Double Hearted
Psalm 12:1-4 Help, Lord, for the godly man ceases! For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men. They speak idly everyone with his neighbor; With flattering lips and a double heart they speak. May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, And the tongue that speaks proud things, Who have said, “With our tongue we will prevail; Our lips are our own; Who is Lord over us?”
With flattering lips and a double heart they speak – I have done exactly this. How so you ask? I have spoken words with an ulterior motive. With flattering lips and a double heart I have spoken in order to gain the affection people around me. I convince myself that what I say is to help someone, but in reality, it is to gain acceptance.
This is a double heart. I am unable to love when I use my giftedness to make people like me. My tongue had spoken proud things (things that build me up and cause others to think more highly of me) as well as sounding as good and articulate as I can in order to gain favor and acceptance.
Perhaps this if why Jesus said if your eye is single (good), it will be full of light.
Matthew 6:22 '“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. '
The word for “good” literally means “single”. The healthy eye sees single because its vision is proper and fixed. It sees things as they are.
Matthew 6:23 'But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!'
The word for “bad” is from the root that means “labor, sorrow, or pain”. If your eye is full of “labor, sorrow, or pain” it will affect the way you embody your life. The “bad” eye sees double because vision is blurred and it can’t see straight. It does not see reality as it actually is. The double eyed vision puts myself at the center of the world rather than Christ at the center of my world.
A friend of mine tells a parable that illustrates the point:
Imagine a street in the city. On the First Day you go to work and are walking on one side of the street, and on the other side of the street there is a Stranger. The Next Day you go to work at the same hour and walk on the same side of the street, and on the other side walks the same Stranger. On the Third Day, the Fourth Day, down to the Fortieth Day the same thing happens. It is like a theatre: you watch what is happening on the stage; you watch the Stranger passing by, and the Stranger too watches you passing by. Perhaps, after a certain number of days you will nod to be polite, but you still will remain strangers to each other. For many people this is what their prayer life looks like. God is like a stranger. It is as if He remains on the other side of a street. God is an outsider, maybe even an idol and not the living God.
The double hearted man sees the stranger and his destination. The one whose eye has become single has met the stranger and made the stranger his life.
If my eye is double, it sees one thing and another and attempts to act on both. Perhaps I see the act of love in front of me but act it out in self interest, hoping to gain recognition for my love. Then my act of love turns me into a prostitute. I have sold my act of love for a pittance, the embrace of another human.
Human beings are experts at acting one way and thinking of ourselves in another. We convince ourselves that we are good and loving while we hate our neighbor (or are at least disinterested). At best we are neutral, at worst we are full of hate and anger. We are mired in darkness because we are double-hearted. And the double hearted uses love for selfish reasons.
As I said, I have done exactly what this verse describes. So what am I to do? I think a good place to start would be to echo the cry of the Psalmist: “Help Lord!” When I recognize my double-heartedness I must repent and turn back to the loving arms of the Father. I must acknowledge that what I see is not reality. When I can finally admit I have a distorted lens I can turn my eye back to the Father in the simplicity of loving devotion.