🎬Cliché Month: (don’t) Follow Your Heart 💓
Follow Your Heart?
Have you ever followed your heart only to have it lead you someplace you didn’t expect to go? Maybe you thought you were following true love. Maybe a religious experience turned out to be a little too much like a cult instead of being Bible based. Maybe you were totally certain you were supposed to go to a certain school, job, or address and all the promises fell flat.
Few platitudes are as universally celebrated as “follow your heart.” You’ll find it in graduation cards, you’ll hear animated heroines speak it as a mantra, and Hollywood pushes it as the way to fulfill your dreams. On the surface, it sounds empowering. But beneath the romanticism, there’s an uncomfortable truth: our hearts (emotions) are fickle, easily swayed, and often terrible navigators. Even God’s Word says our hearts are so deceitful that we can’t even know them ourselves.
Jeremiah 17:9 WEBUS
[9] The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it?
https://bible.com/bible/206/jer.17.9.WEBUS
Danger and Deceit
This is the danger of following your heart. Even though we’re told things like, “The heart knows what it wants,” or “Listen to your heart,” those efforts often lead us to a broken heart or into hopeless depression. And why? Because they mix up emotional desires with being led through this life by our loving Creator. Only the Spirit of The One who made us can lead to the places He planned and designed for us. Every other direction is hit and miss. Maybe it will lead to someplace great; maybe not. John Bevere speaks on this in his message: “Breaking Intimidation.” He says things of the soul can imitate things of The Spirit.
The affiliate link above is for the book at Amazon, and I’m not certain if that portion is in the book or only on CD, so I asked Microsoft Copilot for a summary of that portion of the message. Here’s that summary…
John Bevere warns that the soul (mind/will/emotions) can imitate the Spirit, creating impulses that feel right, sound noble, and even look “spiritual,” yet still come from human desire rather than God. He uses John the Baptist as the example: everything about his priestly family line suggested a respectable ministry path, but the Spirit led him into the wilderness instead—camel hair, locusts, and a calling no one expected. Bevere’s point is simple and sharp: following your heart is often just following your soul, and the soul, no matter how sincere, “cannot receive the things of the Spirit.” True direction comes from the Spirit, even when it contradicts what seems good.
1 Corinthians 2:14 BSB
[14] The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/1co.2.14.BSB
The Romantic Rebellion
The belief that our inner feelings are the ultimate moral compass took root during the late 18th-century Romantic Era. Poets and philosophers, who reacted against the cold rationality of the Industrial Age, argued that personal passion and raw emotion were inherently pure. Over the 20th century, pop psychology and modern individualism cemented the idea that it was unhealthy to suppress our desires. They suggested that trusting immediate emotional impulses was the highest form of self-discovery.
An Ancient Warning
Long before modern cinema made the human heart into the hero of every story, ancient wisdom urged caution with yielding to wild emotions. In classical philosophy, Plato illustrated the human soul as a charioteer (Reason) struggling to manage two horses—one noble, and the other a wild, rebellious appetite that was “the mate of insolence and pride… hardly yielding to whip and spur.”
Scripture provides more anchors against letting blind, emotional trust lead us to places of destruction or depression:
Proverbs 4:23 BSB
[23] Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow springs of life.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/pro.4.23.BSB
Proverbs 3:5-6 BSB
[5] Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; [6] in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/pro.3.5-6.BSB
Rather than letting unchecked desires drag us toward a fire, wisdom calls us to tether our hearts to truth, discernment, and sound guidance.
Leading Your Heart
In the 2008 film Fireproof, there is a pivotal conversation between Caleb and his friend (and boss) Michael that perfectly dismantles this platitude. When Caleb tells Michael he is “in” with The Lord and wants some faith advice, Michael gets very excited. He calls Caleb his brother (but you gotta hear how he says it 😁) and then gives great big-brother-type advice:
“And don’t just follow your heart, man, because your heart can be deceived; but you’ve got to lead your heart.”
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Cliché Month: A Walk in the Park
Sometimes, a day or an effort may seem super easy. Other times, what we’re asked to do can be excruciatingly difficult. But no matter how easy or difficult it is, the one thing we don’t want is for someone else to think it will work the same for us as it does for them.
For example, an experienced baker may be asked to do something that, for them, is literally as easy as pie. If you asked me to bake a pie, I could do it, but it may or may not be easy. If I make an easy pie, it is usually a no bake something with a cream cheese filling and a graham cracker crust. 😋
Still, most of us have had moments that could be called a walk in the park. We often use that phrase to describe something effortless, easy, and free of any stress at all. We can see ourselves skipping through the task like we would skip through a park filled with greenery, beauty, sunshine, and even a light Spring breeze. 🏞️
Where Did “A Walk in the Park” Come From?
The idiom emerged in American English during the early-to-mid 20th century. Urban public parks were originally designed as tranquil, landscaped escapes from crowded, noisy industrial city streets. Because strolling down a level, paved park path required virtually no exertion or hazard, the phrase naturally evolved into slang for any task that was delightfully easy or uncomplicated.
