Are we here to change minds or heal broken hearts?

​When Jesus began his ministry, he did what a lot of people do when they begin a new venture. He returned to his home town. He returned to friends and family and familiar faces.

It was a Sunday, like today. Jesus gathered with his people in a Synagogue he'd surely attended as a kid. To help with his first sermon, he asked someone to hand him the old testament. Jesus opened to Isaiah 61 and began to read:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.

After Jesus told this familiar crowd that God had sent him, what was the first thing he told them God sent him to do?

Heal the brokenhearted.

Jesus' ministry started with the belief that the people he was talking to had broken hearts. Jesus didn't start his ministry by jumping on people for believing or behaving the wrong way. He started his ministry with the belief that beneath all beliefs and choices are hearts. He started his ministry with compassion, not judgment.

From the very beginning, Jesus set out to transform lives, not indoctrinate them.

I looked up the definition of indoctrinate - I found: the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.

From the very beginning, from his very first sermon, Jesus was pleading with us to understand that if we interact with people motivated to change their minds - the way they think and behave - without first exploring the hurts in their hearts, we are missing an opportunity to transform people.

We are missing an opportunity to love.

Jesus opened his sermon by saying God had sent him to heal the brokenhearted. I think Jesus went home, back to his roots, to deliver this message so WE would always understand that the roots of our efforts should be healing the brokenhearted.

I know too often, my efforts are to indoctrinate - to change minds without ever exploring the hurts in someone's heart.

I know too often, as well, that I'm on the receiving end of indoctrination, people wanting to change my mind without ever exploring the hurts of my heart.

You know, when Jesus was reading the book of Isaiah from the old testament, he was reading a prediction come true. He was reading a prophet predicting this very preacher would come along and encourage people to go heal broken hearts.

Well that preacher came. Now we get to look back and read the prediction. We can read it come to life. But now, what do we do with that?

Do we go out to indoctrinate lives or transform them?

Do we go into the world to change people's minds, or heal their broken hearts?

Or - is it possible - Jesus was telling us the best way to change people's minds is through their hearts - through love?