The heart is no matter

August 27, 2005

by Cyrus Gikori

God searches the heart, say the scriptures.
Where is that heart He searches? Is it in our chest, in our gut or between our temples?

I pluck petals around the idea that; perhaps with some contribution from the mysterious Old Testament sons-of-God, there may have been a super intelligent civilization happening around the plain of Shinar. Bringing their highly intelligent minds together, they had a thinking-hat session that resulted in the construction of what came to be known as the Tower of Babel and, may I propose a theory; they began to grasp matters beyond the earthly dimension. They probably came close to seeing God through earthly eyes. I bet they almost made the Lord regret having breathed His very life into mankind, because the zeitgeist of their day conceived the possibility of a human realm independent of God.
The story of what happened at Shinar is either steeped in deep, mind-boggling metaphor or may well be one of the narratives whose meaning God tucked away beyond our comprehension for His own purposes. If the story is metaphorical, then human science and technology at Shinar may have transcended nuclear physics and surpassed the mapping of the human genome; I chuckle at the thought that they may have been well on their way towards mapping the cherubic and seraphic genome! After all, scholars have suggested that they may have been inspired by the “mighty” Nimrod, who was perhaps the first of post-flood Nephilim—the offspring of man and angel (see Genesis 6).
At Shinar, due to their unified desire to build a citadel with its top in heaven, they had probably begun to understand the nature of matter and the foundations of galactic, stellar and planetary systems. Perchance, they even had a glimpse of the shape and expanse of the universe; a feat that modern-day science is yet to accomplish. The Lord saw the looming danger of mankind turning away from Him to worship their own scientific prowess and self actualization; they probably even had blueprints ready for cloning… or even for creating complex man-made life forms. I fail to grasp the reason why a mere bricks-and-mortar establishment (well, bricks and bitumen at Babel) on its own would have worked up God’s envy as is recorded in scripture, no matter how high it rose. I believe there was more to the ancient gargantuan sky-scraper than the narrative gives us.
At Shinar, humanity may have proved to the Maker that we were like a young genius; the child prodigy who yet couldn’t be trusted with boundaries. Think of it this way: an eight-year-old wiz kid grasps the knowledge of how to create a nuclear bomb. His father, a scientist, finds him planning to go and show off to his friends…
To avert a situation where our knowledge would inevitably lead us into direct conflict with Him, forcing Him perhaps to destroy us (like they do with robots gone bad in Hollywood), out of love, God probably chose from Babel, to curtail the extent to which mankind would be able to fathom things of the spiritual realm… Maybe doing that necessitated the annihilation of the Nephilim. Could be there was a time in post-flood history when God saw the need to pull out a men-in-black-style flash-light to rearrange our memory… like he did with their language at Shinar, so that there was no record of the makings of the civilization epitomized by the Tower of Babel; the one that caused Him to come down to see for Himself, and subsequently to call a crisis meeting in heaven to stem the impending counterculture!

But then again, it could be a whole lot simpler than that!

It may be that such heights for human science and technology were simply premature at that stage, according to the creator’s scheme of things. There could be a much more simplistic explanation to all this. You see, villages, cities and countries are made out of man’s hunger for significance. Obelisks, towers, magnificent bridges and sky-scrapers usually signify some individual, group, city or country’s achievement. But here’s the problem:
We might be caught inadvertently worshiping the persons or epic stories behind particular monumental structures or even the structures themselves when we gaze at them in awe and wish we had one like that in our name. We point our children in the direction of physical manifestations of human achievement to motivate them to pursue similar heights of excellence. While there is nothing wrong with that, we easily forget to draw their thoughts to a place beyond human achievement. The need and requirement to show them that God’s creativity “wipes the floor” with anything that human hands can do! The snake from Moses’ staff swallows the snakes of Egypt’s greatest magicians! We must remember that God wants monuments only for His glory’s sake and He will not share that with any created being! This is so important to God that the first two commandments of the ten handed to Moses on Mt. Sinai are all about it.
The worship of human intellectual achievement through various art-forms, sculptures and monuments drums up God’s jealousy. It was the cause of God’s anger against Old Testament leaders and monarchs. At Shinar, the perceivable sky was the absolute limit and the people stood in awe of the great minds that visualized and the skillful hands that erected such a magnificent edifice. Perhaps that was all there was to it. The tower with its top in the heavens was the pinnacle of human capacity as far as those people were concerned. They would have their name forever and indelibly stamped on the face of the earth. They could claim a place of godly proportion in the minds of future generations. Now, that was not looking good from where God sat! Our mission is to have God’s name—not ours, forever stamped on all the diegitic elements of our existence!
So, there you have it. The tower of Babel was probably simply all about typifying mankind’s innate desire to make a name for an individual or the community he belongs to or the movement he ascribes to. God wanted us to learn from that story that we should never bow down in worship; that is to say, hold anything created by human hands in higher esteem than God Himself. We love our names on buildings and monuments. We have even found ways to stake a claim on places created for God’s worship. We put up church buildings “to the glory of God”, but we want to be remembered as the ones who built them.
In scripture, our relationship with God is likened to marriage. By making man in His image and subsequently carving Eve out of Adams rib, God epitomized the “chip-off-the-old-block” nature of how tightly woven His genesis and ours are. The cognitive, spiritual and emotional interdependence He intended with mankind would be best exemplified on our side of creation by what is felt between a man and a woman when holy matrimony is consummated—note; only when it is truly pure, holy matrimony, which is sadly more and more the exception than the rule in our day!
It was for that interdependency then that He created us. Just imagine you were given the power to create the man/woman of your dreams and you made him/her as intelligent as your self… Then he or she decided to heed external influences and you realize that you are losing him/her… If I know anything about human, it would be either poisoning or a shot between the eyes from you the maker, to end that dispute.

