Don’t Guard Your Heart

Today marks my 38th day at kamp this summer, and my 223rd day at kamp overall. That sounds like a lot, but it’s really such a minuscule amount of time compared to the greatness of the impact that kamp has had on my life. One of the biggest perks of kamp is that I get to see what is happening in the Christian youth of America. Some of it is really encouraging: a generation of leaders, thinkers, and dreamers who want to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. But some of it is discouraging, especially as it relates to undue pressure put on young Christians by other young Christians. This often comes in the form of phrases that were originally biblical, but have been repeated so much that they have been twisted entirely from their original meaning. The most egregious offender to cross my path lately is the phrase “guard your heart." 

"Guard your heart” comes from Proverbs 4:23, which I will get back to in a bit. This phrase is most often dropped in reference to young Christian romantic relationships, particularly when a teenaged or young college-aged girl starts to like a guy. Older college-aged girls will place a tender yet slightly condescending hand on the twitterpated girl’s shoulder and warn her, “guard your heart!” Other times it comes from a guy as he starts to date a girl but doesn’t want to open up to her. “I’m just trying to guard her heart,” he tells his small group as he opens up his enormous study bible to what he believes is a checklist in Proverbs 31 (which, as we all know, is the only woman in the Bible… another rant for another time). But “guard your heart” isn’t only applied to romantic relationships. I’ve heard it used of friendships, family ties, or any relationship in which you could possibly be hurt… so ANY relationship. Everyone warns you to “Guard your heart! Guard your heart! Guard your heart!” So when you get hurt, whose fault is it? Yours. You just didn’t guard your heart.

Let’s talk about why I’m struggling with this phrase: I suck at guarding my heart. I mean, I really suck at it. This is not so much in romantic relationships as in ALL relationships. If I meet you and we talk once, you are my friend. If you ask me a question about myself, you will get the full answer. I am often guilty of the social sin of oversharing. I invest hope in people. I aggressively believe in people. I latch on to the good in someone, and expect them to perform out of that good all the time. I don’t mean to brag; on the contrary, this year more than ever, I’ve felt like it’s a flaw of my heart. Every time I am hurt or disappointed by someone, I feel like I haven’t guarded my heart well enough. I resolve to be better, but then people are great, and then I return to aggressive believing, and then I am disappointed again, and so the cycle continues. 

Lately, I’ve felt so stupid about being this way. Why don’t I guard my heart more? Then I’d be hurt less! Why do I keep believing and loving when I know it will wreck me eventually? This inevitably leads me to the most important question: didn’t God make me an open-hearted person? Is it a sin to feel the way I feel about people? Bottom line: why can’t I guard my heart? 

So I went back to the Bible. I am ashamed to admit that, though I myself have been the perpetrator of more than one “guard your heart” over the years, I had no idea where to find it in Scripture. It ended up being Proverbs 4:23, which reads (in full): 

Above all else, guard your heart,
    for everything you do flows from it.

That’s certainly true of me, I thought. Best friend/business goddess Alyssa Boutelle recently sent me a Myers Briggs profile that described me as “making sense of the world using my feelings.” Not that I walk around sobbing to Celine Dion or anything, but that is a pretty accurate description. Nearly everything I do flows from my heart, and any input from the head is merely incidental. 

So I started hunting around Proverbs 4. That passage is actually a father talking to his sons, advising them to walk in wisdom. It is not against relationships that the sons must guard their hearts, but against evil. The father does say to “give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways,” but he never asks the sons to close themselves off from others. The original “guard your heart” is not a directive on relationships with people at all. It is an encouragement towards wisdom. 

Consider David (as I so often do). If you’ve ever heard any sort of lesson on David at all, you know that he was “a man after God’s own heart.” Not God’s own brain, God’s own judgment, or God’s own spreadsheets of information about people. David felt the ways that God feels about people. For instance, David, the rightful heir to the throne of Israel, had the opportunity to kill the current king (who had consistently tried to kill David) and take the throne in 1 Samuel 24, but David spared his life. He valued people. David, king of Israel, danced with servant girls in the streets in 2 Samuel 6. He enjoyed people. When David screwed up big time in 2 Samuel 11, it was because he ignored what he knew was right. When he couldn’t escape the consequences of what he had done, David broke down and came home to the Lord. He was open with those who he had wronged, and then in Psalm 51, he is open with us. He promises the Lord that he will use his mistakes to “teach transgressors Your ways, so they will return to you.” Now we have David’s words to help us in our times of regret. Do we have to share all of our painful stories with the whole world? Of course not. But an unguarded heart that is recovering from hurt can help another heart heal.

Some of the most powerful hearts in Scripture are unguarded hearts. When Jesus asks his disciples who they think He is in Matthew 16, Peter immediately pipes up, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” He’s not afraid of being hurt, wrong, embarrassed, or disappointed by this outlandish confession. He lays all of his cards on the table. As a result, Christ builds his church on Peter. In Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas are embarking on a missionary trip. Barnabas wants to bring along a third, John Mark, who had deserted Paul on a previous trip. Paul, afraid of getting burned again, refuses to bring John Mark along. But Barnabas was a giver of second chances. He and John Mark go on their own way together, and Paul travels alone because he wasn’t willing to open up his heart. Maybe Paul had already forgotten that the only reason he himself was able to gain the trust of the church was because Barnabas had given Paul a second chance in Acts 9. Barnabas directly enabled the tremendous spread of the gospel simply by having an open heart.

And- I almost hate to throw this in here- what about Jesus? He was open-hearted like crazy. He ate dinner with all sorts of sketchy people on a regular basis. He told them about his life. He believed in them. He knew that every person was fallen, but he also encouraged them to act out of their Him-given capacity to do good. He called Peter out of the boat and onto the water because He believed in Peter. He called Zaccheus down from the tree and said, “Hey bro, let’s grab dinner!” (That’s the Message translation.) Jesus loved people. Jesus treated people like they could be the best version of themselves, and in Him they became better. He knew people’s limits, but He also believed in their potential. Shouldn’t we try to do the same?

Don’t read this and think that I want everyone to air all of their personal pain all the time, or that I think that I’m a super-Christian because I’m a people person, or that you have to keep giving second chances to people who have annihilated your heart. Of course, as the father says in Proverbs, you should pursue wisdom about when you should and should not give your heart and your stories to other people. Some people are going to be more private by nature, and that is totally and completely okay. But giving your heart and your stories at the right time doesn’t make you a failure. The kingdom of God needs all types, and open-hearted is certainly one of them.

All this to say: next time somebody tells me to guard my heart, I will probably reply, “Open yours!" 

As if I don’t cause enough trouble at kamp already.