NOTES for Sa1 16:6-7
The gaze of God and the gaze of humanity. Why are they often so unlike each other? The answer is simple: a person looks at the face, while God looks at the heart. It seems everything is clear: God looks at the inward, at the soul; a person 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 is also 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 everything is not simple either. In the language of the Bible, the heart is the spiritual "I" of a person, his deepest depth, where the breath of life breathed into him by God at creation abides.
Yet according to the Savior's word, evil thoughts and intentions come precisely from the heart. The heart too can be different, and what it will be depends on the person. And there are no 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? Probably in the dynamics 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 gives way to another, one decision made follows another. Where the subtle and complex fabric of relationships is woven, connecting a person with God and with other people, a fabric that constitutes the foundation of spiritual life. A fabric that is never static, that is always in motion, always changing its endlessly complex pattern. Even its owner cannot always trace these changes; after the fall we know ourselves far less well than it seems to us.
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 as we see them here. For Him our past and our future are one eternal present. And He sees our whole spiritual life completely 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 a concrete moment in time. One can also judge by it about a person in 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 a second ago is no longer a face, but only its outline, contour, mask. The face that will be in a second 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 suitability for His work by that person's whole life. Therefore He looks not at the face but at the heart. This is not difficult for Him: for Him all hearts are open.