In the place of a material knowledge of our maker, I think that God embedded in us something that may work like a micro-chip, but is smaller than microscopic. The “chip” was concealed in that place where our soul lives. The place we call the heart—but not the one that pumps blood. I wonder at our intelligence when we cannot even come up with separate words to differentiate between the blood-pumping organ and the mysterious place where God’s breath that was breathed into Adam dwells.
God made that “chip” invisible, intangible and unfathomable to our perception, yet it is what drives the “operating system” of our very existence, equipping us with ways of deciphering the complex matrix of good and evil from as early as a few weeks in our mother’s womb. Who tells a baby that crying will draw attention? Does not the toddler whose vocabulary is all of gugu and gaga reach out and nick goodies? Has a baby ever relieved itself all over you and then gave you “the look”?
For us to find God, we need to re-establish contact with that mysterious heart. That place where God planted His likeness in us; for though He made us in His image, He is certainly not subject to the forces of nature like we are. We must seek to find that place where the tuner for spiritual frequencies sits.
Post-modern attitudes to matters of faith lend truth to the fact that the more intelligent we become, the higher the towers of Babel around us rise. The more trust we place in science and technology; the more we may be two-timing our loving creator. With education at the apex of our cognitive existence, mankind knows more, but perpetually falls short of the glory of God. It is not an intellectual argument: It is a matter of the heart.
The heart and the mind are like day and night. In our human state, the best place to find communion with our creator is usually at one transitional point or the other—dawn or dusk. Too much swing into the mind and we are losing Him… Too much swing to the heart and like Enoch or Elijah, we shouldn’t be here… But first things first: we must find that heart. That is how we shall begin to find God.
How do we know we have begun to find the heart? Take a lesson from the original King of Rock & Roll—David Jesse who wrote songs that still top the charts in our day, thousands of years later. He was the King of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah. As his poetic journals reveal, after the many ups and downs of his deep, critical introspection, he makes the connection…The impact of the docking of his mind with his heart was such that could only be expressed in uninhibited song and dance. He tossed etiquette and royal decorum out the window and got down till the cops came knocking! His wife went searching for the stop knob on the invisible jukebox because the king’s clothes could not keep up with his rocking!
There is a joy and vibrancy that is evident in those that find that connection. But because He is a God of paradoxes, the same people often experience swings from one extreme to another; they are the ones who carry the burden of the brokenness of others as may be manifested in the moments of great sadness and desperation that often precede intercessory prayer. A lot of them cannot and will not even attempt to explain what goes on between those extremes. They are caught in the swings of the pendulum that drives a clock beyond time.
I find that generally among the marginalized, working or impoverished people, there seems to be relatively greater expression of that heart than there might be among the elite or well-to-do societies of the world. For instance, there is often much frenzied song and dance in African cultures around death, birth, seed-time and harvest. The most beautiful spontaneous music has been heard from among slaves and oppressed peoples such as the apartheid victims of South Africa. It is often expressed without a care for personal appearance or what others might say. Such selfless expression will easily be found in authentic Christian worship today. I observe too, that there seems to be more of heart than head connection to faith among those that will easily find it in themselves to do the David dance.

In your ministry, are you concerned about leaving a mark for yourself? Stop. Jesus didn’t even leave us a picture of his own appearance! He could have sat for a portrait artist and commanded one of the twelve to ensure the preservation of his image for future generations to see. Is your church planning to construct a monumental house of worship to the glory of God? Then make certain it is only to the glory of God and that none among you are envisioning sharing the limelight with God because He is a jealous God as proved at Shinar. Are you too concerned about defending God’s word through intellectual arguments? Stop. The young man Uzzah died for attempting to prop up the ark of the covenant (2 Samuel 6:6,7). God can take care of the business of defending His own name. Yours is to simply obey, live out the great commission of Christ and lift him up. He will draw all unto himself in his own way once we lift him and not ourselves up. Again, it is not a matter of science, archeology, technology or any other field of human excellence. It is a matter of the heart. It is the heart of the matter, but this heart is not a heart of matter.

Have you found that heart in you?

©2005

Published on the Matthewshouse Project web magazine