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.

Defy the Darkness, America!

America, some say, is on the verge of a breakdown.

Many leading voices in this country have suggested that the solution to the problems plaguing the world will only be solved when the voices of the American people are lifted to Washington and the government finally hears our cries of dissatisfaction. Tea Parties, Internet Networks, and Blog Groups have quickly snowballed into a nationwide phenomenon.

As a thinking American, I am ecstatic with the mobilization of Americans coming together to think.

I would like to suggest that WHAT we think about is paramount to whether these mobilizations will have any effect on our future. There is one central issue that I believe could single-handedly, over time, bring our country back to it's former glory.

I present to you the necessity of "The Conservative Biblical Family". Whether you have been a liberal, independent or conservative in your political outlook, a return to this ideology solves problems on so many fronts. Take for example, our public school system. Talk to five public school teachers and you'll get five different takes, but a single overarching disease infecting todays youth: a lack of morality.

About half of all adults (54%) claim that they make their moral choices on the basis of specific principles or standards they believe in. Other common means of making moral choices include doing what feels right or comfortable (24%), doing whatever makes the most people happy or causes the least conflict (9%), and pursuing whatever produces the most positive outcomes for the person (7%).

I get a vision of todays youth walking down a dark hallway. Their eyes are useless in the black and the abysmal ambiguity, and an unknown end to their journey quickly insights chaos. They feel around the hallway, the cool walls offering little comfort or guidance. What feels “good” becomes morally expedient. We are bringing up children without a moral compass, and letting the institutional halls of a godless education replace any solace of spirituality with the bosom of Darwin.

The Conservative Biblical Family would take responsibility not only for the spiritual training of their children, but for their education as well. The conservative Christian world-view formation of our children would resurrect the moral compass of our nation. The history of our country speaks to this. While this country gives freedom for a family to choose their own religion to form a moral compass, there is no doubt that as our families have become gradually less Christian, our country has experienced moral decay, a rise in crime, apathy toward honor, and less of an influence around the world. The Barna Group agrees: "By an overwhelming margin - 74% to 23% - adults agreed that their religious faith was becoming even more important to them than it used to be as a source of objective and reliable moral guidance."

On average, adults who describe themselves as "mostly liberal" on sociopolitical issues were twice as likely as those who describe themselves as "mostly conservative" to participate in activities that conflict with traditional moral perspectives. In particular, liberals were five times more likely to participate in unmarried sex (20% vs. 4%), more than three times as likely to view pornography (30% vs. 8%), more than twice as likely to lie (21% vs. 8) and to get drunk (17% vs. 7%), and twice as likely to engage in retaliation (13% vs. 6%) and gossip (17% vs. 9%).

In today's America, ultimate truth is in short supply. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about a bunch of people walking around fibbing about taxes, fixing ballots, or apologizing for American arrogance. Our problem lies at a more basic level. Many influencers in today's America doubt whether truth can even be known. They prize agnosticism as humility. They see tolerance as the only answer to universal doubt, and I don't see a light at the end of this tunnel without the family finding itself standing on Biblical Truth. Unfortunately, many Christians, especially those associated with the Emergent church, have quaffed deeply of this postmodern wasteland. Instead of standing on an unpopular platform of universal truth, some have chosen an easier lighter burden of ambiguity. '

George Barna, in his book, "Think Like Jesus" states, "Few people in churches have a biblical worldview because most preachers seem intent on teaching broadly rather than deeply. That’s emotionally and intellectually appealing, but until people have a mental framework through which they can process the numerous principles, ideas and stories provided in the Bible, preaching is typically an exercise in information overload. We have to prepare people to know what to do with the information. A biblical worldview gives them the filter they need to know how to categorize and implement the facts and ideals they receive."

I would like to leave you with these questions, and hope they inspire those who read it to stand with me in this necessary battle:


1. How can objective morality exist without God?
2. Are our public schools teaching from a standpoint that God may exist?
3. If objective morality cannot exist without God, why are we allowing “morality” to be a lesson that our schools primarily give our kids?
4. Just how would the nation look if the Conservative Biblical Family were the prevalent system of parenting?

Defy the Darkness

This short film by Lamplighter Theater will inspire you to shine your light in dark places.

God's Existence and Relevance Debate