Conversion: Subject of the Heart or Behavior?

Is faith only a moral consideration or does it concern the whole being?

Photo: In 2014, Pope Francis undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and prayed at the Western Wall. This wall is known as the “Kotel”, is the last remaining outer wall of the ancient Jewish temple, and this wall of the temple was closest to the Holy of Holies. This moment relates to this post in light recent events in Israel concerning the Hamas War.

Turn on the news, and you will find all kinds of really bad news. This is so much the case most of us either don't turn on the news, despair about things as they are, or become so jaded concerning the greatest of crimes and conspiracies, that we interpret crimes casually. This jadedness extends to our own sins with which we are so familiar, that we begin to not see their malevolence. The question we have already answered in the past month is that there is something amiss here and it is not solved by adding correct propositions or trying harder but receiving deeper the love of God, through both justification and Sanctification.[2] In this way, we have already answered our question, but it is worth treating it on its own and we will find the same answer using different data points, that conversion is not something we will per se, although our will is very relevant, it is not only about what God has or has not done although this is still primary, but it concerns the very nature of man himself, in his tendency to habit, ignorance, corruption, and the corresponding/related poverties.

First, our will and God's are the dynamic forces involved. If there is any change in our hearts and in how we act it always concerns our own will; and when positive and lawful, primarily the will of God. If we end up doing something good it is because God is working in us, even when we are badly mistaken about Him, the good comes from Him because He works with what we are not as we wish to be. "No one is good but God alone" (Mark 10:18).[4] Our will is always involved because God honors our free will, and we must choose what God has to offer or against it. Clearly, if we choose God, it is because we perceive Him rightly and so have already (even unwittingly, but no less really) accepted the first workings of grace in our hearts inviting us one step at a time through His Divine Plan, where sin and stubbornness has not yet touched and are thereby free.[1] If we continue choosing bad, it is because that is where sin has touched and the best of our will has not yet reached, because we have not found ourselves strong, enough, understanding things rightly enough, or still stuck in our ways and understanding that disinvites the aforementioned graces (Romans 7:15-20).[3] No enemy is truly more formidable to the sinner than this sort of blockade to grace in the will, since all other enemies work mostly from outside the human. 

Second, we have started there because "what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander."(Matthew 15:18-19) Now, we like to treat ourselves as being composed of different parts and sometimes that is helpful, but if we are to analyze the person on this matter, we must consider the whole. Perhaps from our depth comes our sinfulness, and indeed, if we are generally people in pursuit of the good it is true the subconscious is where we are to look for the most meaningful answers, but it is the whole person who is engaged in good or evil. We consider the whole because it is the whole that is broken, and the parts which sometimes choose the good or the bad. It is into the whole person God's love must go, not just into the good parts nor just the bad, nor just the conscious self but the unconscious self also, if one truly pursues perfection. The "heart" in our view is not a separate part but makes up the whole of our interior lives, and not just our spiritual but also instinctual as well. We must learn peace if we are to not find obstruction from our instincts, and sometimes due to traumas and habits, we have much work and patience to engage truly and intentionally, in the peace and grace of God into those sacred spaces of our wounds. Fortunately for us, our Savior is more sacred than those spaces are, so let us invite Him who is Sacredness itself into the sacred spaces. God's will does not change on these matters, it is always for our truest and particular good, we have to open the door and let God's love melt away the obstacles. It is not hurried since It knows the eternal reality of the person. We can struggle all we want consciously to be different, but no conversion is ever true which does not change the heart, nor is it complete until it is expressed in perfect acts.

Thirdly, our question is yet to be answered, does conversion concern behavior or the heart. It truly concerns both, but it is only possible in the latter and then later expressed in the former. "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness, and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you." (Ezekiel 36:26-29). Christ came to save us from ourselves, as much if not more than from the influence of demonic or the trends of sin in the world. Sin concern acts as regards the transgression of the law, but is a disease as regards the inner tendency. We are privileged to be called Sons/Daughters of God. We must understand this love is an answer to every lie and question concerning the self. Sometimes our reception of grace will have to transcend our understanding of ourselves because we do not perfectly understand ourselves as God does. Conversion, finally thus, is nothing else than a marriage lived ever better, with Him who love perfect, infinitely, and first. Receiving grace is a mystery that is somewhat beyond words, but it is characterized by authentic surrender, receptivity, and obedience (action and belief). If we cannot accept God (Love Himself) as He is, we will not be able to receive anyone else as they are or even the idea of doing so. Progress and transformation are only possible with God's love and grace. Further, where was Jesus when he was on earth in bodily form? He was among the poor where His love was most needed. Let us invite Him thence into those places in our lives and we always know where to find Him, in our greatest trials and hurts.

In conclusion, maybe you are reading this because you want to be an even better moral person or maybe you want to understand people who aren't (striving for that). In either case, it is paramount to understand we are incapable of it without God's grace just as we are not freed from slavery by anything but a Savior entity, which in our case in only possible by Him from whence we ran. "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved"(Acts 4:12). He does will it. Do we? Until we do, there will be no progress. Truly, truly it can be said that it requires at least being detached from all worldly goods and endeavors, ALL of them. There is nothing however important it may be which raises itself in importance higher than Him who is Highest and who made all for the end of our relationship with you. It requires our doing "whatever He tells [us]"(John 2:5). It requires choosing some breathtakingly difficult acts, that sometimes bring one to question everything. It is God's love and our clinging to it, which shall get us through. Moreover, transformation requires the will to be transformed. Our behaviors do not change because someone tells us they ought to but by truly wanting it, and we do not truly want it apart from this love. Jesus is believed to have told Teresa of Jesus something to the effect of, "I would do everything, I have ever done again, Just to have you say you love Me one more time". If only we understood that this is what we thirst for also, i.e. our holiness, our connectedness to God. We cannot understand ourselves without Christ since without Him there is no clear context that man is fallen and in the process of redemption, and still, loved and good.

FN:

1. CCC 2001

2. CCC 1989

3. cf. CCC 1849

4. CCC 1990-1991

Written by Carter Carruthers & also available at Vivat Agnus Dei (See Press Releases)