It's the heart versus the Bible

townhall.com ^ | 3/16/04 | Dennis Prager

[kattracks]

I recently interviewed a 26-year-old Swedish student about her views on life. I asked her if she believed in God or in any religion.

"No, that's silly," she replied.

"Then how do you know what is right and wrong?" I asked.

"My heart tells me," she responded.

In a nutshell, that's the major reason for the great divide within America and between America and much of Europe. The majority of people use their heart -- stirred by their eyes -- to determine what is right and wrong. A minority uses their mind and/or the Bible to make that determination.

Pick almost any issue and these opposing ways of determining right and wrong become apparent.

Here are three examples.

Same-sex marriage: The heart favors it. You have to have a hard heart not to be moved when you see many of the loving same-sex couples who want to commit their lives to one another in marriage. The eye sees the couples; the heart is moved to redefine marriage.

Animal rights: The heart favors them. It is the rare person, for example, whose heart is not moved by the sight of an animal used for medical research. The eye sees the cuddly animal; the heart then equates animal and human life.

Abortion: How can you look at a sad 18-year-old who had unprotected sex and not be moved? What kind of heartless person is going to tell her she shouldn't have an abortion and should give birth?

The eyes and the heart form an extraordinarily powerful force. They can only be overcome when formulating policies by a mind and a value system that are stronger than the heart-eye duo.

With the decline of Judeo-Christian religions, the heart, shaped by what the eye sees (hence the power of television), has become the source of people's moral decisions.

This is a potentially fatal problem for our civilization. As beautiful as the heart might be, it is neither intellectually nor morally profound.

It is therefore frightening that hundreds of millions of people find no problem in acknowledging that their heart is the source of their values. Their heart knows better than thousands of years of accumulated wisdom; better than religions shaped by most of the finest thinkers of our civilization (and, to the believer, by God); and better than the book that has guided our society -- from the Founders of our uniquely successful society to the foes of slavery to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and most of the leaders of the struggle for racial equality.

This elevation of one's heart is well beyond self-confidence -- it is self-deification.

One of the first things you learn in Judaism and Christianity is that the eyes and heart are usually terrible guides to the good and the holy. " . . . (D)o not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after" (Numbers 15:39); "the heart is deceitful above all things . . . " (Jeremiah 17:9).

Supporters of same-sex marriage see the loving gay couple, and therefore do not interest themselves in the effects of changing marriage and family on the children they do not see. And since they venerate their hearts, the biblical ideal of male-female love, marriage and family is of no significance to them.

Animal rights supporters' hearts are deeply moved by the animals they see experimented on, not by the millions of people they do not see who will suffer and die if we stop such experiments.
Likewise, the hearts of the people who support PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are so moved by the plight of slaughtered chickens that the organization has a campaign titled "Holocaust on your plate," which equates our slaughtering of chickens with the Nazi slaughtering of Jews.

For 25 years I have been asking high school seniors across America if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority has nearly always voted against the person. Why? Because, they say with no self-doubt, they love their dog, not the stranger. An entire generation has been raised with no reference to any moral code above their heart's feelings. They do not know, and would not care if they did know, that the Bible teaches that human beings, not animals, are created in God's image.

So, too, those who cannot call any abortion immoral are moved by what they see -- the forlorn woman who wants an abortion, not by the human fetus they do not see. That is why abortion rights groups are so opposed to showing photos of fetuses that have been aborted -- such pictures might move the eye and the heart of viewers to judge the morality of many abortions differently.

It is undeniable that many people have used their minds and many have used the Bible in ways that have led to evil. And some of these people have been truly heartless. But not one of the great cruelties of the 20th century -- the Gulag, Auschwitz, Cambodia, North Korea, Mao's Cultural Revolution -- came from those who took their values from the Bible. And the great evil of the 21st century, though religion-based, doesn't come from the Bible either.

Meanwhile, the combination of mind, Judeo-Christian values and heart has produced over centuries the unique success known as America. Reliance on the heart will destroy this painstaking achievement in a generation.

©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Contact Dennis Prager | Read Prager's biography

[goldstategop]

We are forbidden from relying solely by what we see or by our feelings to guide outlook on life for it is a trap and a snare. The reason is we don't see all sides of the picture and feelings can be used to justify unethical or illegal behavior. Religion teaches us to constrain our base passions and to remember the world needs to be looked at with our head not just by what we witness or by our feelings. Religion, especially the Judeo-Christian faith, teaches us humility and enjoins us to recall as beautiful as the blessings of this life are, we also have an obligation to be concerned with the hereafter and the World To Come, not just this life and worldly things. That is the divide that separates those who act on what is in front of them and their feelings from those who consider the bigger picture and the truth of both this life and the next one.

[Jeff Gordon]

Wrong. All Wrong. Badly wrong.

The issue is not one of hearts and minds. It is one of emotion and logic. Those who accept the Bible as the one and only true word of God are emotional centered people. They do not allow themselves to think.

