Follow your heart, young man
On gardening our heart
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” - Proverbs 4:23
“Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But…” - Ecclesiastes 11:9
If you asked me in my early twenties to name a Bible verse about the the heart, I would have been ready with Jeremiah 17:9—“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” If you told me your favorite verse was the famously hopeful Jeremiah 29:11, I would have been quick to give you context in an attempt to spoil your positivity. But when it came to the bleak Jeremiah 17:9, I believed there was no further context needed! As I’m sure I said from a pulpit at some point, let’s leave it to Disney to naively instruct us to ‘follow our hearts,’ as if we all do not do that anyways. No, our heart is deceitful. ‘Distrust your heart with all vigilance!’
However, I was wrong. Dangerously wrong. It is not so simple. Consider this from the Preacher in Ecclesiastes:
“Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.” - Ecclesiastes 11:9-10
The Preacher tells this young man to have a cheerful heart, to follow his heart, and to deal with the vexation (grief, worry, and fear) in his heart so that he can enjoy his fleeting youth while it lasts. When is the last time you heard a sermon like that?
Wisdom is not a one-note symphony. Famously, Solomon puts two Proverbs together about confronting a fool that seem to contradict one another (26:4-5). One says do it, the other warns not to. But the point is that wisdom involves paying attention to context. And when it comes to the heart, the Bible is a treasure trove of rich, varied, multifaceted, and at-times-even-paradoxical wisdom.
Jeremiah, who was ignored and persecuted by his people before witnessing the horrors of the Exile and being personally deported to Babylon, knew something had gone terribly wrong with the human heart. Indeed, “who can understand it?” Jeremiah is like a doctor struggling to diagnose a terminal illness. The twisted purposes of the heart are “deep” (Psalm 64:6). However, that is not the whole story. The heart of another can be “drawn out” and known by a wise person (Prov. 20:5). One can “know” their own heart’s joys and griefs even if no one else will ever fully understand (Prov. 14:10). Our heart can be “firm, trusting the Lord” (Psalm 57) or “melting like wax” under pressure (Psalm 22). The heart can be a continual feast and a highway to Heaven (Prov. 15:15, Psalm 84:5). Even Jeremiah constantly describes the possibility of the heart being cleansed (4:14) and engraved with the law (31:33) so that they “no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart” (3:17). After all, we are told above all else to keep/guard our hearts. Why would we ‘keep’ something that is hopelessly deceitful and sick?
All of this is from Jeremiah and a tiny sampling of the ‘wisdom literature’ of the Old Testament. Jesus of course talked about the heart constantly. In his paradigmatic parable that explains all the parables, ‘The Parable of the Sower,’ Jesus talks about the four soils of the heart in Matthew 13. I don’t know how I missed this, but here is what our Lord is saying: our heart is a garden. We are keepers of the garden. Excuse the corny pun, but we are to above all, ‘garden our heart.’ Guarding is part of gardening, but only a small part.
Let’s take a brief and nerdy stroll through biblical theology: Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden, the first Temple, to work it and keep it as the first priest. God and mankind dwelling together. Later we get the portable tabernacle in the wilderness and then the permanent temple in Jerusalem as the physical place where God dwells with man. Then Jesus comes (shortly before the physical temple is finally destroyed) as another mobile tabernacle, God with us, the tent being his flesh. He then, as both High Priest and Sacrifice, ascends to the actual heavenly tabernacle (see the letter to the Hebrews if you have all day) and sends the Spirit upon all flesh, which is where things really start to heat up. The apostle Paul will refer in the same letter to both the gathered assembly (1 Corinthians 3:16) and the individual believer (1 Corinthians 6:19) as temples of God’s presence. Let’s explore the latter: you, the individual believer.
You are a temple of God. Putting all of this together, your body is a new garden of Eden. And in the Bible, what is at the center of the human person? The heart. What is at the center of the garden of Eden? The tree of life. Your heart then is to be a tree of life, a paradise, a holy of holies, a place from which the spring of life flows (Proverbs 4:23) and the fruit of the righteous grows (Proverbs 11:30). John sees all the metaphors come crashing together as the Biblical story comes to a close: the tree of life somehow on either side of the River of the water of life, its fruit and leaves blessing and healing the nations (Revelation 22:1).
When we talk about ‘keeping our garden’ as men, we are thinking of being responsible to those in our care. But we must not neglect our very first responsibility: our own heart. In fact, when we have first tended to our own hearts, being responsible to the various people and duties God has placed before us tends to ‘flow’ much easier (the idea of Matthew 11:28-30). But when our heart is sick, even our well-intentioned actions cause harm and the smallest responsibilities feel like mountains. Nothing flows.
How is your heart?
