The False Heart Amplified or The True Heart Revealed: Poetry as expressing, confronting Reality as it really is, Part I. Crane’s In the Desert, the Ten Plagues and the state of the heart
[Reading Time: 14 minutes]
“In the desert” by Stephen Crane
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
A brief bio with a question from the poem
These words were penned by Stephen Crane, whom we know best for his 1895 Civil War era novel, The Red Badge of Courage. As the ninth surviving child of Methodist parents, Crane began writing at the age of 4 with his first articles published at 16 and a later writing stream that would eventually establish him as one of the foremost, innovative voices of Realism. As many such figures, however, his life came to a seemingly, premature close at the age of 28 after years of ill health (this time from Tuberculosis while living in a sanatorium in Black Forest, Germany).
Two years before his death while en route to work as a war correspondent in Cuba, his vessel, the SS Commodore, sank off the coast of Florida, leaving him and others adrift for 30 hours in a dinghy (the experience of which he would go on to describe in a short story published a year later under the title, the “Open Boat”). Though these and other events in no way “explain” the particular emphases of his writing, they do, at the very least, demonstrate that his literary corpus came out of the experiences of his actual corpus—that is to say, the real life, flesh-and-blood experience he had to endure in his body.
The poem closes with the words given in answer to the narrator of the poem, who asks this “naked, bestial” figure “squatting on the ground,” eating his heart,
“Is it good, friend?”
To this he responds,
“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
That is the theme before us: The reality of the bitterness of life in this fallen realm and our divergent pathways of response. We can either accept the bitterness as that which has been tailor made for us to be the burning medicine of Jesus, which will work in us in a way that nothing else can (“the narrow and hard path”). Or we can avoid it, try to get around it, finally reject it (“the broad and easy way”).
Or to put it in the form of a question, given the reality of the hardship and bitterness of life which reaches its tentacles down into the depths of our heart, what are do we do with it?
Do we, as this poor figure, feed on it with the strains of cardiac muscles and vessels somehow becoming for us an infernal form of nourishment?
My life is bitter…look at this….and this…and this….What about yours?
The larger question of the bitterness of sin: Augustine, Calvin and Psalm 119
Both Augustine and Calvin had a particular Latin term, incurvatus in se, which they employed to describe the effects of sin on a person, literally causing his being to be ‘curved inwards on itself.’ Crane appears to take this picture a step further in the this short, little poem. Not only does it change the physical image of the person to such a degree that he no longer stands upright like a man, but lives rather as a “creature,” “squatting on the ground,”“naked”, subhuman and “bestial.”
Not necessarily a picture of the risen, victorious life of the modern Western Church.
We will not spend much time on it here as we have already analyzed certain granular aspects of sin’s working in other writings. Our only comment will be to restate the thesis that sin, in whatever form it happens to be taking at the present moment (be it lust, the love of money, passion, profit, prestige, property, power…pride [what has been called “The pp’s of life”]), slowly, consistently, certainly, completely work to destroy the image of God in us. This poem presents such a picture to us in a way that is intended to strike out against our modern sensibilities, as it reveals not only the possibility of, but the terrifying reality of sin’s destructive, disfiguring force that can so easily “get a foothold” in our spirit.
And coming to this realization, we can a little bit better understand the desperate cry of the Psalmist cry out, literally moment by moment:
Oh, that my ways were directed
To keep Your statutes!…
Oh, do not forsake me utterly
Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments!
What is to be done?
Your word I have hidden in my heart,
That I might not sin against You (Ps 119:5, 8, 11).
The Heart
In any cursory reading of Scripture, it becomes evident very quickly that the heart is spoken of as the operating center of our being. As such, as Jesus makes clear, if the “light” that is in our heart “is darkness, how great is that darkness!” To this word we should add that the context, which begins with the statement,
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also;”
And it ends with the warning that,
No one can serve two masters;
For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon (Mt 6:19-24).
The Heart, the False Gods of This Fallen Age and the Ten Plagues on Egypt
As discussed in a bit more detail here, the narrative in Exodus of the Ten Plagues upon Egypt is presented as a war between JHWH and the power structures of the false Elohim of This Age. Within that context, each plague, as it were, targets particular dimensions of the false, manmade religious systems in which the Egyptians trusted. As such, the first plague of turning water to blood (Ex 7:14-25) was centered on Egypt’s divinization of the Nile River, which was deified as the fertility god Hapi. personified with a man’s bearded face and female breasts with a gravid uterus. Out of the waters of the Nile, in their conception, therefore, all life first began.
And what happens to the Nile?
Thus saith the LORD, In this thou shalt know that I am the LORD: behold, I will smite with the rod that is in mine hand upon the waters which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood. And the fish that are in the river shall die, the river shall stink, and the Egyptians will loathe to drink the water of the river…
And the fish that was in the river died; and the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river; and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt (7:17-18, 21).
The second plague of frogs, likewise, was a polemic against the goddess Heket (Ex 8:1-14). This one can be particularly lost on us—frogs??
Heket was pictured as a female with a frog's head. She was the spouse of the creator god, Khnum (known, interestingly enough, as the “eater of hearts” in the Pyramid Texts) and was worshipped as a symbol of fertility and power, becoming in the Egyptian religious understanding the goddess of birth. Even more, the accounts of Heket speak of her blowing the breath of life into the formed creatures.
