NOTES for Sa1 16:6-7

The gaze of God and the gaze of man. Why are they often so unlike each other? The answer is simple: man looks at the face, while God looks at the heart. Everything appears clear: God looks at the inward, at the soul; man looks at the outward, at bodily beauty. Or not at beauty, but at what makes a person great in human eyes. But if one thinks about it, everything turns out not to be so simple. After all, a person's face too is from God. One can object: the face is not from God, the heart is from God. A person makes his own face; it reflects and expresses his essence, his life, what he is before God and people. But with the heart too not everything is simple. In the language of the Bible, the heart is the spiritual "I" of a person, his final depth, where the breath of life breathed into man by God at creation dwells. Yet, according to the Savior's word, it is precisely from the heart that evil thoughts and intentions proceed. The heart too can be different, and what it will be depends on the person. Nor are there sinless people in the world; David was no exception. Both face and heart are not only God's gift, but also the result of the spiritual efforts of their possessor, the fruits of his spiritual life.

So what is the difference? It is in the dynamic of the process. A person's spiritual life is one; it is a single spiritual process. Precisely a process, a flow, what philosophers of the modern era sometimes called existence. A process in which one choice made in one or another situation is replaced by another, one decision follows another. Where the thin and complex fabric of relationships is woven, binding a person with God and with other people, a fabric that constitutes the basis of spiritual life. A fabric that is never static, that is always in dynamic motion, always changing its infinitely complex pattern. Even its possessor cannot always track these changes; after the fall we know ourselves far less well than it appears to us.

And only God sees it all, with all its patterns, those that were and those that will be: for Him there is no past and future such as we see them here. For Him our past and our future are one eternal present. And He sees our whole spiritual life as a whole and in all its fullness. And our heart to its full depth.

With the face everything is different: it reflects and expresses only our spiritual state at one concrete moment in time. One can also judge a person by it in all the fullness of his spiritual life, but only at that concrete moment. The face is always in the present; only in the given instant is it alive. The face that was there a second ago is no longer a face, but only its outline, its contour, a mask. The face that will be there a second later is also not yet a face, but the misty outlines of its future image. But God is not interested in one of the many moments of human life. He judges a person's fitness for His work by the whole of his life. That is why He looks not at the face, but at the heart. This is not difficult for Him: for Him all hearts are open.

How do we evaluate a person? What does it mean that, in the words of the sacred writer, we look "at the face" of a person? Is it only about 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" what is really meant first of all is a person's outward appearance. Yet appearance too can say a great deal 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 that we perceive as inward turns out to be outward for God, who looks "at the heart." Indeed, the world that we define, with regard to ourselves and other people, as inward is usually connected with our soul life, our psychic life. Of course, it largely determines our visible, outward activity, but psychic life still cannot be considered spiritual life proper. 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 straight into a person's heart, at his spiritual "I," where the intentions and motives of every action committed by this person are born. He looks at the one thing that determines a person's spiritual appearance: identical actions, identical movements of the soul, and identical psychic states in different people are often caused by different, sometimes directly opposite, intentions and motives. Meanwhile, 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, even outstanding ones, but by the choice he makes in a concrete situation. And God looks at the heart, which is transparent to Him, evaluating the person's spiritual life and spiritual condition. And He makes His decision depending on what He sees there.

From this statement two consequences follow at once, at least: first, before God all masks are useless; and second, we have no right to draw final conclusions about other people, because we look at the face, not at the heart. In ourselves, too, we often value a good outward appearance, complexion, and clothing more. But even when we turn our gaze to the heart or to actions, we perceive ourselves as something static and incapable of change. Yet today's inability to do something simple but important, or the absence, as it appears to us, of "special gifts," does not mean that tomorrow the Lord, looking into our heart, will not call us to fight Goliath.

The Lord does not look at the face. This is not only about appearance, but in general about everything that lies on the surface, about how we perceive the people around us. We may consider a person weak, while in reality he is a leader. Or a person may give the impression of being very sociable and open, the life of the party, while in reality he is withdrawn and afraid of everything, but simply knows how to put on a tightly fitting mask. The Lord looks not at the mask, and not even at the face, but at what is inside, because He Himself created us and knows what is inside.

This does not mean that we have no freedom of choice, because we can decide for ourselves whether to live on the surface of our own personality. Then it will be hard for the Lord to reach us; we will not hear Him and will not recognize Him. But we can decide to sink into the depth of ourselves, there where the Kingdom of God is, where His dominion is, and where we can meet God, recognize Him, and understand what He wants us to be, what He intended us to be. Perhaps we will learn that we are kings, and we will not be frightened by this, because God will give us the strength to become kings.