Humble Heart vs Proud Mind
The mind gets desperate when it wants a new problem to solve and will attach itself to anything. It craves a conflict to resolve. It will tackle any topic, even the examination of scripture. In deciphering truth it only creates more encryption. It deliberates contradictions only to debate its own confusion.
A humble heart knows far more than a proud mind. I know nothing at all unless I know that God alone knows it all. I know things that I don’t know I know, and there are things I don’t know that I think I do. Questions persist and beliefs remain untested, but disputes or variances in interpretation can offer new meaning to old explanations.
I don’t want to speak as though my take on a subject is immune to disagreement or forget that the word of God is filled with paradox. Mystery sits tantalizingly out of reach and paradox remains a contradiction in logic – but the spirit effortlessly extrapolates the truth from both ends of the spectrum.
The mind is linear. It prefers cut and dry or black and white with no shades of grey. It calls for “either” “or” and chokes on the abstract of “both.” Its insistence on true or false, right or wrong, or good or evil evidences little desire for relationship with the One who knows apart from reason.
My mind has been busy examining a point allowing the ego to satisfy its many needs. It needs closure on a subject that remains open, it needs to be right, it needs truth carved in stone so it can feel in control, it needs to justify the time it has spent pondering the subject, it needs to feel alive. The ego wants to be my hero!
Yes, the hero; the one that figures it out and presents me with “absolute truth” on the subject of choice. It wants to conquer the enemy and deliver the head on a silver platter. It wants the glory, the prize, the homecoming, the parade. It wants to usurp the throne and be the interpreter of truth, the great delineator, the one I turn to in times of trouble. Dare I say, it wants to be God? But the ego is denied…
Revelation is a gift that’s given by God alone. He shines light, imparts insight, and awakens the understanding. God gets to be the hero and the knight in shining armor. He rescues me from the curse of living with reason as my only guide. The tyranny of the mind can be unbearable and my opinions make me crazy. I lay it down…again!