Willard Renovation of Heart
URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/103821534
Today you will hear many presumably learned people say that there is
no such thing as human nature, or that human beings do not have a nature. Now, there is a long historical development back of this view, which we cannot deal with here, and it is not entirely without an important point. But that point is mismade in the statement that human beings do not have a nature. It then becomesa part of the unchecked political and moral rage against identity that characterizes modern life. This is a rage predicated upon the idea that identity restricts freedom. If ] am a human being, as opposed to, say, a brussels sprout or a squirrel, that placesa restriction upon what I can do, what I ought to do, or what should be done to me. (View Highlight)
Note:: If I have freedom, but I am a meaningless nothing, is the freedom valuable? I can pointlessly do whatever I want. That doesn’t actually sound like freedom to me.
Now, this embattled state of human nature tells us at least two things: First, it tells us that the issue of human nature is of great importance?
too important for us to leave alone. We must deal with it if we are to have anything useful to say about spiritual formation and about the spiritual life that Jesus brings. (View Highlight)
Second, it tells us that the confusion now publicly prevailing over the
makeup of the human being may not be due to its inherent obscurity. Rather, it may be due to the fact that it is a field where strongly armed prejudices?assumptions about what must be the case, ?don't bother me with facts??prevent even well-intended people from seeing what, at least in basic outline, is fairly obvious, simple, and straightforward. (View Highlight)
Note:: It astounds me how much attention two-year-olds get when they make a lot of noise even though they make up a small percentage of the population.
We especially have in mind opinions to the effect that a human being
is purely physical, just an animal?basically, just the human brain. Or the opinion that human beings are, as such, good, or not to be forced to do anything they don?t want to do. (View Highlight)
Note:: So many thoughts on this, primarily around like Stalin and Hitler and the things they forced on people. If people are meaningless goo, why the backlash? Or, conversely, why not just shoot people like Putin without care? Surely, it is insignificant to take him out, but I guess we would have to determine the Ukrainians that he is killing are worthy of the effort to kill him?
best of ?common sense? (View Highlight)
Note:: Common sense isn’t that common, unfortunately.
Now, when we set aside contemporary prejudices and carefully examine
these two great sources, I believe it will become clear that heart, spirit, and will (or their equivalents) are words that refer to one and the same thing, the same fundamental component of the person. (View Highlight)
Will refers to that component's power to initiate, to create, to bring about what did not exist before. (View Highlight)
Spirit refers to its fundamental nature as distinct and independent from physical reality. (View Highlight)
And heart refers to its position in the human being, as the center or core to which every other component of the selfowes its proper functioning. (View Highlight)
The human heart, will, or spirit is the executive center of a human life.
The heart is where decisions and choices are made for the whole person. That is its function. (View Highlight)
This does not mean that the whole person actually does only what the
heart directs, any more than a whole organization actually does precisely what the chief executive officer (CEO) directs. That would be ideal, perhaps (and again, perhaps not); but as any CEO or person in a management position?or even the head of a family?knows, the system rarely goes as it is directed, and never perfectly so. (View Highlight)
six things inseparable from every human life. These together and in interplay make up ?human nature.?
