The Heart is Tricky?

Science continues to narrow the lead against antiquity:

[Researchers found] that male undergraduates were fare more likely to consider women attractive if they had just been exposed to alcohol-related words like "keg," "drunk," wasted," and "booze." What's more, the men didn't know they were seeing the words, which were shown for 40 milliseconds on a computer screen and disguised so they couldn't be identified. The men were asked ahead of time if they thought that alcohol fueled sex drive. Most said they thought it did. Those who thought it didn't found women's photos less attractive. U.S. News & World Report, May 16, 2005, p. 53.

That's interesting stuff, but we like this concluding line from the article, "The things that drive our behavior are pretty much mysterious to us." Ronald Friedman, a psychologist who led the research.

Our behavior is a mystery to us? Perhaps that's why the words "Know thyself" were inscribed on the Delphic Oracle, and why the Bible repeatedly cautions us against self-confidence. Perhaps that's why millions of people have cloistered themselves away, to do nothing but plunge into the depths of their souls in an effort to figure out why the mind is willing but the flesh is weak. Perhaps that's the reason the Church cautions everyone to avoid the mere occasion of sin, knowing that "things" get triggered in us that act on us in ways we don't discern.

One of our favorite quotes:

The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. There also are rough and uneven roads; there are precipices. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the Kingdom, the light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasures of grace–all things are there. The Pseudo-Macarius