Life With A Well-Ordered Heart

Beyond Balance

Many people in our culture, when asked what they're after, will say something about a balanced life.  However, in The Life You've Always Wanted, John Ortberg makes the statement that if we go through scripture, we won't find God saying that His ultimate goal for us is to lead a balanced life.  "Balance" tends to carry the idea that we're trying to make our lives more manageable, more convenient, and more pleasant - but God wants something more for us than that.  The point is not that we ought to live an unbalanced life (being frenzied, hurried, stressed, or neglecting the most basic relationships around us).  However, there are certain problems with making balance the ultimate metaphor of what we're after. 

For starters, the goal for balance can contribute to a tendency to compartmentalize our faith.  Often a "balanced life" is pictured as a pie chart with life divided into seven or eight slices, one labeled "financial," another "vocational," and so on, with one of the slices reserved for "spiritual."  This picture encourages us to think of matters such as finaces or work as "nonspiritual activities."  It blinds us to the fact that God is intensely interested in our every moment and activity.

The Quest For A Well-Ordered Heart

But there is a pursuit that is worthy of our devotion – a goal that is achievable.  It is the quest for what might be called a "well-ordered heart".  The balance paradigm assumes that our problem is external – a disorder in our schedule or our job or our season of life.  But the truly significant disorder is internal.

What does it mean to have a "well-ordered heart?"  Basically, it means that you come to love what's worth loving – to love:

- the right thing

- to the right degree
- in the right way
-with the right kind of love