"heart issue" and heart issues

In the Christian circles I have been part of over the last decade I have heard an idiomatic expression I have never heard anywhere else. The expression is "heart issue". It almost invariably refers to an imputed motive, though it can refer to a curiosity or discernment about ACTUAL motives. When a Christian says he or she wants to address "the heart issue" this is, at the risk of speaking too broadly and cruelly, a kind of Christianese psycho-babble, a pop pyschological shibboleth that goes unrecognized because of a tacitly assumed "biblical" foundation.


Few things, just now, seem dumber or more risky to me than a Christian going to another Christian attempting to address "a heart issue". I don't say this because Christians are not called to be irons sharpening irons to each other. I early on came to an appreciation that "blows from a friend are better than kisses from an enemy" even though I have written elsewere in this blog about how the riddle-like nature of many proverbs suggests that many Christians only reflect upon one possible meaning of this verse and to that one meaning, in contrast to the other, I intend to devote my attention.


Christians often give themselves liberties that normal heathens would not advise. What I mean to say is that a husband and a wife might have an argument and, whereas in a not-overtly spiritual marriage the two would talk through their differences and work out some kind of solultion if they want their relationship to continue being healthy, a spiritual couple may well have lengthy discourses about how this, that, and the other are "heart issues" or "sin issues". Of course there are perfectly legitimate reasons for discussing all of life with those categories in mind for a Christian ... but I have seen a few cases in which that spirituality becomes a tool that a Christian can appropriate, pious-sounding language invoked as leverage for much less than pious thoughts, feelings, and actions.


What I alluded to earlier I will explain here, the famous proverb that is often rendered "faithful are the wounds of a friend, deceptive the kisses of an enemy" or in the aforementioned alternate wording, can also be read in a substantially different but apparently similar way: the wounds of a friend endure but the kisses of an enemy are profuse. WHEN a friend hurts you the wound is terrible and long-lasting precisely because the wound comes from a friend. If you don't believe that this is a practical reflection or meditation on the nature of the proverb do yourself the favor of reading Psalm 55! Yes, I am aware of the christological import of the psalm but bear with me as I have come to realize in the last seven years that a default mode of interpreting the psalms ONLY as christological references has been one of my biggest problems in appreciating the psalms. I have already written about that elsewhere so forgive yet another digression.


What I have meant to say in the above is to note that there is a flip side to a popular proverb through which we as Christians can justify confronting fellow believers on what we consider to be their great failures. If we only consider the first, more popular meaning of the proverb we may be quick to confront a "friend" (see any variation of the "open letter" in blogging) without considering the second, less popular meaning. We are quick to suppose that in Jesus our blows prove our faithfulness without considering that they will be long-lasting and whether or not the long-lasting effects of the blows are going to be the most faithful way to express a God-honoring friendship. The desire to offer the "wounds from a friend" may be a sign of neither friendship nor help. The proverb obliges us to consider whether we are friends before counseling that faithful blows will be helpful.

I have seen a few cases in my own life where I or others have assumed the worst about each other as fellow Christians and the results were disastrous. Not too long ago I saw to Christians I know display a problematic relational pattern. I eventually concluded I had to speak to both Christians separately about this pattern. Without getting too detailed what I noticed among them both was a pattern in whiich each Christian felt justified in having a suspicious disposition based on an assessment of the other's heart. One of them actually said that the concern at sake was not addressing concrete behavior but "the heart issue".


That was the point where I pointed out that that, precisely, was the problem. He wanted to get past specific, concrete measurable things that could be practically addressed to get at "the heart issue" and that attitude and assumption was actually where the bad faith was developing. He had already made up his mind about what was in his neighbor's heart based on his own concerns. I had seen the same problem with the other Christian. We can tell ourselves that by wanting to skip past the behavior and get to "the heart" that we are doing the Christian thing. In many cases we are not, we are tempted to spiritualize our own resentments and fears. I suggested to both Christians that what would work better is for concrete things to get addressed. I even went so far as to argue that in one case the proper response was not to go in and try to address the "heart issue" but to instead eastablish a concrete approach to mutually agreed upon objecctives.


When I was told that this might skip the heart issue I pointed out that we should not ignore the power of operant conditioning. For instance, I would suspect any parent knows that a child never has the "heart" to clean his or her room without some kind of external motivator. It takes a lot of conditioning and training and encouragement and, let's face it, rewards to induce a child to make a habit of cleaning a room. I'm not even an adult who is as concerned as others about how tidy my room happens to be. My hope is that the Christians I talked to stopped assessing each other on the basis of "heart issues" that were projections of their own suspicions or resentments and were able to discuss the concrete behavioral and relational rifts that developed in their relationship.


There are some Christians whose "heart issue" is that they constantly want to frame their concerns, their objections, their fears or resentments of others as "heart issues" in other people that must be addressed. It comes off as a wonderfully spiritual and c0nvincing approach to spirituality but it means that the Christian who embraces this kind of spirituality becomes an insufferable, sanctimonious disputer. Differences that might otherwise be manageable if kept at the mundane level on which the occur are elevated to nearly insurmountable problems because "the heart issue" has to get addressed.


And naturally how this plays out pours fuel on the fire rather than puts a fire out. This leads to a Christian who, to put things unfairly and bluntly, is much happier dishing out than taking confrontations about "heart issue" subjects in any relational context. "I" get to tell you that the real problem between us is the "heart issue" but if "you" confront me about being a jerk then "I" get to hide behind the idea that if "you" knew my heart things would go more easily. It becomes a self-exonerating cycle.


So if one Christian notices another Christian doesn't clean the dishes as much as he'd like he can tell that other Christian that he'd appreciate a lot more diligence about dishwashing. OR he could say that more than the dishes not being washed to his liking he's REALLY concerned about the "heart issue" behind the person who is not washing the dishes as much as he likes. If you've spotted the Christianese so far you can imagine how being on the receiving end of this kind of pious condescension could inspire a negative reaction even from a fellow believer.

Perhaps the first Christian might even go so far as to throw in another wonderfully Christianese buzzword and say that it's a matter of "stewardship". In terms of rhetoric this is actually a brilliant maneuver because it skips past any enquiry as to the nature of the behavioral lapse and presupposes the subject around which any discussion should happen. Anyone who attempts to back the conversation up to concrete actions is trying to dodge "the heart issue", which has been made about stewardship of objects and has not managed at any point to touch the relational dynamics at hand. Of course the first Christian who brings up "stewardship" has absolutely no idea that he's done this and only perceives an uneasiness or hostility on the part of the recipient of his admonitions, which he then suspects is yet another "heart issue".

There, if you're with me this far, is one of the inevitable risks of framing everything in "heart issue" terms--it becomes a nasty form of self-fulfilling prophecy in which employing spiritual jargon and making assumptions about the motive of the other person actually goes a long way to transforming them into the adversary you have, in your heart, already decided that other person must be. Through your own eagerness for confrontation or moral evaluation you paradoxically end up turning the person into the kind of person you fear they are by how you relate to them. Men look at outward appearances but God looks on the heart.

Now some may say at this point that we cannot judge the heart but we can judge the fruit. What this often really means in practice is judging actions and associations. Let's take a popular example, evangelicals and politicians. There are plenty of evangelicals who consider Bush 2 to have been a solid president who respects the Constitution. I have many sincere doubts about that myself. I don't see a necessary correlation between one's bona fides as an evangelical and the success of one's given job.

Now it's true that the scriptures describe rulers as good or bad based on what are fairly simple criteria. We don't live in a theocratic monarchy, obviously, but we can search the scriptures and consider leaders to succeed or fail in governing in a way that seems to conform to scriptural precedents. But the scriptures also reveal that some of the best intended Israelite kings made some of the worst mistakes and had the least competence in important leadership decisions. Even a king who starts off well can be ruined by initial success. If you want to read further on that I have some blog entries on Jehoshephat and Amaziah for your consideration. For this entry it suffices to say that another problem of attempting to address "heart issues" is that a person may have the best heart possible for a mortal and still be imcompetent.

Perhaps the best way to sum all of this up is in the apostolic exhortation that we consider others as better than ourselves. We are not told we have no value, of course, because we are being saved by the work of Christ and the Spirit for fellowship with the Father, Son and Spirit. Considering each other as better than ourselves as a useful corrective against the temptation to make things about addressing someone else's "heart issue". It would be overstating my case to mention that Pharisees were great at jumping into the lives of other people and confronting them about their "heart issue". They tried doing this with Jesus disciples and then eventually directly questioned Jesus' motives. Of course we know from the scriptures that God the Son took their allegations and assumptions about His "heart issue" and turned it back on them. Their eagerness to make everything about Jesus' "heart issue" gave the Lord the opportunity to confront them about the real problem at hand, THEIR heart issue.