More Tortuous Than All Else is the Human Heart

Fr. Scott Haynes

Meditation on Jeremiah 17:9

“More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it?”

The prophet Jeremiah speaks with startling honesty about the human condition. He does not flatter us with comforting illusions. Instead he reveals a truth that every thoughtful person eventually discovers: the human heart is mysterious, complicated, and often deeply divided.

“More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

The heart of man is capable of extraordinary generosity, yet also of selfishness. It can reach toward holiness, yet fall into weakness. It desires truth, yet often deceives itself.

This is why Scripture speaks of the heart as something that even we ourselves do not fully understand. We may think we know our motives, yet beneath the surface there are hidden fears, desires, wounds, and attachments that shape our actions without our realizing it.

Saint Augustine understood this mystery very well. Looking back on his youth, he confessed how easily the human heart can become entangled in its own contradictions. In the Confessions, he describes the strange power of sin over the human will:

“I had become to myself a vast problem.”

Augustine was not ignorant or foolish. He was brilliant, educated, and intellectually gifted. Yet even he could not easily untangle the complexity of his own heart.

He famously tells the story of stealing pears from a neighbor’s orchard when he was a young man. The fruit itself did not interest him. He could easily have obtained better pears elsewhere. Yet he stole them simply for the thrill of wrongdoing. Reflecting on this strange episode later in life, Augustine wrote that he loved not the pears but the act of stealing itself.

Here the prophet Jeremiah’s words become painfully clear. The human heart can twist even the simplest actions into expressions of pride and rebellion.

But Augustine’s life also shows something equally important: the heart that is mysterious and wounded is also capable of transformation.

For years Augustine wandered far from God. He pursued pleasure, ambition, intellectual pride, and philosophical speculation. Yet beneath all these pursuits there remained a restless longing that nothing could satisfy.

At last, in a garden in Milan, his restless heart encountered grace. Hearing the voice of a child singing “Take and read,” Augustine opened the Scriptures and read the words of Saint Paul calling him to abandon the works of darkness and put on Christ.

In that moment the confusion of his heart was pierced by divine light. Augustine later wrote the words that have comforted generations of Christians:

“Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”

The human heart is indeed tortuous, as Jeremiah says. It twists in on itself through pride, fear, and disordered love. Yet it is not beyond God’s understanding.

What we cannot fully comprehend, God knows completely.

The same passage of Jeremiah continues with a declaration from the Lord:

“I the Lord search the heart and prove the reins.” (Jeremiah 17:10)

God sees into the hidden places where our motives lie. He understands the wounds that shape our choices, the longings that drive our actions, and the fears that cause us to hide from Him.

More importantly, He does not merely understand the heart—He heals it.

The saints show us that the remedy for the tangled heart is not self-reliance but surrender. Augustine did not untangle his life through his own brilliance. He found peace only when he allowed God’s grace to reshape his desires.

The prophet Ezekiel later expressed this promise in another powerful image. God declares that He will remove the heart of stone and give His people a heart of flesh. The divine physician performs a kind of spiritual surgery, replacing what is hardened and distorted with something living and receptive.

This transformation does not happen instantly. Even the saints continued to struggle with their weaknesses. Yet their lives reveal that the heart, though mysterious and wounded, can be purified by grace.

Jeremiah’s warning therefore leads us not to despair but to humility. If the heart is tortuous, we must not trust blindly in our own judgment. We must ask God to examine us, to illuminate our motives, and to guide our steps.

In prayer we place our hearts before Him, confident that the One who understands them best also loves them most.

The tangled heart of man may be beyond human remedy. But it is never beyond the healing mercy of God.