THE
MORAL HEART, PT. 1
By
Jason Moore
The moral heart is misunderstood in our day. Great progress
has been made in understanding the maladies of the physical
heart. Yet while great leaps and bounds have brought us to
the point that bypass surgery has about the same risk as an
appendectomy, the moral center of man’s being has
been shrouded in myth and fiction.
The moral heart, like the physical heart, is constructed of
four chambers. All four chambers have a distinct function
and each must be kept in proper working order to ensure a
healthy heart.
The Intellect is the Digestive Chamber of the moral
heart. It
equips man for three activities: knowing, thinking, and
understanding. Its function for the moral man is closely
kin to that of the digestive organs for the physical man.
It is not just a receptacle but a facility for knowledge
just as the stomach is not just a silo but a refinery for
food. The intellect collects and stores (knowing), chews
and breaks down (thinking), and then distributes and
assimilates (understanding) the information and experience
gathered through the five senses. Faith is an act of the
intellect, not an act of the emotion. “With the heart
man believes…” (Rom. 10:10) is speaking of the
intellect because faith is an intellectual persuasion based
on knowing, thinking and understanding the evidence about
God: “So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the
word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). Three rules for the
care of the intellect correspond to the three God-given
faculties that it possesses: 1) proper diet, 2) proper
exercise, 3) proper clothing. The proper diet for the
intellect is truth. It is properly exercised in the study
and meditation of truth. The only way to properly clothe
the intellect and protect it from the hazards of such
elements as falsehood and myths is by applying the truth to
oneself.
The Emotion is the Combustion Chamber of the moral
heart. As
the word
e-motion suggests
it is the portion of the heart that
moves man.
The emotions are fueled by the intellect. The information
and experience gathered thought the five senses (seeing,
hearing, touching, smelling, tasting) and digested by the
intellect feed and ignite reactions within the emotion
chamber. These reactions, or emotions, then spark chemical
changes within the body that “turn on” a man
for action – to flee, to fight, to cry, to rejoice,
to love. So intense are the physiological changes that
accompany the emotions, that the ancients identified the
seat of the emotions in the belly and loins. Listen to 1
Peter 1:13: “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind
for action.” This passage indicates that emotional
reactions can and must be controlled reactions which
prepare a man to run in the right direction. Emotions move
but they are not equipped either to steer or to brake; they
are just the engine room. A man controls his emotions by
steering his intellect. He turns on and off his emotional
burners by turning his head or his attention and by
refining the mixture of information and experience which
fuel his emotion – by pondering things true,
honorable, right, pure, lovely, reputable, excellent, and
praiseworthy (Phil. 4:11). Meekness or gentleness is
chiefly the virtue of mastering the emotions. The man like
Esau who is a slave to his passions will sell his
inheritance for a mess of pottage. Never mastering himself,
he is always the slave of another. The meek, on the other
hand, inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5).