Healing of the Heart and the Mind (Healing III)...

Monday, May 19, 2014. One of the main points of Jesus when he talks to his disciples is about healing of your heart and your mind. That is strongly connected to all we do, socially, politically, scientifically and personally.

How to? …

Yesterday evening I spend some time in a library. It was a scientific library, and I had the pleasure of looking into many books of colleagues in the field of “applications connected to mathematics” which wrote about their knowledge on their particular fields. I found one book which was new, and I did not know it, but it is exactly about a topic I have just published a book about myself. It is very interesting, I will go again today and read …!

My point here is: there are so many scientists today, doing research and writing about their topics. How do we know what the others have done? How do we acknowledge and properly cite their work? It is not easy to generate a system where that is possible. We used to have one, but the explosion of scientist make it difficult - we can work well in little groups, and we will have our hierarchy and structure therein. But working with the huge community today generates a lot of strange effects.

What has all this to do with faith? It has, since faith is about a healthy way to deal with things. So what is the healthy way to deal with science, with research work, with publications, with colleagues? Science often is focussed very much on the “monumental thought”, on the breakthrough, on the top idea. But is lives from many doing the research, working ideas out, knowing what has been done. It is scholarly work, as well as it is research work.

What is driving your heart? …

What is driving your heart? What is it you try to find when you do science? Is it fame? Is it to be the one who finds something of value? Is it that your own value is linked to what you find? That is the system of science, usually. You are judged according to what you find, what you know, how smart you are and how good you are. You are not judged as God loves you.

There is some tension here. But it is a tension which you will have everywhere. It is the same in politics, the same in sports, the same in art and music. God wants you to rely on him, but the world wants you to be good, to be charming, to be entertaining, to be smart and leading and powerful.

Jesus experienced this phenomenon. When he showed power, the people wanted him to be king. They wanted to benefit from his power. They did not want him to be king when it came to obedience and life style. But this is where healing starts. We are healed when we obey him, when we listen and realize how much better he knows how to approach life than we do. He is the creator!

Healing is an invitation, to our heart and our mind. It is the invitation to believe in Jesus, to follow him. Then, with creativity, we will find ways first to live in our modern world, and second to change it, to go steps of healing here as well. That is, indeed, a very big task. But in faith, nothing is impossible! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts