Main news for 19 March 2017

How do we evaluate a person? What does it mean that we look, in the sacred writer's words, "at the face" of a person? Is the matter only outward appearance? And what does it mean that God looks "at the heart"? What is this "heart" of which the Bible speaks to us? Of course, by "face" outward appearance is indeed meant first of all. But outward appearance too can say much about who is before us, especially if we look a person in the eyes. It is no accident that the eyes are called the mirror of the soul: they really can say much more about a person's inner world than we usually notice. And yet the world we perceive as inner turns out to be external for God, who looks "at the heart." Indeed, the world we define, with reference to ourselves and other people, as inner is usually connected with our emotional, psychic life. Of course, it largely determines our visible, external activity, but psychic life still cannot be considered properly spiritual life. Our psyche is as much a part of nature as our physiology, although psychic nature, of course, differs substantially in itself from physical nature. But God looks directly into a person's heart, at his spiritual "I," where the intentions and motives of every deed performed by this person are born. He looks at the one thing that determines a person's spiritual appearance: for identical actions, identical movements of the soul, and identical psychic states in different people are often caused by different and sometimes directly opposite intentions and motives. A person's spiritual path and his destiny in eternity are determined precisely by his motives and intentions, just as his spiritual life is determined not by knowledge and abilities, however outstanding, but by the choice he has made in a concrete situation. And God looks at the heart, which is transparent to Him, evaluating a person's spiritual life and spiritual state. And He makes His decision depending on what He sees there.