As the tall, lean, and mostly naked warriors walked along the deserted streets of the Imperial City, they gazed in awe of the magnificent buildings and the obvious signs of wealth. As they looked at the beautiful houses that lined the street, the residents quietly moved on to their porches and sat down to watch what would happen next. The warriors thought they must be gods dressed in clean white linens. For a time both sides stared at each other, wondering what to do.
Then the warriors with their swords and spears moved onto the porches and the three days of bloodletting, rapine and theft began. They weren’t gods after all.
This is an unknown author’s description of the sack of Rome in 387 BC by Brennus and the Gallic Celt horde. They had defeated the Roman legions at the Battle of the River Allia and entered Rome through open gates. Please note the order of events. Conquer the enemy combatants; then sack the enemy non-combatants. And when the time comes to quit, you quit, or your own blood is spilled.
Compare this to events in 215 BC when Hannibal was given a clear shot at the Imperial City, and he didn’t take it. He had made it the purpose of his life to avenge the Carthaginian loss to Rome in the First Punic War and he balked when given the opportunity to deliver the coup de grace. He needed to wait for siege engines as some suggest? Hmmm…. I invite my history students to consider whether Hannibal’s hand might have been stayed by spiritual forces. The Romans were not moral giants, but they didn’t ritually kill their children in hopes of gaining a leg up on their enemies. The Carthaginians, like their Ba’al and Molech worshipping forebears, were happy to throw a few kids into the fire to improve the crops.
If you believe, as I do, that a foundational principle of the Judeo-Christian worldview is that we are all made in the image of God and are therefore equal and of infinite worth then this is worth considering. And if you believe like C.S. Lewis that there is a Tao in the moral universe that puts limits on acceptable depravity (my words and not his) and that, like gravity, there is a natural law governing all people at all times, then it makes sense that Hannibal was stopped before he could make even more cosmic trouble.
In like manner, one has to wonder about the relatively sudden disappearance of the Aztecs, Mayans and even Incas. They had each created dominant and, in some respects, impressive empires that, in the case of the Incas at least, didn’t last more than a few generations. Similarly, the Iroquois nations of North America held the balance of power between the French and English, not to mention the weaker tribes to the west for only a relatively few generations. It is almost like there is a natural boundary beyond which human depravity will not be allowed. The French bought English slaves from their Iroquois partners to prevent the depravity.
And this is not to point fingers. Jeremiah’s comment about the status of the human heart, and reflected by Solzhenitsyn three millennia later, is not specific - we are all cursed with deceitful hearts. Today we may not eat the deceitful and still beating hearts of other people, but depravity can take many forms.
So, what is it about the heart and the blood it pumps that attracts such attention? For some time, I have been attempting to understand the latest “science” on human consciousness and have read a few books and papers about brain mapping and proposed centers of consciousness within that remarkable organ. Consciousness is at the synapses, or it is spread throughout the various parts of the brain, or it is in the hypothalamus… there is no consensus on where consciousness lies.
There are some who think that consciousness is intrinsic to the stored information and the speed of its retrieval system. Philosophers like Ray Kurzweil think that machines will achieve consciousness when the speed of instructions and the storage capacity of the machine reach that of the human brain. Homo ex machina. In this construct, consciousness is not a human trait but is a function of the data. Fascinating stuff but, it seems to me, an inadequate explanation. The state of knowledge about consciousness, the brain, and the nature of information remains uncertain to say the least.
As implied by the title to this reflection, the Bible sees the heart as an important player in the discussion of morality and, by implication, consciousness. In today’s popular culture we sing of “your lyin’ heart”. Hearts made of glass can be broken, and even be hungry if Bruce Springsteen is to be believed. Again, we may no longer be heart-eaters but we certainly seem to have a proclivity for giving the heart the attributes of consciousness. That seems silly. But is it silly? Here is the 1992 abstract of a fascinating paper available on PubMed.
Heart transplantation is not simply a question of replacing an organ that no longer functions. The heart is often seen as source of love, emotions, and focus of personality traits. To gain insight into the problem of whether transplant patients themselves feel a change in personality after having received a donor heart, 47 patients who were transplanted over a period of 2 years in Vienna, Austria, were asked for an interview. Three groups of patients could be identified: 79% stated that their personality had not changed at all postoperatively. In this group, patients showed massive defense and denial reactions, mainly by rapidly changing the subject or making the question ridiculous. Fifteen per cent stated that their personality had indeed changed, but not because of the donor organ, but due to the life-threatening event. Six per cent (three patients) reported a distinct change of personality due to their new hearts. These incorporation fantasies forced them to change feelings and reactions and accept those of the donor. Verbatim statements of these heart transplant recipients show that there seem to be severe problems regarding graft incorporation, which are based on the age-old idea of the heart as a centre that houses feelings and forms the personality.
Nothing is proven by any of this. History was and remains the story of the great extents to which we are prepared to go to abuse those around us. There is nothing new there. Maybe we attach feelings and emotions (elements of conscious life) to the heart to justify that abuse. Maybe our brains flood our hearts with chemicals that cause changes in blood pressure and heart rate, and we identify moods and feelings with those changes. Maybe.
But how to understand emotional and physiological changes that mimic the personality of the previous and entirely unknown owner of the heart? That is weird.
Speaking of the intrinsic Intelligence of the Heart check out references to the book by Joseph Chilton Pearce titled The Heart-Mind Matrix How the Heart Can Teach the Mind New Ways to Think.
And the research/insights of the HeartMath Insitute too, which, among other things proves at the level of the feeling-heart everybody is instantaneously inter-connected.