Seeing With the Heart

Have you ever attributed qualities to a person based on looks alone?

It is not something I like to admit, since it sounds prejudicial and judgmental, but it happens, doesn't it?

We see a tall, handsome man in a tapered suit, with slightly graying hair and we think him wise, honest, successful, intelligent, the list goes on.

But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’  - 1 Samuel 16:7

Imagine if we could learn to see the way the Lord sees, on the heart and not on appearance.

Would it be a blessing or a curse?

In some ways, it would make life a bit easier.  We could better decide which candidate was the better, and maybe determine that none of the above is the right answer.

We might be able to solve the age old problem of knowing whether or not we should enter into an agreement with this person, from business relationships to marriage.

Those would be good things, wouldn't they?

So, what would be the down side?  Could it be a bad thing to see the truth in someone's heart?

Maybe.  As Jack Nicholson's character said in the movie, A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth!"

The good news is that isn't a problem for God.  He knows what we are on the inside and so his choices are pure of heart.  Not so for us.

But I don't think that means we can't try to see others through the heart as well as the eyes.  The problem might be that we won't want to.

You might think that a blind person would have an advantage in that approach, since he can't use his eyes, but studies have shown that the sense of touch and the use of echolocation to identify the place of objects in space is processed by the brain through the same channel as visual stimuli, the visual cortex.

In other words, though we "see" differently, we can still have the same flaws in our perception of what we experience.  That means we all need a lesson in "seeing with the heart."

I'd like to tell you how to do it, but I am not sure I have it figured out myself.

I can think of one person who was so gifted, though, Helen Keller.  She described it this way, "the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched -- they must be felt with the heart."

When we come to meet someone or experience something with our own ideas and preconceptions of what we will encounter, we will fool our senses into seeing, hearing and witnessing something false, something that is far from the heart of the matter.

So, how do we shed our preconceptions?  Is it possible to open ourselves to such an encounter?

It sounds scary, doesn't it?

Having a framework, a lens, through which to see the world and the people in it is helpful, even if it can be misleading.  Maybe it is better that way.  Maybe we want it that way.

When we are children, our parents tell us not to speak with strangers.  Who is a stranger?  Anyone we don't know.

Children see people with their hearts, until they are trained to look for types of people, attributes.  So, we may walk up to anyone, tall, short, fat, thin, anyone.  That is why we are given simple instructions.

The more our experience teaches us, the further we move from that open heart visioning process.

So, our protection mechanism can be helpful and harmful.  We could find ourselves trusting the wrong people.

So, what's the lesson?

I would love to live in a world where all of us play by the same rules, where the rules are simple, where everyone is seeing with their hearts.

But given our nature, someone, and it would only take one, I'm afraid, would break the rules, and then it would all fall apart.

So, where does that leave us?  Could we shed our prejudices and preconceptions?  Or will we hold firmly to them for protection?

What do you think?

More to come...




Image credit: mcininch / 123RF Stock Photo