And what happens to the frog-headed god Heket?
But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all your territory with frogs.
So the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into your house, into your bedroom, on your bed…(Ex 8:2-3
And when the plague strikes, Pharaoh begs Moses for his intercession such that
…the frogs died out of the houses, out of the courtyards, and out of the fields. They gathered them together in heaps, and the land stank.
The source of life in the Nile had brought forth frogs “abundantly” (sharats, the first use of which occurs in the Genesis creation account [1:20-21]; as well as in the opening of Exodus where it describes the abundant multiplication of the children of Israel in their land of slavery [1:7], yet paradoxically to the degree that “…the more they afflicted them, the more they increased in abundance (sharats) and multiplied”). Now, however, the Nile brings forth frogs which are not a source of fertility, but rather a plague. And lest the Egyptians believe in its continued divine power (for remember, even the court sorcerers of Pharaoh were able to mimic the first two plagues…), JHWH strikes the frogs down so that they “died” and were “gathered into heaps.”
From these two examples, it is then a little easier to see how the fifth plague upon the cattle (Ex 9:1-7) targeted the gods of the Egyptian cults of fertility symbolized in the sacred bull (the god Apis), the cow (the god Hathor) and the calf. Or how the ninth plague of darkness struck at the center of the Egyptian worship of the sun god, Amun-Ra. And, finally, how the tenth plague of the death of the firstborn struck down the divine line of Pharaoh, who himself was deemed a god and protector of all Egypt.
The Heart, its Hardening and the Egyptian Book of the Dead
The Weighing of the Heart
With the background of the Ten Plagues that culminated in the death of Pharaoh’s firstborn, we move to the way the text describes how in the pathway of each of these plagues Pharaoh’s heart was progressively hardened. That is to say, returning to the title, do the hardships and trials he suffers operate within him to “amplify the false heart” or “reveal” the one that is “true”?
The writer of Exodus uses one primary term for “to harden,” khazaq, which occurs 12x in the narrative. Two other verbs are utilized, qashah, “to become hard” (Ex 7:3 only) and kabad, “to be heavy” (which occurs 8x: Ex 8:15, 8:32, 9:7, 9:34, 10:1-> 14:4, 17-18). The later term, kabad, is particularly relevant as it relates to the heart and the Egyptian conception of judgment, damnation and salvation.
In the Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian text from the New Kingdom period (that was contemporary with the Mosaic writings), the condition of the heart is presented as the ultimate criteria for the judgment of the human soul. In one section, The Papyrus of Ani, there is a description of future judgment. Ani, and his wife are depicted entering the hall of judgment, where there are before them the balances of truth and righteousness by which he, and all men, are to be judged.
Anubis, the god of the underworld, is there weighing men on the balance. Thoth stands to record the verdict. Amentet, the female goddess of death, waits to devour the condemned sinner. To testify on Ani's behalf are the twin gods of birth with Bah, Ani's soul
The Criteria
Anubis then calls for the heart of Ani to be weighed on the scales against the feather of truth and righteousness.
If his heart is too heavy and outweighs the feather, he is condemned to eternal death and is cast to Amentet.
From Ani to Pharaoh
What we see in the concurrent literature of Deuteronomy is a similar trial. And this time, it was not Ani, but Pharaoh who is to be judged.
The hermeneutic of the Mosaic writings on this point specifically emphasize that the heart of Pharaoh was 'hardened’ and ‘made heavy' (chazaq and kabad, as noted above.)
“And the Lord hardened Pharoah's heart” (Ex 7:13, 9:12, 10:1, 10:21, 10:27, 11:10);
“And Pharoah hardened his own heart” (Ex 8:15, 8:32, 9:34);
And the end result is that:
“Pharaoh's heart was hardened” (Ex 7:22, 8:19, 9:7, 9:35).
According to the Egyptian conception of judgment, Pharaoh was judged a sinner and ultimately condemned because his heart was too heavy. He who was worshiped as a sinless divinity is now judged to eternal death because of the weight of his heart.
Furthermore, as Currid makes clear, his judgment served as a polemic against the gods of Egypt and the Egyptian belief that the heart of Pharaoh was the all-controlling factor in history.
In the Memphite theology, the gods, Re and Horis, were believed to be sovereign over all things by means of their hearts. Since Pharaoh was considered to be the divine incarnation of Re and Horis, his heart was, therefore, believed to be sovereign over all creation.
This conception is absolutely destroyed by the hardening and subsequent judgment of the heart of Pharaoh.
From the Pagan Religions of Egypt to the Gospel with JHWH’s Testing of the Human Heart
Moses declares on the verge of the Promised Land that God led the people of Israel—His people—into the wilderness for forty years to show them their continual need for the kind of provision which only He could provide:
So He humbled (ānâ) you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know
And why exactly?
That He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone;
But man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord (Deut 8:2-3-> Mt 4:4; Lk 4:4).
When the heart of man is tested—and it will, it must be tested—these two pathways open up before us:
The “broad and easy way” of the false heart, which the world, the flesh and the devil operating in all the false powers, religions and institutions of This Fallen Age, will, no doubt, continually “amplify”; and on the other side, the “narrow and hard path” of the Gospel, which will lead us through the condemnation and destruction of the self life “unto life” and healing in and through Christ Jesus.
This will be the focus of our next installment: The pathway to true healing—simply and without pretension, in simple faith and humble obedience.