The Heart - Knower

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Heart - Knower</B></FONT></div> <div> #############################################################################</div> <div>  </div> <bR> <div>      Have you ever met a “know-it-all” type person who observes the actions of others and [supposedly] is able to tell why people do what they do?  This “know-it-all” may understand, for instance, why a neighbor, John, never keeps a car for a very long time, and never has an old car.  “Oh, John won't keep a car more than two years.  He's gotta go get a new one because he thinks he's too good to drive an older car.”  But perhaps John, when he was growing up, had been around older cars which often failed his family.  He may have, as a child, spent some time sitting in a car which didn't run, and was being pushed.  Possibly, when he got older, he contributed some grunt force to shoving an old rust-bucket.  By the time that he became an adult, he had grown so weary of having older cars stall out and leave him stranded that he is now going to great lengths to avoid having an undependable car.  John may not care much at all about the appearance of his car, and is primarily interested in its dependability-its ability to get him “from point A to point B”-and having a car which looks nice is merely a coincidental by-product having a car which is newer and more likely to be dependable.</div> <div>      When I was in junior high school, I became rebellious, and that rebellious streak lasted well into my high school years.  As a senior in high school, I first heard Mr. Ted Armstrong on The World Tomorrow television program.  Mr. Armstrong's subject concerned the Sabbath.  I scoffed and declared that I would prove the notions presented to be wrong.  As I looked more and more closely into the Sabbath and other teachings of the Worldwide Church of God at that time, some members of my family, who all knew that I had spent most of my teen-aged years in a rebellious attitude, assumed that my looking into the teachings of </div> <div> the Worldwide Church of God was simply more rebellion on my part.  Yes, I had dug that hole for myself, with my past rebellion, but those family members, in assuming that my looking into what I had heard from Mr. Ted Armstrong was my way rebelling against the Baptist Church, put themselves in a position of not being able to understand and help me.  No matter what I told them to the contrary, they were sure that I was rebelling.  If, instead of looking into the Worldwide Church of God, I had gotten involved with Islam, should those family members have stood by, arms crossed, mumbling, “He's just rebelling,” and offered no help?</div> <div>      In a speech class at Ambassador College, Mr. Richard Ames showed a twenty-minute educational film, “The Eye of the Beholder.” This movie was made for psychology classes, and introduces viewers to a practice which psychologists call projection.  A person who practices projection believes that he understands the </div> <div> actions of others because he is assuming that others do things for the same reasons that he does things. He projects his motivations on the activities of others.  The film showed several nosy neighbors observing the actions of a certain man as he ran errands in that neighborhood.  One nosy neighbor, with a history of mental disorders in her family, said, “The way that he acts shows that he is unstable.”  Another snoopy neighbor, with a tendency toward kleptomania, declared, “I can tell that that guy is a crook.”  Other spying neighbors pinned their own motivations on the man running errands.  At the end of the film, the man running his errands is shown to be a happy, innocent, busy person, and nothing that any of the overly-curious neighbors assumed that he was.</div> <div>      In Acts 1:24, the apostles are asking for guidance in choosing the successor to Judas.  They referred to God as One “which knowest the hearts of all.”  According to Strong's, the words, knowest, and hearts, are translated from #2589, kardiognostes-a heart-knower (from the Greek words, kardio, heart, and ginosko, to know).  Could Strong's #2589-Heart-knower-be one of God's many names?  If God is, indeed, the Heart-knower, then what does that make all of the “know-it-all” people who love to engage in projection?  Are they running where they should fear to tread?  Is the ability to be able to tell intentions and purposes of others strictly a domain of God's.  Are those who think themselves able to know why others do things appointing to themselves duties belonging solely to God?  Are they playing God?</div> <div>      In Acts 5:1-10, Peter knew that Ananias and Sapphira had sold some property, and had told everyone concerned that they had given all of the money from that sale and delivered it to the apostles.  Peter knew that they had held back part of the money.  Wouldn't we all agree that God had revealed to Peter that part of the money from the sale had been withheld?  And yet Peter did not attach a motive to the deceit of Ananias and Sapphira.  He asked Annanias, “Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart,” verse 4.  Peter could easily have said, “You people kept the money because you're greedy,” or “You fearful people:  you're hoping that this Church lasts, but I know that you're afraid that it may be a “flash in the pan,” so you stashed back some loot for a cushion.  I don't have to ask why you did what you did.”  Peter knew what Ananias and Sapphira </div> <div> did.  But Peter did not attempt to answer why they did it.</div> <div>      In Jesus' command to us concerning assessing actions of others, Jesus seems to have separated discerning what is done from why it is done.  He said, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment”(Acts 7:24).  In other words, don't think that you can read a person's mind and figure out, by how something appears to you, why a person does something, but stick to using the law (righteous judgment-“My tongue shall speak of thy word: for all thy commandments are righteousness”Psalms 119:172), in order to figure out whether an action is appropriate.</div> <div>      In, of all places, a train station in France, I found out how powerful judging by appearance can become.  I had just gotten to the station, and the schedule showed that my train was supposed to arrive at the time showing on the clock at the station.  So I wondered whether I had gotten there just before the train arrived, or just after it had left.  I walked up to a woman and asked her, in French, whether the train which I wanted had not yet arrived, or had already come and gone.  She looked at me and saw an American.  Her seeing my appearance drowned out my French speaking.  She was sure that she heard me talking in English.  She replied, “No English.”  I said, in French, that I was speaking to her in French.  I told her two more times, in French, that I was talking to her in French.  I got two more “No English” replies.  I finally said it loudly enough that she heard.  She shook her head as if coming out of a trance, laughed, and apologized, and told me that that train had not yet arrived, and that she was also waiting for it.</div> <div>      “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).  The answer is in the next verse:  “I the Lord (not a “know-it-all” neighbor) search the heart, I try the reins.”  Also, “O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.  Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.  Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.  Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:  And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalms 139:1-3; 23, 24).</div> <div>      In dealing with our children, it is our obligation to “judge righteous judgment” in looking at their actions.  We are obliged to tell them where they go wrong.  But we can't read their minds.  Just as Peter asked, “Why?” to Ananias and Sapphira, we should challenge our children to ask themselves why they do things. </div> <div>      We should be ready with suggestions for possible explanations.  But it may well be that parents who jump to conclusions concerning “why” their children do things do more harm than good. “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment,” Acts 7:24.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> Jimmie Parr</div> <bR> <div>     </div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>