NOTES for Sa1 16:7

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.