How is it that God alone only can know our hearts?

[WannabeSaint]

“The heart is deceitful above all things”
“Who can understand their sins?”
“I am not conscious of any wrongdoing, but I am therefore not acquitted…God will manifest our hidden motives.”

I have a question on this. These verses point to a possibility that one can be deceived about their intentions.

Theologians acknowledge that our intentions can be insidious even during acts of charity. Thus we can never be sure if we are “worthy of love or hate” by God.

To be honest, I don’t CONSCIOUSLY have those evil intentions in acts of charity. When I did, I went to confession. I most certainly have times where I have to halfheartedly WILL a good intention because everything in me is wanting to do the evil intention. There are also times where I was completely unaware of how much of a jerk I was being and later realized it after reflection. But at the most, those are only partially deliberate sins.

So my question is, where are these deceptive evil intentions that people aren’t aware of that damn them?..One has to be aware of what they are doing is wrong and intend to do it anyway for it to be mortal.

My moral life is like dung compared to St. Paul, so his case is even more of a head scratcher for me.

 

[WannabeSaint]

Any insights on this?

^bump

 

[Aspidistraflyer]

So, Jer17 is among the most taken out of context verses in the whole Bible. It is pretty much invoked whenever a Christian says “you oughta take a gut check” or, “try to slow down, and do some introspection.”

Jer 17 is talking about God rewarding the good and punishing the wicked. In v.7and8 God talks about those who produce good fruit as being close to him, and implies they will be rewarded; Jeremiah then asks about how inscrutable (because the Hebrew word is not translated as “deceitful” anywhere else) the human heart is, but the implication is not how inscrutable the human heart is to the person’s self. It is the fact that each person’s human heart is inscrutable to every other person.

After searching men’s hearts and testing their kidneys (for the things they kept secret from other men) God will "give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” So, God can understand your deeds in light of your works.

In other words, the Bible is not encouraging never listening to your individual conscience or reason, and it is not saying to psychoanalyze yourself

 

[awesomecatholic]

God really is the only one who knows our hearts. From the very beginning God had a plan for us and sometimes it may seems like we want something but God really knows what will make us happy.

 

[fhansen]

Pride and covetousness are often involved in human motives, so our intentions aren’t always the purest. And we don’t always know; we fool ourselves easily enough; as moral beings we want to be right, or “look” right, and so we attempt to rationalize and justify behavior which isn’t always so perfectly right.

This has to do with our fallen state of being, our separation from God. As the catechism teaches Adam wanted to “be like God”, but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God”.[279] This means, for one, that Adam wanted to determine morality for himself, apart from God and His wisdom. Morality thus became effectively relative for man; while man still had God’s law written in his heart, the control over that law, over morality itself for man, was no longer held in partnership with God. With this men’s consciences were dimmed, compromised, and so we’re not always motivated by the purest of motives. Loss of self-mastery, concupiscence, had entered man’s interior world. The Church teaches that we are now in some manner separated from truth. There is a rift between ourselves and God, ourselves and fellow man, ourselves and creation, and even between ourselves and ourselves.

Our faith holds the antidote as it seeks to re-establish the broken communion between man and God, wrought by the work of reconciliation that Jesus came to accomplish. But we must still struggle here. Absolute perfection isn’t attained until the next life.

 

[Genesis315]

One has to be aware of what they are doing is wrong and intend to do it anyway for it to be mortal.

Not necessarily. Ignorance isn’t always an excuse when you are ignorant through your own fault:

From the Catechism:
1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man "takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin."59 In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.

 

[WannabeSaint]

Not necessarily. Ignorance isn’t always an excuse when you are ignorant through your own fault:

From the Catechism:
1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man "takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin."59 In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.

@Genesis315
Yes. But one has to be aware they are taking little trouble in finding out the truth and neglecting their obligation to research into it.

If one is not aware of ever doing that, I don’t understand how they would be culpable for that.