the abundance of the heart

" . . . out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."  

Jesus Christ

The teaching of Scripture is not only true but it is divinely insightful and instructive.  The passage quoted, above, reveals what seems to be an obvious fact, that is, that the 'mouth speaks' forth whatever the heart is full of.  The implications of that truth are profoundly important not only for understanding contemporary culture but, also, for understanding something about certain urgent needs related to Christian ministry.


The Bible warns and exhorts to "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23).  Scripture oftentimes uses the word "heart" as a synonym for spirit or mind.  We are thus forewarned by God to be very careful about what things we allow into our mind: for, what goes into the mind affects what comes out of that same mind.  The principle is simple, intuitive, self-evident.  Why, then, is that fundamental principle practically ignored and neglected amongst the majority of professing Christians?

Just as the maxim is self-evident, so too is the proof, of that rhetorical question just posed, self-evident.  All that one needs to do is simply listen to any self-professed Christian talk for a few minutes.  Relatively very few such persons' speech reveals a heart filled with the things of God.  It is rare indeed to find a Christian whose conversation is consistently Christ-centered.

But it was not always so.  In earlier days of American society (from 1620 until about the mid-1800s), American culture was very largely shaped by widely held Judeo-Christian beliefs.  The holy Bible was almost universally used to teach children how to read ~ in a land (America) which long sustained a literacy rate near 100% (according to that famous historian of early American society, Perry Miller).  Long after that public education was institutionalized throughout most of the United States, the curriculum was largely Bible-based and Christ-centered.  The effect of which was that American society was practically saturated with Biblically literate persons.

Because the Bible was central to the worldview of most Americans, during the time period above described, many other works of art and literature were significantly influenced by Americans' knowledge of Scripture; thus, enriching and reinforcing the already Biblically literate culture.  Besides those influences, the essentially agrarian economy of early America contributed in its own ways to cultivate a host of principles and precepts derived from the Bible's teachings.  America truly was once a Christian nation; notwithstanding the then increasingly disproportionate influences of many wealthy (and ungodly) landholders, manufacturers, merchants, and financiers.

The several periods of "Great Awakenings," in early American history, do not so much reflect spiritual apathy or apostasy but, rather, they suggest how responsive to the Gospel message Americans continued to be, long into the nineteenth century (see brief history, here).  

But it was about that time (mid- to late-1800s) that things began to radically change.  The rapid succession of scientific and technological advancements substantially changed American society, beginning around the mid-nineteenth century (see timeline, here).  As I have written extensively elsewhere on this blog, the Apostasy (of Christianity) began to spread and intensify throughout America (and the West), from the mid- to late-nineteenth century and onward.  Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories elaborated in his "On the Origin of Species" (1859); the introduction and proliferation of Bible-substitutes (1881, 1885, 1902...); Friedrich Nietzsche's and Helena Blavatsky's anti-Christian philosophical writings, during the late-1800s: all of those heretical influences, and more, conspired to subvert Christian culture in America (and the West), and replace that with a secular one.

By the early-twentieth century, a large percentage of Americans were unfamiliar with the Bible's teachings.  By the mid-twentieth century, virtually every theological seminary in America had renounced belief in the perfection of God's Word, the Bible (see, Dr. Harold Lindsell's "The Battle for the Bible," here).  Then, in the mid-1960s, all hell (literally) began to break loose in America.  God was given the boot from America's public schools.  Not even one decade later, abortion-on-demand was codified as federal law in the United States.  And it has been a precipitous downhill slide ever since.  But there is no bottom to the pit into which this nation is still falling.

In the early 1980s, personal computers began to transform the world in ways thitherto unimaginable.  About a decade or so later, the Internet took computing power to a whole new level.  Advances in electronics technologies, during the past two decades, has been phenomenal, in the truest sense of that word.  Which brings us to where we are, today.

American society is not merely hedonistic, but in every way it is thoroughly antichrist.  Every social institution in America~ including the majority of churches, has been sterilized, sanitized, scrubbed clean of every (respectful) reference to the Bible and to Biblical Christianity.

Now consider, if you will, the pervasiveness of electronics technologies, and the power of those technologies to flood the culture with ~ what? ~ everything but Christ, everything, in fact, antichrist.

Schools, mass media, churches, and homes: practically every setting in which the primary purpose is supposed to involve influencing and developing the minds of people, especially of young persons, has instead been radically diverted to serve the purposes not of Christ but of Satan. Even supposedly Christian homes, typically, are provided with a minuscule amount of "Christian" food for the mind, contrasted with the nearly incessant consumption of worldly alternatives to that.

The image at the top of this essay powerfully conveys the meaning of what I am herein attempting to describe.  From the earliest age, children's hearts (minds) are being filled up, not with the knowledge of God, but with the things of this, the devil's, world.  Although somewhere between 75-85% of all Americans profess to be Christians, yet, perhaps only 5-10% of those actually go to church as much as two or three hours each week, on average.  And in the vast majority of those "Christian" homes, the Bible is never studied, nor is prayer a significant part of those families' life.

"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."  I didn't say that; Jesus Christ did.  And he ought'a know.  Every where I go I make it a point to witness of Christ.  I would guess that about 8 out of every 10 people I speak with tell me that they are a Christian (which agrees with the statistic I just gave, above).  But no one would ever know that any of them is a Christian, based upon their own habits of speech.  God is not found in their mouths, because their hearts are full of other things.  "God is not in all [their] thoughts" (Psalm 10:4).