The Heart Knows Best

Trumah(Exodus 25:1-27:19)

The Heart Knows Best

While in the desert, God gave instructions on how to build the first sanctuary. It was to be a portable tabernacle. God wanted all the Jewish people to play a role in the process by making donations to aid in its construction.

God told Moses that the people who should give are those:

"...from every man whose heart motivates him...." (Exodus 25:2)

A LIFE LESSON

God wanted people whose "heart" motivated them to give. Why should it be someone's heart that motivates them and not their brain? The answer can be found in understanding what the internal "mechanism" is that motivates someone to do anything - especially an act of kindness or good deed for someone else.

When someone wants to give, the first thing that happened was their heart - or soul - became aware of something and was inspired to give to it. But just when we're about to take any sort of action, we hear a voice that attempts to reign in our behavior. It's the brain. While the heart and soul are emotionally based and only want to give, our brain, on the other hand, operates strictly on logic. And any time the heart wants to give, the brain will instantly filter the request to see if the idea makes sense from a logical standpoint.

And this where trouble starts to brew. The brain - having access to literally billions of pieces of data from your life experiences - will analyze the suggested act of kindness and decide if it's really in your best interest. There's no "heart" in the brain, just logic. While the brain knows that your heart wants and needs to give, it must look out for you in other ways and sees things only through logical glasses. This creates a significant internal conflict because in an effort for your overall protection, the brain will try to stop the heart from being a constant giver.

For example, let's say that you're rushing for an important meeting and you see an old lady who's having trouble crossing the street. Since our initial reaction is always based upon emotion, you'll instantaneously "think" with your heart and have a strong urge to stop and help the elderly lady. But then your brain instantaneously counters this decision and reasons that it will cause you to be late for your meeting and lose a huge business deal. In a matter of micro-seconds, your brain further reasons that if you don't stop to help this lady and you're able to make your meeting on time, then the money you'll make from the business deal can help society much more as a whole than just helping this old lady.

At this point, your heart counters that this lady needs your help now and you should stop and help her and that no one will hold it against you if you're just a couple of minutes late for your meeting. An intense three second internal battle ensues and while sometimes the heart is the victor, quite often it's your brain that wins out and the opportunity to help this lady is lost forever. And as you continue to race towards your meeting, your brain - in an effort to erase any lingering guilt you might have - will continue to give you more and more reasons to justify its earlier decision.

God "wired" us and He knows exactly how our decisions are made. So when God said that all gifts should come from every man whose heart motivates him, God wanted to ensure that the brain wasn't going to block the heart's true desire to give. God didn't want anyone's brain to convince him that helping to build the tabernacle was a bad idea.

If God knew that the Jewish people's brains could reason that they shouldn't give to one of the most important and crucial causes in history, then clearly our brain can talk us out of most any cause or situation we want to give to. In this instance, God wanted the Jewish people to bypass the brain and listen to heart.

And that's the lesson for all of us. Sometimes the best way to win a battle is never to fight it to begin with.