…Continued

Craig

Let’s remind ourselves of that really important thing that Simon said right at the beginning of this series. The word ‘blessed’ should be replaced with ‘flourishing’. So you are flourishing if your inner life is unified, if there’s no division within you, if your mind isn’t being pulled in different directions, because what flows outwards is coherent and mirrors what is real.

Roy

It’s the alignment of the inner self and the outward action, isn’t it? When they’re at one there’s a clarity and a purity and, perhaps, life as God intends.

Craig

Which maybe illustrates what Jesus meant when he said ‘I don’t do anything except what I see my father doing’. Now, of course, we don’t understand exactly how the process of hearing clearly worked for him, or exactly what he meant by these words, but we do know that there were times that he went away to be quiet. He listened and he reflected. And I think of that time he was about to go into the temple and then he pauses, saying ‘no, we’ll do this tomorrow’. He heard an inner voice, the voice of wisdom, or maybe a strategic awareness that came from the ability to see the bigger picture.

Simon

In a funny kind of way, contemporary science is helping us get back to what people in the 1st Century would have meant by heart. Because when you think of the heart, the first thing you see in your mind is that red thing that pumps, or something about love. There’s a sentimental image that is completely separate from the mind, or from negative emotions. It’s completely separate from the body. 

But now we know that our entire nervous system is connected. So, when people in the first century were talking about the heart, they were talking about that fluttery feeling you get in your stomach. They were talking about a whole person, about the way our body reacts to our environment. So this pure heart isn’t about being in love with Jesus and is not about having nice sentimental feelings about God. It’s about integration. It’s almost a monomania about the ways of God, because that can only be incarnated in our whole body. 

And so, now we know something in a scientific way that people in the 1st century were unaware of. We know that, when they were talking about the heart, they were talking about everything they felt in their whole body. They were seeing themselves as a whole person rather than, a romantic, sentimental, emotional bit of me that’s my heart.

Helen

One of the things that had occurred to me was that, as we were talking about our will and about our whole bodies, we have power in ourselves to follow Jesus and to see God. This means that we aren’t reliant or dependent on powers or institutions or other dominions. We can actually choose to be pure in heart, in our direction, in our focus, in what we want to be in life. And we can see God. We don’t need layers of religion in order to be close to, and in touch with, God. And I think that’s one of the things that I really like about Jesus telling us, if you’re pure in heart, you will see God.

Craig

Yeah. Thank you for using the word power, because of course, we’re doing this because people are saying Jesus is weak. Whereas he is actually telling his disciples that they have power. Weak people are dominated by strong people, or by strong thoughts or strong emotions or whatever else. But, actually, to be pure in heart is to have strength.

James

If the heart is that place in the human psyche where we exercise our will, and in and through which we make our choices in life or where we determine what direction we’re going, then there needs to be purity in order for us to see clearly and act for the good of others.

Helen

Yeah, I think of Psalm 51. I think of that prayer that speaks of creating a clean heart and renewing a right spirit within me. I think when we talk about a clean heart and a clean spirit we are talking about the same thing. We’re relying on the spirit to help us to renew ourselves. That’s not to say that we don’t have power on our own, which is what I’ve just said so I’m not contradicting myself, but I’m recognising that a clean heart is the same as a clean spirit. And it leads us to what God is calling us to be in our relationships with other people.

Roy

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who is a politician and he was relaying a conversation he had with fellow politician. They were both being asked to act in ways that contradicted their core values and were experiencing a very tangible sense of cognitive dissonance. They were able to recognise this because of their general experience that when there’s an alignment between how they live and what they believe they are able to live harmoniously and well. I think there are lots of people who are conflicted by having to exist in contexts where what they really believe is so hard or impossible to live because of outward, external pressures and constraints.

Craig

This makes perfect sense because we’ve been talking about being either united or divided. Time and again I will be listening to the news and am forced to ask myself how these characters that lead us can act like they do. And the only answer I can come up with is that they clearly haven’t worked out for themselves what their values are. If they haven’t done that work, there is nothing for them to be coherent with. If they haven’t even begun that process, what values are they going to live by? 

So an event happens, an opportunity arises, or something goes wrong and they are driven by whatever felt need is uppermost in that very moment. Unless there are values that anchor them, they have nothing to act as a guide. And so when Jesus talks about cultivating a pure heart he is enabling us to find that ability to be internally coherent, and not be overwhelmed by the raging sea that is cognitive dissonance.

Roy

Which gives rise to internal dysfunction, stress and anxiety. Jekyll and Hyde internal divisions.