I left my kidneys in San Fransisco

"Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and my mind." Psalm 26:2 

The footnote in the ESV let's us know that the word they have translated as mind is actually the Hebrew word for kidneys (kelayot).

The Kidneys are used often in the old testament as a metaphor much like we use the word heart. It means mind, conscience, inner thoughts - pointing towards all your thought processes that affect your conduct and your contemplations.



Test my heart and my kidneys
Heart and Kidneys are often used together (Ps 7:9, Ps 26:2, Jer 11:20, Jer 17:10, Jer 20:12) Both your heart and kidneys together constitutes the whole sum of the inner workings that dictate your actions.When God examines your heart and your kidneys, he is probing the very foundations of what it means to be 'you'.

So why do we use biological metaphors to describe these areas of our 'self'. Well, in terms of the word heart I think we can pick out at least two reasons:

1. We are trying to express something mysterious - something hidden. We use the word heart because a literal description is never enough. We can use words like 'love' and 'passion' and we can describe our 'faithful commitment'. But its not the same as saying "I have a heart for pastoral ministry" or "my heart was broken when TakeThat split up". Its true what countless soppy lyricists have expressed: that words are not enough to express the matters of the heart.
2. we are trying to express something personal - something internal and unique to us. We use an internal body organ because it hints at the fact that what is happening, is really happening inside of us. It is more than just a wave of hormones or fuzzy thoughts. We use the heart to describe positive and negative surges in emotion that compel us to action. There is something tangible and real that happens when our heart is moved.

But what of kidneys
And so it is a very interesting development in the history of language, that we we still use heart as a metaphor but no longer kidneys. Whilst the processes of our metaphorical heart are still largely mysterious, the processes we traditionally attributed to the metaphorical kidneys have now been adequately explained away by science. And for starters they now happen in our brain, not our lower body. The more we have developed a scientific understanding of our thoughts and mental processes, the more we think we can rationally pinpoint where those thoughts take place, and we also endeavour to make logical sense of them. We do not need an abstract metaphor because we believe our inmost being is no longer mysterious.

The heart retains it's mystery and personal nature because nobody wants science to interfere with our love and our relationships. For most people, matters of the heart are still unexplainable and transcendent - they happen to you and you cannot explain how and why. But scientific achievement has conquered our thoughts. And scientists can tell us how and why we think what we do. Our conscience is not connected to our soul - it is merely a mental reflex action. Our inmost being is just the opinions and principles and attitudes that have developed through a lifetime of experiences and interactions. Our mind, like our body, is just a product of its environment.


So what?
Is this just the victorious march of progress, so we just deal with it and move on? Is it just the natural evolution of language? I'm starting to think that using an abstract metaphor like kidneys to refer to our inner-thoughts is still helpful for a number of reasons:

1) It is yet another defence against chronological and scientific snobbery. Just because we know that our thoughts take place in our brain, and the writers of the psalms did not, does not mean that they were idiots and we are enlightened. They simply perceived their self-awareness differently to us. They were still intelligent, thinking humans. And so when we read the word 'kidneys' we have an opportunity here to dig inside their culture and their minds (inside their kidneys?) to find out a fresh perspective. What was their philosophy of Mind?

2) It points us afresh towards the genuine mystery of our thoughts. Modern theories of the Philosophy of Mind tend to reduce our mental abilities to pure physical processes - Our brain is a computer that receives input and produces responses. A Christian must, however, affirm that there is more then just physical matter. A Christian can never be a Monist. When we use an abstract metaphor like kidneys we celebrate that we can not exactly pin down what we mean. We can use the words 'mind' or 'conscience' or 'inmost being' but they never express fully what we are trying to say - there is a mystery that we can only experience, that cannot be explained.

3) It keeps the heart close to our thoughts. The two so often come together in the psalms. the LORD examines them both. There is more to us then just emotions and thoughts. We are not just hormones and brainwaves. The LORD attributes a lot more value to our 'inmost being' then we do when we reduce it simply to our intellect.


Conclusion
Using Kidneys rather than just 'mind' or 'inmost being' jogs us out of our 21st century rationalism. It reminds us that our 'self' is more mysterious, that spirituality is involved and that God knows more about us than science will ever discover.

"My son, if your heart is wise, My own heart also will be glad
and my kidneys will rejoice when your lips speak what is right." Pro 23:15-16

Footnote

This post is here largely because I stumbled upon a very interesting article in the 'Journal of the American Society of Nephrology'. I'd thoroughly recommend reading it here!