[Robert_Paulson2]

nah... God was joking when he said: "come let us reason together."

I just love snippet debates.
The heart is evil, and desperately wicked... bla bla.

The heart is good, filled with God's joy, bla bla bla...

mine is right yours is wrong... MINE should be the basis of all laws, and yours should be gutted from the bible and used to promote evil...

and on and on and on.

this is why there MUST remain a separation between religion and state. SECTARIAN bickering over conflicting words, intperpretations and infinite minutea derived from both.

"oh no, you don't understand the scriptures, let me explain it to you...." gag.

HOW DARE YOU INSIST ON USING THE MIND FOR THE PURPOSE OF REASONED CONSIDERATION?

[philetus]

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

This refers to Isaiah 13 Distruction of Babylon

[familyop]

Where you replied, "F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe. (Gen. 38:6- 10; Deut 25:5-10)," Genesis 38 contains nothing of shoes that I saw while reading it.

Of Deuteronomy 25, the Bible says,

"Then shall his brother's wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother's house. And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed" (Deuteronomy 25:9-10, KJV).

Apostasy and its lies come from the "heart." Romanticism is a war against scriptural belief in favor of immorality for the fun of it. Adultery is romanticism's favorite promotion. Feminists (male and female) have led in the fight to successfully infest western culture with romanticism for more than 150 years. Law favoring adultery is the one most destructive tactic against the family now. The last and most serious attack against believers will involve executions to enforce a form of spiritualism with goddess worship.

[lainde]

BTTT

[familyop]

"But many here use the old testament to excoriate homosexuals. So I merely suggest they be consistent."

How about the New Testament, then?

"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,..." (1 Corinthians 6:9, KJV)

[familyop]

"But many here use the old testament to excoriate homosexuals."

Here's more from the New Testament.

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." (Romans 1:26-32, KJV).

And is it "simple" enough for you?

[RonHolzwarth]

The RSV is MUCH more accurate than the KJV, since it did not go through a series of translations,

Greek -> Latin -> Middle English.

In modern Engligh, That same verse reads:

---

1 Corinthians, Chapter 6:
[9]
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts,
[10] nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.

---

Notice that unrighteous, immoral, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers are all lumped together with "sexual perverts".

And, exactly what a "sexual pervert" is, is not defined.

And, remember:

John.8
[7] And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."

[RonHolzwarth]

yeah, we can hardly live up to this:

Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

[coulson3]

I'm afraid I must disagree: the Bible is not necessary to teach morality. For that, you can read Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, and consider the meaning of the categorical imperative.

Or you can listen to your parents, who, when they bounced you on their knees, said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

A whole lot of hogwash about God and sin isn't necessary to learn how to treat other people with decency and respect.

[familyop]

"The RSV is MUCH more accurate than the KJV..."

No, it's not. Here's the truth about the RSV.

The Revised Standard Version - 1952
http://www.revelationwebsite.co.uk/index1/kjv/mouth3.htm#rsv

It's packed with lies and distributed by apostates.

[coulson3]

It is written...

Be wary of religion, it's proven to be a very effective meme. "Believers will be saved! (carrot) Non-believers will perish! (stick) The Bible is the Word of God! (codified memotype to resist mutation)"

You don't have to believe everything that is written. It has only survived this long because it's effective at generating believers (parents convert children, evangelists convert adults, and the destitute convert themselves). It's a massive chain-letter for the soul.

[RonHolzwarth]

Perhapst thou art correct.

I shall hearken unto thee, and consider the truths that thou hast revealed unto me.

[scan58]

Ecclesiastes, Chapter 10:
[2] A wise man's heart inclines him toward the right, but a fool's heart toward the left.

Sorry for interrupting. Just thought that needed repeating.

[RonHolzwarth]

Besides, I'm Jewish anyway.

So, only the Tanakh, composed of the Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim, all in the original Hebrew and Aramaic, are accurate, since they have never undergone a single translation, ever.

[tdadams]

Their heart knows better than... the book that has guided our society -- from the Founders of our uniquely successful society to the foes of slavery...

Excuse me?? Will someone remind Mr. Prager that the Bible condones slavery, even offers guidance as to treatment of slaves, and for hundreds of years was offered as unquestionable authority that slavery was proper.

[BSunday]

It's the heart vs the Bible

Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

[tdadams]

Those who accept the Bible as the one and only true word of God are emotional centered people. They do not allow themselves to think.

Unfortunately, I think you're right. And the Bible is all too often used as a sword instead of a lamp by those same people.

[tdadams]

Why are liberals always so obsessed with sex and sexual matters?

Are you trying to be ironic? Take a good look sometime at the topics sideboard of this conservative site and then ask yourself again who's obsessed with sex, liberals or conservatives.

It seems to me if liberals (leftists really) are concerned with sex, it's about their own sex lives. Conservatives are concerned with the sex lives of others. I think the latter is the more pathological, in all honesty.