🐝 THE BUZZ: Covenant loves Family Camp, and it’s just around the corner. If you are a part of Covenant or our extended family and friends, we hope to see you there! It’s June 17-21 at PineCrest Christian Conference Center in Twin Peaks, CA. Remember to register before May 29.