Published by When Heart And Soul Collide
Almost any inspirational book, recording or movie will, at some moment, tell you to “Follow your heart.” For Christians, that can be a slippery slope. Here’s why.
Here’s a scenario to contemplate:
Your life is going well. You are reaching out to embrace your dreams. Your loved ones are healthy and happy. If you look beyond your own little corner of the universe, things aren’t so blissful. However, in spite of your concerns about climate change, political upheaval, and increasingly uncivilized behavior in our society, your primary focus is on your life.
Then, things begin to turn. Your health suddenly begins to crumble. Your boss retires and is replaced by an unknown “corporate” type, or worse yet, a rival. You find yourself faced with unanticipated financial difficulties.
What do you do? You turn to your faith to sustain you. You pray for help, for a path out of your troubles to open before you. Even though they may be the result of your own poor judgment, you pray for God to bail you out.
As your problems deepen, your prayers become more fervent, less focused, more general in their appeal. God, why is this happening to me? What have I done to deserve this? I need a financial windfall. I need a better job. Please heal me.
Driven by your emotional turmoil, your prayers are indeed following your heart.
We all tend to be impatient, and often, when our prayers aren’t answered in what we consider to be an appropriate amount of time, we become frustrated, perhaps even angry with God. Why aren’t you answering my prayers? Are you listening? If you love me, why won’t you help me?
Is there any among us who hasn’t felt this way?
We are emotional beings. God created us this way in order to allow us to use our lives in a myriad of wonderful ways. When we see a beautiful sunrise, we don’t speak of it in detached, rational terms; we say it is magnificent. When Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony, his soaring music expressed the joy of being God’s creation.
Likewise, when we are hurt, we express our pain through tears of sorrow, or cries for mercy, acts of anger. No matter what happens to us at the moment, our emotions drive us.
Here is where following the soul comes to bear.
Life’s troubles surely test our faith. Whether it’s personal trouble or the tragedy of the world around us, our faith will be strained. No amount of rational, unemotional discourse will ease our pain. Only by reaching into our soul can we pass the test.
God created us with free will. However, when our will is driven by our emotions, we often stray. For example, we believe that striving for a certain thing is what we want. We think about it, we pray about it, and it becomes part of our daily makeup. It becomes a goal, a dream, and as such begins to take on an emotional element.
Because we have now formed an emotional attachment with our goal, we begin to long for it. Our emotions overcome our rationality. We yearn for something which will, in turn, “make us happy.” We may come to believe that the voice inside us may actually be God speaking to us, endorsing our path. Have you ever done this? I certainly have.
Our soul is God’s own presence in us. It is something ethereal, something we often refer to but never touch, something we can never really define. It is through the soul that God speaks to us.
The Bible is laced throughout with physical miracles: the parting of the Red Sea, Saul being struck blind on the road tom Damascus. Yet, in modern times, such visible, tangible miracles would seem to have vanished. Has God gotten out of the business of miracles?
No. Miracles in our age are of a more personal nature. They aren’t necessarily physical: we don’t see a mountain suddenly leveled, for example. As faith evolves, and we develop a personal relationship with God, the miracles in our lives become more intangible.
If we pray from the soul and not the heart, our prayers take on a broader scope. For example, in The Bishop’s Wife, Henry believes he is praying for a cathedral. However, the Angel Dudley tells him that he is actually praying for guidance.
By recognizing the difference between the urges of our heart and the doorway to God of our soul, we open ourselves to receiving His will. Once we accept His guidance, we can overcome the emotional irrationality which makes us frail Christians. We strengthen our faith by succumbing to His will, not from the sandy ground of emotion, but from the firmness of faith planted on rock.
Don’t mistake me: emotion is a wonderful human trait; it allows us to love one another, to nurture one another, to develop our talents in ways no other creature can. It is the underpinnings of genius.
And yet, if our faith is based solely on our emotional tie to God, we tread a dangerous path. By recognizing that it is our soul which raises us above all other creation and fosters within us a part of God, we can strengthen our faith and, indeed, move mountains.
