We see passionate people setting the world on fire all around us. People attacking each other. Wars and conflicts around the world. There is division caused by passionate people everywhere you look. It’s curious a word most often commonly associated with love leads to such damage.

To understand why passion is often so destructive, let’s push the line of association a little bit further. Passion is associated with love and love is most commonly associated with the heart. The heart is viewed as a positive thing. If I had a nickel for every touching movie line or “inspirational” quote that talked about following your heart, I’d be retired. The world preaches to follow your heart. People listen and that is why our world is in such a constant state of pain. When such amazing things like love can come from the heart it doesn’t sound right that the heart could cause such grief. The answer lies in what type of love comes from the heart. Love from the heart is a feeling. There are many feelings beyond love – positive ones like empathy and compassion but so much evil – anger, hate, loathing, lust, pride, envy, jealousy and so many more. Feelings are vast.  If we only follow our heart, we only follow our own desires and that will always lead to more dark, self-serving feelings than good. The heart will tell you that you are right and just, when really it is just telling you to do what will selfishly make you feel good, at least for a time. The result is destruction all around you and eventually your own, whether in this life or the next. The heart is deceitful. This is also why so many people follow their hearts as their guide post. The heart loves itself and will make you feel good when you follow it but that is short lived. When the destruction of your passion finds you, the heart will stab you in the back as you only feel hollow.

Now we can understand why passion, on its own, is so destructive. People strive to remake the world to their own selfish desires which their hearts lead them to believe will make them feel happy. What is a world of passionate people trying to remake a world in their image but a flawed portrait of ourselves.

Passion can be a beautiful thing.  However, without something to direct and focus it passion is nothing more than an out of control fire that consumes everything in its path. For passion to be constructive it must be directed by a strong moral framework. As one of our Founding Fathers and the 2^nd President of the United States said “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.”

Let’s explore from where this necessary moral framework might come. Regardless of what you believe, all free and critically thinking people will agree we not only have feelings but also a mind to learn and think with and a conscience that tells us if something is wrong (as long as we haven’t abused it). If we honestly use all three, in a good situation and without pressure, we should be able to come to a well-reasoned framework to live our lives in. However, that isn’t reality. Life is a daily struggle between doing what’s right and following our desires. There is no life without pressure. Using all of our senses to reason and make decisions is a step in the right direction but unless we have something that is unyielding and unchanging to how we feel, situations we are in, the pressures we are under; it is all too easy to altar that moral framework to again only match what our hearts/feelings want. When doing what is right will cost us, we will fall away. You see this time and again in the world as people talk about their own personal truth, their own personal spirituality, their own personal beliefs. Interestingly, these never challenge the person to deny themselves or challenge them to be better but only serve to make them “feel” good.  

Our senses alone are not enough to create a solid moral framework to guide our passion constructively. The moral framework must come from something beyond and above ourselves that will not change regardless of time, situation, pressure, or especially how we feel. It must demand service and surrender to its desires or we will change it to meet ours. The only thing that can meet this description is a being beyond and above us who is all righteous, all just, all knowing, and all good. A being who is constant and never changes. A being written about by numerous contributors over thousands of years in books that all correlate and what is said in the beginning is fulfilled in the end. A being who sacrifices for us and saves us instead of a being who is just a superpowered version of a human influenced only by passion. A being who would come to earth to live the perfect life we could not and then die as the perfect sacrifice because the creation cannot save itself – it can only be saved by the creator. There is only one being that fits this description and that is the God of the Bible.

Once passion is governed with all of our God given senses and His word, as the moral framework those senses are used within, it transforms from destructive to beautiful. This moral framework directs us to deny our desires instead of give in to them; to sacrifice instead of self-serve. This ensures our passion is directed to only the positive feelings from the heart – love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, self-control, faithfulness, and goodness. Matthew 22: 27-40 says:

 “Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”

There is no better framework for the constructive use of your passions than this.

  In Jeremiah 17 a passage of scripture talks about those that only follow their heart and those who put their trust in the Lord. Those who only follow their heart fall away from God and those who trust in Him draw closer to God. Jeremiah 17:9-10 says

“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings.

Why do those who only follow their heart fall away? Why does the Bible say the heart is deceitful above all things? It is because sin has corrupted our hearts. This does not mean our hearts are bad; it means our hearts must be made whole and pure again.

Proverbs 4:20-23 says:

           My son, pay attention to what I say;
           Turn your ear to my words.
            Do not let them out of your sight,
            Keep them within your heart;
            for they are life to those who find them
            and health to one's whole body.
            Above all else, guard your heart,
            for everything you do flows from it.

God gave you a mind to learn facts and information, a conscience to know right from wrong, and His word to give clear checks and balances to all these forms of decision making. God can also give you a pure heart bursting with passion to push you forward to do just and righteous things. Make sure you use all of them so your passion and drive is properly directed and not for self-serving actions that take you away from God. As you get older and advance in life, it gets harder. Your heart alone will guide you astray. Only a heart given to God will stay on the path for what is good, right, and pure.

“Moral” people all around us watch as the world burn. The same as unbridled passion leads to destruction, morality without passion is equally as dangerous. As Edmund Burk is attributed with saying “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” It is the job of “good” people to be sheep dogs and protect the flock. The flock, in this case, representing the world. If “good” people lack the passion to protect what is good in this world, evil will surely triumph. We see “good” people all around us who may live morally in their own lives but when they see people suffering and in pain, something that is unjust, or something wrong; they do nothing. One could argue if a lack of action in these situations means such a person is even “good” but that’s another discussion.

When this quote talks about “good men” it’s in the context of people who wouldn’t do something wrong themselves. Regardless of if you would do wrong yourself, if you do nothing when you see evil then evil will win. I see videos constantly of people recording criminals committing evil acts or others in a bad situation but taking no action themselves. They and others justify it by truthfully stating that intervening might cost them something – jail, finances, health, or even their lives. I will tell you this fact – you find out exactly what someone truly believes when doing what’s right might cost them something. Unless they have a moral framework that is above and beyond themselves, most people won’t do the right thing and take action if it will cost them. They will change their moral framework at that time and do what benefits them.

That brings us full circle. See, the interesting thing is, the moral framework of the Bible demands passion and action in the face of pain, hurt, and what is unjust. The Bible is full of verses that demand we take care of widows and orphans, defend the oppressed, and fight what is unjust – James 1:27, Exodus 22:22-24, Psalm 68:5, Psalm 146:9, Isaiah 1:17, Psalm 82:3, Micah 6:8, Zechariah 7:9-10 and many others. Perhaps the most famous is that of “The Good Samaritan”. You cannot operate within the morale framework of the Bible without being passionate for doing what is good and stopping what is evil.

The dichotomy of the moral framework of the Bible is you cannot have morality without passion for what is good and you cannot have passion for what is good without morality. It is only in this framework that they are one and the same. This is the path to creating a better world and stopping those destroying it. Without it taking root as the norm instead of the exception, we will only have what we do now – passionate but moralless people setting the world on fire and “moral” but passionless people watching it burn. If this outcome isn’t what you want then you have to do something about it, starting with examining yourself and the moral framework you live by. If you won’t pursue justice and fight evil when doing so will cost you then it isn’t enough and you are either selfishly making the fire worse or apathetically watching the fire grow.

The Old Man