- Thought (images, concepts, judgments, inferences) 2. Feeling (sensations, emotions) 3. Choice (will, decisions, character) 4. Body (actions, interactions with the physical world) ... 5. Social context (personal and structural relations to others) 6. Soul (the factor that integrates all of the other aspects to form one life)
Note how many aspects of the selfare explicitly involved in this passage: the mind (thought), the will (choice), the feelings, the soul, and the body. A major part of understanding spiritual formation in the Christian traditions is to follow closely the way the biblical writings repeatedly and emphatically focus on the various essential dimensions of the human being and their roles in life as a whole. (View Highlight)
But as to what the human being is, it is simply a whole of a certain kind, consisting of parts with properties and functions that give rise to the properties and functions of whole persons. These, in turn, make possible the relationships persons have to the natural and social worlds and?beyond all these, if they are fully alive as spiritual beings?to the kingdom of God. That is what makes up human nature. (View Highlight)
Each aspect or dimension of the person will be a source of weakness or
strength to the whole person, depending upon the condition it is in, and the condition it is in will depend, finally, upon the heart. A person who is prepared and capable of responding to the situations of life in ways that are ?good and right? is a person whose soul is in order, under the direction ofa well-kept heart, in turn under the direction of God. We can better see what this means if we keep in mind what each dimension of the human being does, (View Highlight)
Thought Thought brings things before our minds in various ways (including perception and imagination) and enables us to consider them in various respects and trace out their interrelationships with one another. Thought is that which enables our will (or spirit) to range far beyond the immediate boundaries ofour environment and the perceptions of our senses. Through it our consciousness reaches into the depths of the universe, past, present, and future, by reasoning and scientific thinking, by imagination and art?and also by divine revelation, which comes to us mainly in the form of thought. (View Highlight)
Note:: When was the last time a squirrel or broccoli developed a vaccine?
Or, even displayed meta cognitive abilities or self-awareness?
Feeling Feeling inclines us toward or away from things that come before our minds in thought. It involves a tone that is pleasant or painful, along with an attraction or repulsion with respect to the existence or possession ofwhat is thought of. How we feel about food, automobiles, relationships, positions, and hundreds of other things illustrates this point. (View Highlight)
Will (Spirit, Heart) Volition, or choice, is the exercise of will, the capacity of the person to originate things and events that would not otherwise be or occur. By ?originate? here we mean to include two of the things most prized in human life: ... freedom and creativity. These are really two aspects of the same thing when properly understood, which is power to do what is good?or evil.
If it is our act, there must be added to those conditions the inner and always unforced yes or no by which the person responds to the situation. This response is our unique contribution to reality. It is ours, it is ws, as nothing else is. (View Highlight)
Now we need to be very clear on this point: the capacity for volition,
and the acts of willing in which it is exercised, form the spirit in man. In this narrow and focused sense, the ?spiritual? is not just the nonphysical, as we explained it earlier, but it is the central core of the nonphysical part in man. In us there is much that is not physical that also is not ?spirit??that is, not of the will. (View Highlight)
Human beings have only some small element ofspirit?unbodily, personal power?right at the center ofwho they are andwho they become. It is, above all, this spiric (or will) that must be reached, cared for, and transformed in spiritual formation. The human will is primarily what must be given a godly nature and must then proceed to expand its godly governance over the entire personality. (View Highlight)
It is the heart (Mark 7:21) and spirit John 4:23) that God looks at (1 Samuel 16:7; Isaiah 66:2) in relating to humankind, (View Highlight)
On the other hand, what we feel and think is (or can and should be) to a very large degree a matter of choice in competent adult persons, who will be very careful about what they allow their minds to dwell upon or what they allow themselves to feel. This is crucial to the practical methods of spiritual formation. (View Highlight)
People nearly always act on their feelings, and think it only right. The will is then left at the mercy of circumstances that evoke feelings. Christian spiritual formation today must squarely confront this fact and overcome it. (View Highlight)
Body The body is the focal point of our presence in the physical and social world. (View Highlight)
Just recall how cumbersome
it is when we /ave to think about what we are doing?learning to skate, drive a car, speak a language. The very purpose of learning or training in some activity is to bring it under our direction without our having to think about it or make decisions regarding it. The body makes this possible. It has a ?knowledge? of its own. (View Highlight)
Note:: I was thinking about this the other day. Why aren’t we just inherently good at things? Why do we always start at failure and work our way up? That is so interesting to me.
