Developing Chests
I’m a huge CS Lewis fan. So the other day my eye was immediately caught by the title, “What I Failed to Learn from C. S. Lewis.”* Its author, Jeff Dryden, confesses he had missed a significant point in Lewis’ book, The Abolition of Man. He had always thought Lewis’ main point in this work was the importance of objective knowledge. But through his years of teaching, he’s found that forming intellects isn’t enough. Informing minds does not make people in Christ’s image. Now he sees that Lewis’ model actually focuses on forming students’ emotions and affections—“teaching them to “love what is good and to disdain what is evil.” Or, “the head rules the belly through the chest.” The head’s role is to determine what is right (by intellect and reason), but by itself, it hasn’t enough power to control the belly (our desires). For that, we need the help of our “chests.” By that, Lewis means our deepest self, our will, which is fueled by our emotions and affections. These need to be trained to want what our heads have discerned to be good, right and true.
For a long time I have pondered how the Holy Spirit forms us into the image of Christ and how we partner with the Spirit’s work. I share Dryden’s conclusion that often we’ve too much emphasized informing heads, and not enough forming chests. We all agree that knowing the right thing to do is no guarantee of doing the right thing. We have to want to do what we know is right. We need to train our emotions and affections in order to move our wills.
Let me summarize: We have desires that may or may not be aligned with God’s best for us. These desires metaphorically come from our belly. Our intellect and reason (our heads) help us discern what is God’s best for us. But it is our will (our chests), driven by our affections and emotions, that determine what we will do. Without chests, we will never be able to do what we know is right (“Men without Chests” is the first chapter in The Abolition of Man).
The key question is clear: How do we go about forming chests? Certainly, we need to start with our own. Even as we teach our minds to discern what is good, we need to train our emotions to value, love and long for what is “good and right and true” (Eph 5:9). Additionally, for those in Christian ministry, we are also concerned with helping others to shape their affections and emotions.
How? To begin, we need to discover what stirs our hearts toward the things of God, and participate in them regularly. These “stirrers of our emotions” can be things like songs, movies or books. They may also be activities like Bible meditation, prayer, running, hiking, writing or composing music. Certain people can also stir our hearts toward God and the things of God. Chests form when we spend time with those who lift our emotions toward what is “good, acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2). The key, I think, is to intentionally devote time and energy to build up the strength of those loves and affections that draw us into Christ.
As we regularly partake of these practices, we can partner with the Spirit’s work to not only renew our minds, but to develop our hearts–our wills–in alignment with the heart of God. Similarly, by training and encouraging others toward practices that lift and inspire them to want God’s best for themselves and others, we can help them form chests that can move their wills in line with the desires of God.
May Christ form the fullness of his heart within your chest.
*Didaktikos November 2021, 5:2, 31-35; see also CS Lewis, The Abolition of Man, New York: MacMillan, 1947.