It Always Goes To The Heart

It was a crushing headline that ran in our local Sunday paper, and across the United States: "After Gastric Bypass Surgery, Some Patients Battle New Addictions."  The article itself summarized research, including life stories of people who lived out a connection between dramatic weight loss from gastric bypass surgery followed by an increased incidence of alcoholism.  

• "Drinking for me became like eating used to be — instant satisfaction," said the 60-year-old resident of South Florida.
• "All addictions are about fixing how one feels," said Lerner. "Changing the nature of the addiction does not change the nature of the person." 
• Click Here for the full story. 

These stories and research reflect an important Gospel principle: Our problem is deeper than our behavior, even if our behavior is itself destructive.  Our dysfunctional behaviors are simply the external expression of an internal brokenness.  We can work hard to change the behavior on the outside, but unless there is a change on the inside, we simply exchange one behavior for another.  In this case, it was one destructive behavior for another.  Such destructive behaviors, whatever they are, have a way of making themselves known and confronting us, even when they are difficult to alter.

But the same process plays out in church life as well, even though it is much more subtle.  A person begins coming to church because their marriage is in great need.  They have never learned the skills, values and behaviors that help equip a person for that most important of relationships.  We teach them about God's vision for marriage, conduct seminars on communication or family finances and have them join a small group for relational support.  Over time, there can be a meaningful change of behaviors that have positive effects.  They have essentially become "churched" people.

But while they may now be better equipped for a more stable marriage, without a change of heart, there will continue to be issues that rob them of real relationship with God and others.  You can improve a person's communication skills with a seminar, but if their heart - the motivational structure of their life - is still as fearful, controlling or self-righteous as before, there will continue to be problems.  A skilled communicator with a fearful or controlling heart will be just as difficult to live with as an unskilled one, just in a different way.  It is the church equivalent of a "dry drunk," the former-alcoholic who is sober but still impossible to be with.

While every circumstance is unique, this pattern gives us an insight into why divorce rates are so similar inside the church as outside.  And why "churched kids" can be such a challenge in their teen years.  Sadly, the "churched" are often just people with a different set of external behaviors than the "unchurched," At the level of the heart, one can hardly tell the difference.  Arrogance, fear, self-righteousness, pride and the like all have different expressions that fit well in different contexts, either "churched" or "unchurched."  When Christians train in behaviors instead of the heart transformation by grace, things are set up to cycle from one destructive behavior to the next.

A change of heart is dramatically different than a rush of emotion.  It occurs when the center of our life and motivations is altered.  We leave one object of focus and exchange it for a new object of love.  While we are the ones changed, it is God Who is the One at work in this exchange.  When we recognize that His grace for us in Jesus is greater in every way than any other thing that we could love, we are changed.  We love something different, because that different thing has so dramatically loved us.  And in that moment, a change first touches our heart, and from that moment a change first begins to express itself in some altered behavior.  Of course, it is a process that will take time and have ups and downs.  But it is a "change-of-heart process" not just a "change-of-behavior process."

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.  II Corinthians 3:18