Jeremiah 17:5 – The Departing Heart
5 Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the Lord.
"That's the cause of a lot of chains – people wanting to be accepted," reveals Nate Hentoff in a 1964 article in The New Yorker preserved in the magazine's dedicated anthology, "people not wanting to be alone."
I like the image of a chain to describe the desperation for social acceptance, especially as we consider the end of God's warning in Jeremiah 17:5. Chains, Jacob Marley warns us in A Christmas Carol, are forged a link at a time in our daily interactions. By these, God's insists astride time and individuals' swirling emotions, hearts depart from the Lord.
Consider how oppressive the feeling of estrangement will be for the people to whom God speaks. They once got their sense of assurance from proximity to the Temple. They used this to argue with Jeremiah for their own righteousness, to help them ignore the validity in his God-ordained warnings. Absent this assurance by location and habit when they go into exile, God knows their tendency will be to cleave to each other.
In truly traumatic moments, this isn't bad. We are His image-bearers to one another. But community consensus and comfort as an endpoint can be stultifying to the point of deadliness. By this chains more confining than those on exile captives are forged. By this our hearts depart. Insidiously, like the book of Judges says of Samson when the true source of his strength departed, we know it not.
We think ourselves, though, more aware than the manipulated populace whose hearts were gradually stolen by Absalom's feigned regrets that he could not advocate for them. Are we closer to shepherd than sheep, in our own eyes closer to Solomon those anonymous people he led? So be it. Even he, Scripture says, with wisdom unsurpassed among men, followed a heart that had been led astray by those he gave it to.
Leaders, followers, we are subtly but indelibly changed by our associations. The companion of fools, Proverbs dictates, becomes a fool. We think we exempt ourselves from this if we spend our money and practice our trade with reasonable proficiency, but there are NONE so foolish as he or she who does not actively depend upon the Lord and wall off the stillness of mind and heart to hear His voice over, under, and around the influences of people.
This is where times of exile are SO dangerous. We talk rightly about the lures of prosperity and stability, but, hear me, their opposites may be worse. Bless me in the same ways over time, and even the world's advertisers know I'm on the prowl for more. “As the unexpected becomes ordinary," writes Greg Carlson tellingly in Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You, "the spotlight shifts once again to land where your brain thinks it will get more informational bang for the attentional buck.”
Yes, this acquisitive state can stoke ingratitude. Yes, it can lead David to the roof to gaze at Bathsheba. But such wiring to consider what might be can just as easily lead to fresh encounters with the Almighty. It can lead Moses to turn aside to consider the burning bush. It can give our same Solomon an Ecclesiastes opportunity to consider what has been tried in the search of true fulfillment and whether it worked.
Put me in trauma, though, especially with my whole community, and I'm no longer contemplating. In place of weighing options, I am in survival mode. I'm looking for likeness in the first place I can find it. I'm forsaking the usual social rituals that allow us to get to know each other gradually and figure out with at least a little accuracy whom we can trust, who will point us closer to the Lord. Desperation can be as deadly to that process as it can occasionally aid it.
Thus the Lord warns that we readily give away our hearts to people who look a little stronger than we are. We readily insist that our hope will be found in somebody whose brokenness complements or counteracts ours.
In such ill-considered cleaving, our hearts depart from the Lord and we have wasted the opportunity which dislocation provided to draw closer to Him. Our chains, wrought in the fire of mutual affliction, are harder as a result. Now they, unlike the ones which bound Jeremiah's countrymen in exile, are invisible.
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the Lord.
"That's the cause of a lot of chains – people wanting to be accepted," reveals Nate Hentoff in a 1964 article in The New Yorker preserved in the magazine's dedicated anthology, "people not wanting to be alone."
I like the image of a chain to describe the desperation for social acceptance, especially as we consider the end of God's warning in Jeremiah 17:5. Chains, Jacob Marley warns us in A Christmas Carol, are forged a link at a time in our daily interactions. By these, God's insists astride time and individuals' swirling emotions, hearts depart from the Lord.
Consider how oppressive the feeling of estrangement will be for the people to whom God speaks. They once got their sense of assurance from proximity to the Temple. They used this to argue with Jeremiah for their own righteousness, to help them ignore the validity in his God-ordained warnings. Absent this assurance by location and habit when they go into exile, God knows their tendency will be to cleave to each other.
In truly traumatic moments, this isn't bad. We are His image-bearers to one another. But community consensus and comfort as an endpoint can be stultifying to the point of deadliness. By this chains more confining than those on exile captives are forged. By this our hearts depart. Insidiously, like the book of Judges says of Samson when the true source of his strength departed, we know it not.
We think ourselves, though, more aware than the manipulated populace whose hearts were gradually stolen by Absalom's feigned regrets that he could not advocate for them. Are we closer to shepherd than sheep, in our own eyes closer to Solomon those anonymous people he led? So be it. Even he, Scripture says, with wisdom unsurpassed among men, followed a heart that had been led astray by those he gave it to.
Leaders, followers, we are subtly but indelibly changed by our associations. The companion of fools, Proverbs dictates, becomes a fool. We think we exempt ourselves from this if we spend our money and practice our trade with reasonable proficiency, but there are NONE so foolish as he or she who does not actively depend upon the Lord and wall off the stillness of mind and heart to hear His voice over, under, and around the influences of people.
This is where times of exile are SO dangerous. We talk rightly about the lures of prosperity and stability, but, hear me, their opposites may be worse. Bless me in the same ways over time, and even the world's advertisers know I'm on the prowl for more. “As the unexpected becomes ordinary," writes Greg Carlson tellingly in Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You, "the spotlight shifts once again to land where your brain thinks it will get more informational bang for the attentional buck.”
Yes, this acquisitive state can stoke ingratitude. Yes, it can lead David to the roof to gaze at Bathsheba. But such wiring to consider what might be can just as easily lead to fresh encounters with the Almighty. It can lead Moses to turn aside to consider the burning bush. It can give our same Solomon an Ecclesiastes opportunity to consider what has been tried in the search of true fulfillment and whether it worked.
Put me in trauma, though, especially with my whole community, and I'm no longer contemplating. In place of weighing options, I am in survival mode. I'm looking for likeness in the first place I can find it. I'm forsaking the usual social rituals that allow us to get to know each other gradually and figure out with at least a little accuracy whom we can trust, who will point us closer to the Lord. Desperation can be as deadly to that process as it can occasionally aid it.
Thus the Lord warns that we readily give away our hearts to people who look a little stronger than we are. We readily insist that our hope will be found in somebody whose brokenness complements or counteracts ours.
In such ill-considered cleaving, our hearts depart from the Lord and we have wasted the opportunity which dislocation provided to draw closer to Him. Our chains, wrought in the fire of mutual affliction, are harder as a result. Now they, unlike the ones which bound Jeremiah's countrymen in exile, are invisible.
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