The Path of Real Peace
Though our daily responsibilities are rarely effortless, we don’t have to carry the fatigue alone. 1 Peter, Chapter 5, puts it this way:
1 Peter 5:7 BSB
[7] Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/1pe.5.7.BSB
Stepping onto God’s path and walking with Him allows us to trade our striving for His steady guidance and true restoration:
Psalm 23:2-3 BSB
[2] He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters.
[3] He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness for the sake of His name.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/psa.23.2-3.BSB
May your steps be light, unhurried, and peaceful today. 🕊️👣
I’m a little sleepy today, so I got a little more help from Gemini. It’s starting to write more like me, but I still read and edit carefully like I would do in a human collaboration. Still, it was very helpful tonight.
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Cliché Month: Beauty is Only Skin Deep; plus Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
I’m bringing you two related clichés today because they are parts along the same line of looking at real beauty vs false beauty. I write from the point of view of someone who’s never really liked what she saw in the mirror, though I haven’t hated what I see either. It just always seemed like most others were prettier than me. There have been moments where I fixed myself up into something I was more pleased with, but even those never made me feel gorgeous or beautiful.
On the other hand, my acceptance of being more plain than those “real” beauties in my life has driven me to develop inner beauty. Caring how others feel, trying to be helpful to almost everyone, and freely talking about my various failures in life to make sure no one feels like I think I’m better than them has always been among my goals. Even with winning behaviors or skills, if they made someone else feel loss, it took the wind right out of my sails. (Hmm, that’s another cliché, huh?)
Sometime during my travels with the photo studio, a TV was on with a show called Monsters. The episode I watched back then (around 1990) has stuck with me for years even though I didn’t actually know the show or what the episode was called until a few weeks of deep searching gave me the result: Season 2, episode 23, called “The Bargain.” I’ve linked to it on YouTube, but the summary goes like this:
A woman owns a bookstore and has feelings for a customer who doesn’t seem to feel the same. She decides it’s because she’s plain, so when she sees an ad for a new face, she calls the number. Her new face is beautiful but comes with a few prices. In the end, the woman with her old face gets the guy who’d been in love with her inner beauty all along, so she lost everything by focusing on the outer shell. I guess this actually goes a little with yesterday’s cliché to not judge a book by its cover as well.
Now, the second cliché makes a similar point, and the illustration of it is shown perfectly in the old Twilight Zone episode called Eye of the Beholder from season 1, episode 39. But I was unable to find that in a full original episode without commentary. I have linked to the unveiling moment in the remake from 2002 since the point is still shown, and the videography still pulls off some of the tricks of the original.
If you haven’t seen it, I don’t want to spoil this one, so I’ll just tell you that it’s an episode about a woman who has plastic surgery to “fix” her face to give her the beauty of those around her. The surgery fails and the lights come on to reveal that beauty—both hers and others—is not exactly what most expect it to be.
On a side note, if you watch (or rewatch) this full episode, pay attention to the amazing use of shadows and camera angles that hide the actual faces of the cast until the reveal at about 16 minutes in. The strength of the film is in the audio until the lights come on, and you never realize something is being purposely hidden from the audience. It’s done brilliantly.
So how do we look at the world when we’ve been so trained to judge on outward appearances and yet somehow know they are not the answer? The Bible speaks to this in three different ways.
Proverbs 31:30 BSB
[30] Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/pro.31.30.BSB
1 Samuel 16:7 BSB
[7] But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or height, for I have rejected him; the Lord does not see as man does. For man sees the outward appearance, but the Lord sees the heart.”
https://bible.com/bible/3034/1sa.16.7.BSB
1 Peter 3:3-4 BSB
[3] Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair or gold jewelry or fine clothes, [4] but from the inner disposition of your heart, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in God’s sight.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/1pe.3.3-4.BSB
Each of us should work on our inner beauty, and we should also strive to see the inner beauty of others. It is that true beauty that will allow us to make genuine connections to each other; connections so strong that they supercede any abundance or lack of external beauty.
This message is portrayed beautifully in the Pure Flix movie called “A Hot Cocoa Christmas” (formerly called “Much Ado About Christmas”) and one I highly recommend is worth renting. I wish I could find the karaoke scene that shows the connection between the couple, but here’s the trailer for the whole movie:
Just imagine a world where the insides truly mean more than the outsides to most people. No more harming others because they’re wearing the shoes someone else thinks they deserve; no more attacking people because of any outward display (age, race, gender, etc.) someone dislikes; no more graffiti and damage to the outsides of buildings or cars or wherever people feel their appearances need to be made; and people dedicated to bringing out the best in others, so their inner beauty can shine. All that would be Heavenly. Dream with me, and let your own inner beauty sparkle. ✨🤩
Shout out to both Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot for helping me find the info for that old show and for pointing out the symmetry arc my mind naturally found by looking at these three sources to present my points.
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