We would love to see the world embrace the full richness of God’s best offer. Christ Himself said most of the world would ignore His gift, so the next best thing is for them to embrace the Covenant of Noah. They won’t do that, either. At least, not as long as Western Civilization stands in the way. In fact, we have a very, very long way to go before anything like that is even possible.
We are left with one very important mission: We need to create an alternate culture, almost like a counter-culture, that centers on the heart-led way. We know that God alone can create faith by raising dead souls to life, but Scripture says everyone is accountable to Noah, and Noah requires the heart. Given what we can discover through studies in Ancient Near Eastern cultures, we know that the heart-led way was presumed the norm. While the Bible points out frequent failures of that norm, it was still the norm.
We cannot recreate the whole culture of those ancient times. We can resurrect the one key element that makes any culture worth preserving, and that’s the heart-mind as the standard. We also know that we would be fighting resistance the whole way as long as folks are still under a Western mind-set.
Some people are born with an active heart-mind and as soon as you tell them, they jump right into it. Others need more help. They have to go from cerebral Aristotelian to something stronger. Instead, of thinking in terms of stages, it’s best to see this as a continuum.
Early on, folks will learn to trust their intuition. That’s a form of pattern sensing that leaps over sequential steps in analysis. This is a critical departure from relying so heavily on abstract reason. It’s a shortcut just about anyone can learn to use, but it’s definitely sharper in some than in others. Next would be an awareness of the self all the way down to the core. It requires knowing how to spend time alone without craving distractions, able to be with just yourself. This is that moral look-in-the-mirror that scares a lot of people. Sorry; there’s no shortcut. Farther along, we enter the terrain of direct sensing moral truth.
The biggest hurdle is for people to recognize that there is no objective standard; moral vision is personal. Moral truth is God Himself, alive and variable because He relates to each of us individually. So there’s no problem if God tells you one thing and me another. The only issue is whether we can pursue our moral vision as a team or need some space, as well as when and how much.
I can’t help you come with a snappy name for this. While I call it “heart-led” most of the time on this blog, I doubt that term is going to help in all contexts. You can call it simply “mysticism” if you realize that the term is weighed down in our society with a burden of trash we don’t carry. You could refer to it as “a sense of conviction,” but that sounds religious to folks who may not have much initial interest in that. You have to realize that helping them to move their consciousness into their hearts is the prerequisite for a genuine conversion in the first place.
So this really isn’t news so much as clarification. While praying on my ride yesterday, I sensed a strong call to focus more directly on raising up a new culture of heart-centered consciousness. I won’t neglect evangelism in other forms, but this one thing is worthy of our strongest focus.
Care to join me?
I’ll be honest, Ed, I never liked the “heart-led” label, because of the cultural baggage it brings with it. I mean, I know what you mean by it, but using that phrase with others might give the wrong impression. But we get that with using “Christian,” too. Or “religion/religious,” for that matter. I think a lot of how we communicate depends on our particular audience. Not really an easy answer but I think it’s a better one.
Exactly, Jay; I’ve never liked the term “heart-led” because of that baggage. I simply lack anything better. This is why I’m often reticent with folks who aren’t already inside the circle; that’s behind the reticence in a lot biblical references — “a wise man keeps his mouth shut.” You have to invest the time to lay the groundwork first, perhaps wait for cues on what terms to use. When writing on a blog, it’s a dicey game at best.
I think, in my experience, people I’ve known to “follow their heart,” or would claim to say such a thing, just end up doing a lot of stupid or destructive things. Even some Christians. But I get what you mean by it. That’s the danger of relying on language as something too precise; it uses shorthand phrases to bypass the intimacy required to really get their what they are saying.
Well, for my two cents worth, I LOVE the “heart-led” life. Whether it is weighed down with nonsensical or irrelevant meanings for others as opposed to my way of “seeing” things, I quite frankly don’t care. Once the true significance of the meaning of heart-led sinks in, it is totally relevant to this kind of “being”. Father lives in our hearts and leads us through our hearts. Since the heart is the center of our spiritual selves, it only makes sense to call this the heart-led life.