Greg and Amy remind believers that true wisdom comes from aligning our minds with God’s will rather than relying solely on personal emotions or reasoning.
Transcript
Question: What’s the difference between trusting in your heart, which Scripture says not to do, versus trusting in your own human faculties and intuitions for things you have strong evidence to believe are true in your heart? Is trusting in your heart more akin to trusting in your feelings, which fluctuate and change?
Greg: Well, there’s a little ambiguity here for me because he may be referring to Proverbs 3, which I’ll get to in a moment. In that passage, it says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.” That might be the reference. It could also be a reference to our concern where we hear so much in our culture, “Follow your heart,” “Trust in your heart,” “Do what your heart tells you to do,” and “Live your truth”—all that. That’s a concern for us because, in that context, we’re talking about people being slaves to their feelings in the moment instead of trusting what is good, right, and true regardless of how they feel about it. So, there is a concern with the cultural ethic of following your heart.
When it comes to Scripture, though, let’s go to Proverbs 3 because this is where some of the ambiguity scripturally might be coming from: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” Keep in mind that the biblical concept of the heart, especially in the Old Testament, is that it is the center of your being. It says, “Guard your heart,” not, “Guard your emotions.” Now, there’s a reason we should be careful with our emotions. If we’re given to following our emotions rather than what is true, it can lead us astray. But what the writer of Proverbs is talking about here is that our whole self should be trusting in God. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart”—that’s the center of your being—your will, intellect, and emotions. “Do not lean on your own understanding.”
There is a contrast between God’s way and man’s way. The writer of Proverbs is saying it’s not wise to lean on our own understanding rather than on God. I say “rather than on God” because of what follows in the next verse. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.” When we lean on our own understanding and follow our heart in the sense that modern culture promotes, we are often turning towards evil, not away from it. The writer of Proverbs is saying that just trusting in human understanding—meaning human assessment of things, which is different from using evidence and logic to come to reasonable conclusions—it refers to a completely different value system. I say that because throughout Scripture, even in Proverbs, we see an emphasis on knowledge, observing the world, seeing how things function in God’s world, drawing conclusions from the evidence given to us, and so on. We see this in the Gospels and the book of Acts, so it can’t exclude that kind of thing.
What we have here in the Proverbs passage is that we are not moving ahead as if our wisdom and our take on reality are the only things that matter. James has something similar in, I think, James 4, when he says, “Don’t say, ‘I’m going to go to this city or that city, make money, and do this or that.’“ He calls that kind of boasting evil. We keep reading, and he says, “Instead, say, ‘If God wills, I will do this or that.’“ Again, there’s a focus on doing something totally on your own, based on your own thinking, wisdom, and understanding as an autonomous self, without taking God into consideration.
The writer of Proverbs is saying that if you’re leaning on your own understanding, and that’s all you’re leaning on, well, that’s a bent reed. It might not hold you up. By contrast, if, in all your ways, you are acknowledging him, then God will make your paths straight. James is similar. If you’re just making your plans willy-nilly here and there, remember, you don’t even know if you’re going to be alive tomorrow. Instead, understand that God is sovereign. He can intervene in any plan you have. Keep that in mind. Go ahead and make your plans, but remember, they’ll only happen if God wills it, if God allows it.
I think that’s the best way to understand this. Certainly, in the cultural sense, we don’t want to follow our feelings or “live our own truth.” That’s a lie, and our feelings often betray us. There’s a warning there. In Proverbs, I think we get a clear picture of how to balance our understanding, perception, reasoning, and other faculties, while leaning on God and his truth.
Amy: We’re supposed to be conforming our minds to who God is and his Word. That’s how we learn wisdom and apply that wisdom in our lives. As we take in God’s wisdom, we’re learning to use that in life, using our mental faculties.
I think what Proverbs is talking about is more of a moral issue, not as much an intellectual issue. Although, of course, our intellect is shaped by the state of our hearts.
I thought of another verse that he might be referring to, and that’s in Jeremiah 17. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; Who can understand it?” The idea is that we are bent towards believing wrong things or having a flawed moral compass. We need to have that shaped by trusting in what God has told us about those things. But, of course, like you said, Greg, there are all sorts of places in the Bible where we’re supposed to use our intellect. Even Jesus did certain things as evidence for who he is. That’s an example of asking people to evaluate what they see to come to the conclusion that he really is the Messiah. So, there are many examples like that.