Hearts of Flesh

In the liner notes for his album, nothing like the Sun, Sting writes, “Why does tradition locate our emotional center at the heart and not somewhere in the brain?”

A fair question. Science tells us that our emotional life is housed in the limbic system of the brain, which also has to do with the formation of memory.

And yet we intuitively think of the heart, the muscle that obstinately keeps us alive, as our emotional center and instinctual guide. Feel-good movies often have the line “follow your heart” (as opposed to “follow your limbic system”), and as Christians we often speak of “head knowledge” versus “heart knowledge.”

Even God (who is undoubtedly aware of how the limbic system works) employs the metaphor of the heart often. He tells Ezekiel, “I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ez. 11:19 ).

The heart is not only a picture of our emotions, but of what drives our will. That’s why God has always been concerned with the hearts of men, that they be soft hearts, hearts of flesh.

What can we say about a “heart of flesh?” It is alive whereas stone is dead. It is soft and yielding whereas stone is recalcitrant. It responds, contracting and releasing, whereas stone remains still, proud and unresponsive. 

So the “heart of flesh” has all the characteristics of faith. It is alive because of God. It listens to God. It believes God. And it perseveres in God.

Every Christmas we see in the scripture two examples of heart responses. Through Gabriel, God tells Zechariah that his son, John, will “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children” (Lk 1:17). While Zechariah is a priest and a man of faith, he responds in the following verse with a stony doubt reflective of his nation’s long history of unbelief: “How shall I know this?”

But Mary, a young girl, responds to Gabriel’s message with a question based on God’s character and His will for her (ie. since I’m not married, how will I become pregnant?). Not bitter and jaded by experience, Mary’s curious mind guided by her soft heart of flesh is an example to us all.

As we continue to see hearts of stone and hearts of flesh respond to God in their tell-tale ways, Christmas should be a reminder to us of what is most important. It is not the way in which we excite each other with Christmas cheer that matters, but the way in which we spur one another on to love and good deeds, actions that are only doable when our hearts are bowed in faith to the will of God.