Social Context The human self requires rootedness in others. This is primarily an ontological matter?a matter of beingwhat we are. It is not just a moral matter, a matter of what ought to be. And the moral aspect of it grows out of the ontological.? (View Highlight)
That is why people in general think more often about God than about any other thing, even sex and death. But because ail are to be rooted in God?and really are, whether they want it or not?our ties to one another cannot be isolated from our shared relationship to him, nor our relationship to him from our ties to one another. Our relations to others cannot be right unless we see those others in their relation to God. Through others he comes to us and we only really find others when we see them in him. (View Highlight)
And rejection, no matter how old one is, is a sword thrust to the soul that has literally killed many. (View Highlight)
Note:: Cancel culture
Soul The soul is that dimension of the person that interrelates all of the other dimensions so that they form one life. It is like a meta-dimension or higher-level dimension because its direct field of play consists of the other dimensions (thought, body, and so on), and through them it reaches ever deeper into the person?s vast environment of God and his creation. (View Highlight)
Because the soul encompasses and ?organizes? the whole person, it is
frequently taken to be the person. We naturally treat persons as ?souls.? But, of course, the soul is not the person. It is, rather, the deepest part of the self in terms of overall operations; and like the body, it has the capacity to operate (and does, largely, operate) without conscious supervision. (View Highlight)
But for all of the soul?s vastness and independence, the tiny executive
center of the person?that is, the spirit or will?can redirect and re-form the soul, with God's cooperation. It mainly does this by redirecting the body in spiritual disciplines and toward various other types of experiences under God. (View Highlight)
Influence on Action But now we turn to action. Our actions always arise out of the interplay of the universal factors in human life: spirit, mind, body, social context, and soul. Action never comes from the movement of the will alone. Often? perhaps usually?what we do is not an outcome of deliberate choice and a mere act of will, but is more of a relenting to pressure on the will from one or more of the dimensions of the self. The understanding of this is necessary for the understanding and practice of spiritual formation, which is bound to fail if it focuses upon the will alone. (View Highlight)
Note:: It is crazy the The Tipping Point#^668906, or social context, has on our actions.
This is one of the things we are most inclined to deceive ourselves about. IfI do evil, I am the kind of person who does evil; if I do good, I am the kind of person who does good (1 John 3:7-10). Actions are not impositions on who we are but are expressions of who we are. They come out of the heart and the inner realities it supervises and interacts with. (View Highlight)
By standing in the correct relation to God through our will we can receive grace that will properly reorder the soul along with the other five components of the self. In the life away from God, the order of dominance is
Body Soul
Mind (Thought/Feeling) Spirit God
This is the order in idolatry of all kinds, including that of those who worship ?the good life,? as it is often called. (View Highlight)
In the life under God, by contrast, the order of dominance is
God Spirit
Mind (Thought/Feeling) Soul Body
Here the body serves the soul; the soul, the mind; the mind, the spirit; and the spirit, God. Conversely, the life ?from above? flows from God throughout the whole person, including the body and its social context. (View Highlight)
It is the central point of this book that spiritual transformation only happens as each essential dimension of the human being is transformed to Christlikeness under the direction of a regenerate will interacting with constant overtures of grace from God. Such transformation is not the result of mere human effort and cannot be accomplished by putting pressure on the will (heart, spirit) alone. (View Highlight)
But this eternal kind of life is not a passive life. Passivity was for the
Israelites, and it is for us, one of the greatest dangers and difficulties of our spiritual existence. The land promised to them was one of incredible goodness??flowing with milk and honey,? as it is repeatedly described (see Exodus 3:8, for example). But it still had to be conquered by careful, persistent, and intelligent human action, over a longperiod oftime. (View Highlight)
But in both cases ?grace? means we are to be, and are enabled to be, active to a degree we have never been before. Paul?s picture of grace is ?And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed? (2 Corinthians 9:8). (View Highlight)
But resolute action for the good requires that things make sense.
You wouldn?t want someone caught up in helter-skelter to work on your lawn mower or computer. Life makes sense only if you understand its basic components and how they interrelate to form the whole. Evil, on the other hand, thrives on confusion. God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33). (View Highlight)
We need to access the fullness of biblical teachings on these matters. We suffer far too much from the influence ofa surrounding culture that thrives on confusion. (And therefore its denial that human beings have a nature.) This may seem like a harsh thing to say about our ?Christian world,? and I am sorry to say it; but the issues here are too important to mince words. (View Highlight)