May 19, 2001

A friend of mine, Duane Brooks, has just returned from a trip to see the seven churches of the first three chapters of the book of The Revelation. The seven churches were located in what today is the country of Turkey.

Duane reports: "One interesting sight was a Bulgarian Orthodox Church in Istanbul. The entire structure of the church was made of steel. Our tour guide told us that the church had burned down several times through the years. To prevent the possibility of that happening again, they just built it out of steel. The good news about steel is that it is less flammable. On the other hand, steel isn’t very warm.

When something hurts us, we are always tempted to build a fortress of protection around our lives...C. S. Lewis, who tragically lost his wife, Joy, to cancer once said, ‘To love at all is to risk!’...If we’ve been burned, we could withdraw into a fortress of steel. Nobody could hurt us there. Perhaps no one would blame us...but then we could never know the joy of loving and being loved."

C. S. Lewis addressed the issue of protecting the heart back in the 1950's: "If you want to make sure of keeping (your heart) intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to...the risk of a (broken heart) is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the danger (of a broken heart) is Hell."

No friend will break your heart in Hell. No loved ones will disappoint you there. Why? Because there are no friends in hell. There is only the love of the self in hell. Hell is the place where the idolatry of the self comes to its logical, final conclusion.

I can tell you how to guarantee your heart will never be broken. The price, however, is astronomical. It will create for you the closest thing I know of to a "hell on earth." Never give your heart to anyone - a friend, a child, a brother/sister, a sweetheart. Never give your heart and you consign yourself to living out your life in self imposed loneliness.

My counsel is "Give your heart," but give it wisely. Give it only to those who are capable of appreciating and treasuring it. The Biblical way of expressing this caution is "Don't throw your pearls before swine" (Matthew 7:6). But even if you are successful in only giving your heart to those who will treasure your gift, your heart will be broken.

When your heart is broken, and sooner or later it will be, seek its healing in the presence of others. When you have allowed others to help you with the healing process, you will affirm the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson to be true: "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."