- HEART
hɑrt noun. Hollow muscular organ which pumps blood through the circulatory system. - 2. [in popular culture] Center of a person’s thoughts and emotions; one’s mood, feeling, enthusiasm, mood, or courage.
- 3. [in popular Christian culture] Center of a person’s lifeforce; one’s innermost being; the true self, particularly one’s true thoughts and feelings.
- 4. A conventional heart shape, as found on a deck of cards.
- [Hearted
'hɑrt.ɛd adjective.]
Today I’m gonna discuss another Christianese use of “heart”: Whenever there’s something we’re thinking about, and it’s significant, and it’s bothering us. Might bother us a little, like a peeve; might bother us a lot, like a trigger which makes us relive a previous traumatic experience. In my experience it’s almost always a peeve: It bugs us. It doesn’t bother us so much we’re losing sleep or hair over it; it just bugs us. But instead of saying, “That kinda pisses me off,” like good Christians we gotta bust out the Christianese terms for it:
- “Something was laid on my heart about that…”
- “That feels really heavy on my heart.”
- “Would you like to unburden your heart about what you’re going through?”
- “Sounds like that’s really weighing on your heart.”
This peeve is a burden, a great weight, a heavy thing. And it’s been dropped on our heart, squashing it a bit, causing discomfort—like when the cat tries to sleep on your face; less so like the early signs of a heart attack.
Sometimes it’s not that great a weight—it’s just “been on my heart.” Other times it’s all we can think about. It’s a serious mental or emotional roadblock, it’s “weighing on my heart” or “heavy on my heart,” and if we wanna get it off, we’re gonna have to “unburden” it—dump it on a group of other Christians, who can either fruitlessly worry about it along with us, or tackle the problem and solve it, either with us or instead of us.
Regardless of how light or weighty the burden may be, the fact we use Christianese is a sign we believe one of two things:
GOD GAVE US THIS BURDEN. Supposedly this isn’t just my particular peeve. This is God’s peeve. It’s something which bothers him. And because
I follow him, he’s recruited me to help him do something about it. he thinks exactly like I doI NEED GOD TO TAKE AWAY THIS BURDEN. Honestly, this is just my individual hangup. And I need to deal with it, and I’d like God’s help.
Lemme say right now I much prefer the second idea. A lot of us Christians absolutely do have hangups and issues, and no God isn’t the origin of any of them. They’re unhealthy things we brought into Christianity with us. They need to be purged from our lives. And God can help; Jesus totally offers to.