Out of the Heart

Second Quarter 2000

Editor's Watch

by James W. Skillen

One of the biblical proverbs (4:23) says that out of the heart "flow the springs of life." The human heart represents the depth unity of the person, created in the image of God. Biblically speaking, God is one and each person is a unified creature, dependent on the Creator. None of us is a disconnected bunch of functions, roles, and responsibilities. Regardless of how complex and diversified we are, we ought to know ourselves as whole persons, as integrated and balanced selves, before the face of God.

In our deepest and most integral unity, therefore, we are religious creatures. In other words, our human identity arises from the fact that we are, in our totality, dependent on and oriented toward the One whom we image and whom we were created to serve. By a false turn of our hearts and self-deception we can identify something or someone else as the god around whom we try to integrate our lives. In the end, however, all idols fail. We cannot escape our religious identity, made for the true God. That is why Roy Clouser (p. 4) argues that even scientific theorizing is religiously rooted.

If from the heart flow the springs of life, then we can see that religions (both true and false) give birth to worldviews. Depending on the orientation of one's life at the heart-deep level, one will look out at the world and the meaning of one's own life in a certain way. One's decisions and choice of actions will be framed by a point of view, a worldview. This is the burden of Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey's book, How Now Shall We Live?, reviewed by Keith Pavlischek (pp. 6-7). Worldview differences help account for many of the misunderstandings and conflicts among individuals, organizations, and nations.

From out of different religiously directed worldviews people develop different philosophies and explanations of life's complexity: the nature of science, the task of government, the importance of different kinds of human relationships, and much more. Biblically grounded people should have no trouble grasping that God's unified creation is at the same time a manifold of diverse creatures, each with its own glory and purpose. What unites them all is their interrelatedness as God's creatures.

Just as liberal or Marxist or classical political philosophies arise from deeper convictions about human nature, community, and the meaning of history, so a Christian political philosophy will arise from a Christian worldview. The centuries-long development of Christian political thought is represented in the O'Donovans' sourcebook, introduced on pages 8-9.

Finally, guided and contextualized by their philosophies, whether consistently or inconsistently, whether consciously or unconsciously, human beings act in a thousand different ways—as voters, as educators, as parents, as artists, as scientists. Given our different philosophies and worldviews, dependent on the different gods we serve, we will often make (or want to make) very different choices about schooling our children (pp. 4-5), about candidates running for office (pp. 1, 10, and 11), and about the kind of social services we want to give and receive (p. 3). A just political order is one that makes room for such choices as a reflection of God's grace in upholding creation and sending rain and sunshine on the just and unjust alike.