Can We Trust Our Hearts?

How many times have you received the advice, “Trust your heart”. In various forms and idioms, this advice seems to be the standby answer to any issue to which there is not an obvious answer. I can remember in the highschool yearbook I was given, it was graffiti scribbled with such advice on every page!



John Calvin once wrote, “It is no small profit to be robbed of our blind self-love so that we become fully aware of our weakness; to have such an understanding of our weakness that we distrust ourselves, to distrust ourselves to such an extent that we put all our trust in God… “

The problem with such advice is that it is not natural. For most of us, the comfortable response would be quite the opposite. Trusting our heart seems to be the most natural compass to follow.

The Postmodern heartbeat has pumped cynicism through the veins of our culture; we are distrusting of everything. There is no truth, no meaning, no certainty. Yet, even in such a distrusting worldview, trust of the self is the one thing that seems to be left unquestioned.



The warning of Dostoevsky no doubt explains the contradiction. When God is dead, someone or something will take his place. Self, interpretation, and taste are the rulers of the postmodern worldview. Trusting your heart has become the religion of choice. But the questions remain; can you always trust what your heart feels? Can you always rely on what your eyes see?

I once heard Ravi Zacharias recount the story told by Malcolm Muggeridge. There was a time when he was a journalist in India, and he left home one evening to go for a swim. As he entered the water, across the river he saw a woman bathing. Impulsively, he felt the allure of the moment. He had resisted this struggle before, but this time, he felt compelled to cross the line of his conscience. Swimming toward the woman, his mind fed him fantasies of stolen waters. Finally, only a few feet away, he looked again. At once he realized that he was looking into the eyes of a leper—a toothless old woman was grinning at him. Gripped with disgust at the leprous woman he abruptly turned away. As he returned to shore, the thought suddenly overwhelmed him: It was not the woman who was leprous, but his own heart.

The truth is, trusting the feelings given to us by the bubbling up of our heart is utter foolishness. "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" Jeremiah (17:9).

Through the prophet Jeremiah God speaks into our deceitful hearts and motives, "I, the LORD, search the heart and examine the mind" (17:10).

We can define life by feeling and interpretation or we can live as Christ teaches by dying to the self-centeredness that blinds us and following the God who sees. The unwavering good news is that God has a history of opening blind eyes and purifying hearts.