I think the reason that there is so much talk about and confusion around self-care in our moment is that our culture is so fast-paced, distracted, addicted, and scattered that many of us have simply lost contact with our hearts. A garden that you cannot even find will surely be suffering neglect! It’s far better to be able to say with David and Jesus that your heart is melting like wax or swollen with troubles than to have no idea. A true gardener will be able to tell you all about the little pests, critters, blights, and weeds in their garden. True self-care is not forgetting about others and treating yourself to nice things: it is taking responsibility for your heart. Take bitterness for example. We may be bitter towards a boss for giving us an unjust performance review. We may be bitter towards a friend for not reaching out. We may be bitter towards our spouse for not being more supportive. We may be bitter at our neighbors for voting for a different candidate. Responsibility, or biblical self-care, reminds us that the bitterness in our heart is our own responsibility, not someone else’s.
How is your heart?
Do you know? Is your heart clogged up with “vexation” that needs to be sorted out and cleaned out so it again can be a holy of holies? Is your heart harboring evil thoughts or guilt from unconfessed sin? The heart is the Garden where we walk with God, the secret place we rest and commune with Christ (Revelation 3:20). No one enjoys going on a walk or sitting on a bench in an unkempt, littered garden. And listen: no one is going to clean that space up for you. It is your room. Your responsibility.
How is your heart?
Or as we say at Light Nights, “How is your freaking Garden, bro?” This is not the same as asking about their job or their family. It is to ask about their hearts so that we might know how to better love and encourage them (1 Thessalonians 5:11). It’s to walk with God into another’s Garden and ask: Adam, where are you? And because there is no condemnation in Jesus Christ, we need not hide in the bushes and sew fig leaves for ourselves.
As I write this, the question I am putting to myself is this: what have I been convincing myself is more important than my own heart? To review, our first responsibility is our own heart: finding it and making it a space that we enjoy being in and can invite others into. A million other things feel more pressing, but only a few of those things are actual responsibilities and none of them take priority over gardening our own heart. There is much that could be said on what this involves but I want to highlight one thing above all about gardening: it is slow. Painfully slow at first. It is work, yes, but it is work that never ever involves hurry. Taking responsibility to know and properly care for our own hearts will always involve slowing our lives and minds down.
In Disney, where following your heart is the major key, the protagonists chase their dreams. In the Bible, where following your heart is in the minor key, we walk. As a mentor put it to me a few years ago, we “chase slow” because a culture of hurry fuels our sins and addictions. In a well-tended heart, just because something happens in us or around us, we do not assume we have to do anything about it! Just because I am sad does not mean I deserve a treat. Just because that person is in a bad mood does not mean I have to worry how to cheer them up. Just because our family or team at work is in crisis does not mean I am in crisis. We in fact do not do anything until and unless we feel good about it. This means we can first decide what we feel good, bad, or indifferent about! And that involves a lot of time simply pausing, detaching, relaxing, meditating, pondering, and paying attention to what God is teaching us so we can respond from our hearts rather than react to feelings and circumstances. As they say in 12-Step groups, “easy does it.” Simply slowing down solves and prevents an almost unbelievable majority of our worst problems. Well-tended hearts slow down the body, especially the tongue. “Out of the mouth the heart speaks,” as Jesus put it in Matthew 12:34. A fool multiples words (Ecclesiastes 10:14). The wise are slow to speak, asking the Lord to help them watch their mouth (Psalm 141:3). If you are not feeling a massive sense of relief, you are either quite healthy or may need to slow down and read this paragraph again.
Disney tells us to follow our heart. ‘Period.’ The Bible tells us to follow our heart. ‘But!’ But remember that God will judge (Ecclesiastes 11:9-10). So enjoy your life in the fear of God. We do not like this at first, but when we understand it, it is the beginning of wisdom and of enjoying the life that is really life. When we learn to fear God, we can begin to see to what extent that a million different fears were driving our lives before we learned to fear God. Fear of missing out, fear of being judged, fear of danger, fear of death, fear of failure, fear of settling, fear of making a mistake, fear of quiet, fear, fear, fear. Fear leads us to doing “enjoyable” things like succeeding, performing, traveling, eating, sex, and so much more…while becoming increasingly unable to enjoy anything at all! Why? Because we are not enjoying these things from the heart. It is only skin deep. Our heart was sick with fear, guilt, shame, frustration, worry, grief, etc. God desires our joy, so he commands us to remove such vexation and learn to love from a pure heart.
How?
Let us imagine ourselves as Adam in the Garden of Eden. I think it is radically good news that God’s one command to Adam was to not eat from the tree of knowledge. Adam’s job in the garden was to enjoy himself. That’s what God wanted. As he did so, he would be fruitful and multiply! The one thing he was not to do was try to figure it out on his own. When he got lost, scared, worried, confused, what was Adam to do? Nothing. Simply wait for God and then walk with God for a while. Reconnect with his own heart. After all…where does Christ dwell? In your heart! My three-year old knows that, but we adults tend to forget. Turns out, connecting with your heart is connecting with God. In true fellowship, following Jesus and following our hearts are the same thing. The heart resting in him is not deceitful; it can be trusted. Fear God. Follow your heart.
“Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.” - Augustine