Create in me a clean heart: Digging into David's prayer

I return to King David's prayer of repentance time and again: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:!0). He captures the human desire so well as we long for a purity and holiness beyond our ability to attain. So I want to consider what a clean heart might look like. 

• A clean heart will be joyful: "Restore unto me the joy of your salvation" (Psalm 51:12)
• A clean heart has rid itself of things that make it unclean: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice." (Ephesians 4:31)
• A clean heart holds fast to and desires the Spirit of God: "Take not your Holy Spirit from me" (Psalm 51:11)
• A clean heart desires to be presentable to God: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer." (Psalm 19:14)
• A clean heart is a treasury, carefully filled with treasures: "Therefore every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." (Matthew 13:52)

So the faithful are careful about repentance, about reading Scripture, studying together, and pursuing wisdom. These are some of the ways we build the treasures in our hearts. 

Seeing the Invisible God: The Holy Spirit in symbols

The Holy Spirit is God's gift to us of himself. This is similar to Christ, as Immanuel. As we cannot see the Spirit, the Bible provides some other symbols to help us understand the Spirit: 

• Wind symbolizes the Holy Spirit: a breath that gives life. 
• A dove symbolizes the Holy Spirit: a creature of the air and relatively untouched by earthly problems, it is gentle, an emblem of peace and hope. Doves were also at times used as a sacrifice. 
• Water symbolizes the Holy Spirit: washing, cleansing, and renewal. We see the Holy Spirit descend on Christ at his baptism with water, and speaking to his disciples about a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. 
• Fire symbolizes the Holy Spirit: light for wisdom and understanding, counsel and knowledge. While the Psalmist praised the Word of God as "a lamp to my feet and a light to my path," the image used for that light and guidance is that of fire. Fire was associated with courage, empowerment, and freedom from fear. Fire was also used to purify and refine.

Build-A-Bear Deity Kit: Modern Idols

When I was first forming my understanding of the contemporary world, idols were rare in the U.S., at least in the literal sense of the word "idols". Sure, it was easy enough for people to commit idolatry of a certain kind, putting something else in the place of God. But the kind where people constructed something and called it a god and worshipped it, that was rare. 

Again, it has long been a quip -- a barb, a joke -- that people make gods in their own images. Honestly, given how "understanding" works as we fit things into our minds, we could hardly make any other kind of deity than one that is in our own images. The characteristics must be brought from our own minds and our own understanding, and obviously reflect us. But often that had been meant as a critique of limiting our ideas to the ones already found in our own minds. 

What I have seen recently is the idea -- which some people I know take seriously -- that it is desirable to create a god in our own image based on what we wish that god would be. I have a friend who was  invited to create her own idea of God based on her own needs and preferences, who thought it was exhilarating to be free from all constraints and have a god about whom she had no doubts or reservations. There was even a paper-and-pencil exercise where she decided the traits and characteristics she desired her god to have, based on some reflective journaling. It didn't even seem strange to her. The awareness that she just made it up wasn't seen as a problem. It does not bother her that she prays to a god that she drafted in a journaling exercise. That this deity would never be able to have any insight for her, beyond what she had given it, would be a problem for another day (if ever). I can hope that her understanding of God retains some roots, though there is no guarantee of it. 

We all have misunderstandings of God. When the infinite God meets our finite minds, our mental images are all incomplete. But usually not intentionally so, or with disregard for the best common experiences of humanity through the ages. 

Our culture's relationship to truth and objectivity has changed much in recent years. As BK was posting over at CADRE Comments, there are new challenges calling us forward.