Knowledge of the Heart
By Christina O’Brien
I have always had a heart for science. As a kid I wanted to be an entomologist, then an astrophysicist, then a neuroscientist, and now having studied neurobiology in college, I work as a science teacher. I love asking questions, conducting experiments, and looking for evidence, and I praise God for human reason and the scientific method.
The problem is that I, along with most post-enlightenment Westerners, love it a little too much. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that our modern education, with its emphasis on epistemologies (theories of knowledge) that privilege evidence and human reason over all else, has posed a particular obstacle in my relationship with God at certain times in my life. Recent reflection on this has revealed that perhaps this challenge is rooted in a crisis of identity that comes about as a result of a stifling of the deepest part of who I am: the heart.
In a modern enlightenment view, there is a consensus that there is no “heart” other than the blood-pumping muscle. Yet we know what it feels like to have our hearts sing, break, be revealed, and be rejected. This non-scientific heart seems to affect us more than almost anything else. But we still largely ignore it outside of its ability to communicate symptoms of positive or negative circumstances. In the popular modern epistemologies, it is impossible to know things in your heart and anything that might reveal itself to the heart is probably not reliable at all.
The problem is that God as he is revealed to us in Scripture seems to speak to the heart, not the brain. In the Bible, the heart is mentioned 826 times. It doesn’t say “brain” once[1]. So if we are ignoring the existence of our hearts, it follows logically that we will struggle in our relationships with God.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church sheds some much-needed light on this concept that has been quietly stamped out of popular western anthropology.
“The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place ‘to which I withdraw.’ The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.” CCC 2563
When I first read these words, something clicked within me. I knew there was some place that was deeper than my psychic drives and beyond the capabilities of my own reason because it had driven my actions before. I can remember one of the first times I came to a decision that was “beyond” my “psychic drives” while communing with God in prayer. It was not as much a decision as it was deep knowledge of what I must do. It didn’t feel like other knowledge - it was nothing that I had mastered or could prove. This type of knowledge is like revelation, it fosters wonder, and it drives us to action. I find myself trying to question this type of knowledge since it lacks empirical evidence, but I am unable to refute it because it’s truer than anything else I know, albeit mysterious. It’s the knowledge with which I know the dignity of every human person and with which I know the living God. It’s the knowledge that satiates my fundamental desire to know and be known.
How freeing is it to acknowledge the true existence of this place within us that allows for this mysterious, yet familiar type of knowledge? Maybe you’ve known something in your heart and questioned it endlessly since you couldn’t rationalize it. Maybe you’ve heard God speak in your heart and you denied it because it couldn’t be validated by any external source. How comforting it is to know that truth is not limited by our meager human senses and instruments. Instead a hidden center beyond our own grasp that can only be known by the omnipotent creator, is the most real place of decision and truth. Lies and grasping cannot exist here. There is only truth, tenderness, love, trust. A heart where love abides fosters renewed virtue, relinquishment of control, and desire to follow God’s will freely.
Flipping the epistemological narrative was a necessary step toward letting God transform my life by awakening this repressed heart and quieting my stubborn mind. Evidence and rationalism still have their place, but I am now learning the language of the whispers and promptings that stir in my heart. These promptings free me to trust in my heart’s desire for virtue over whatever secular evidence suggests that I should choose something else. Perhaps more importantly, they alert me to the presence of the almighty God who is love, dwelling within me, allowing freedom and joy to sprout even in the darkest circumstances when a secular attitude would justify despair.
God has a true home within you, even though there is no scientific evidence for it. Your heart is real, and God dwells there, waiting for his love to be acknowledged. May we let him awaken our sensitivities to his action in our hearts, believing whole-heartedly in this hidden place and the God who makes his beautiful, unique home there.
[1] Collins, L. G., Does the Bible Contradict Accepted Biological Concepts? (Creation/Evolution, Issue 36, 1995), 15-23, http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/heart.html (accessed November 5, 2019).
