Head and Heart

To become a people who do not believe or feel that argumentation and deep emotion are opposed to each other. For many people the work of the head and the overflow of the heart are at odds. Thinking and feeling are like oil and water; they repulse each other.

Whatever the reason for this tension that exists in so many people, my own experience, my awareness of the experience of others in history, and my understanding of the Bible teach me that it is neither a necessary tension nor a healthy one, at least not to the degree that most people experience it. Most of the opposition we feel between the heart and the head is, I think, due to learned behavior patterns which do not necessarily result from the nature of our emotions or our thought. We have been warned so often about not becoming a cold intellectual that we have trouble imagining the possibility of intellect that lights fires instead of putting them out. Or on the other side we have been taught to be so wary of fanatic emotionalism that we can scarcely believe that a tear in someone's eye might be coming from a logical arguement instead of heart felt passion.
God has given us minds and demanded that we use them in understanding and applying his Word. And God has given us emotions which are equally essential and which he has commanded to be vigorously engaged in his service.
If we neglect the mind we will drift into all sorts of doctrinal error and dishonor God who wills to be known as he is. And if we neglect the heart we will be dead while we yet live no matter how right our creed is. "This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me." So my goal for us is that we put together what so many keep apart to their own hurt. Let us be clear in our heads and warm in our hearts. Let us feel with all our might and think with all our might.

Psalm 1


BOOK I : Psalms 1-41


1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

Now I think this psalm has an argument. The psalm presents the reader with two alternatives of ultimate seriousness. Verse 6, "The Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish." You can either be among the righteous or you can be among the wicked. These are the only two categories of human beings the psalmist is concerned with, and everybody belongs to one or the other.

Along with these two alternative kinds of persons, the psalmist warns of two alternative destinies in this life and at the judgment. If you are righteous you will be like a tree (v. 3). If you are wicked you will be like chaff (v. 4). If you are wicked your way will end in destruction (v. 6b). If you are righteous your way will be known and attended and protected by God even unto glory (v. 6a). For the wicked: chaff-like and ending in destruction. For the righteous: treelike and ending in the glorious congregation of the righteous.

And then along with the two alternative types of persons and two alternative destinies the psalmist tells us one of the essential differences that distinguish the righteous from the wicked. The righteous delight in God's revealed word and meditate on it (v. 2). The wicked scoff at God's word and heap scorn on those who follow it (v. 1).

Blessed, fortunate, happy is the man who delights in God's word rather than joining the scoffers, because he will be treelike not chaff-like and will experience God's care forever rather than perish in the judgment.
Of course the resounding but unspoken implication of the psalm—the cry of the psalmist for all of us to do is what? Delight yourself in the law of God! And meditate on it day and night. That is the main point of the psalm. It stands at the doorway to the Psalter as if to say: All you who enter here, delight in what you hear, do not scoff.