Claim. Humans ‘incompletely’ inherited God’s Heart through the law of likeness, which is why — even after the Fall — the impulse to seek joy remains irrepressible, even when humans have lost true love and pursue joy through wrong means.
Elaboration. Lee uses the inheritance claim to explain a stubborn empirical phenomenon: every human, regardless of moral condition, restlessly pursues joy and cannot suppress this drive. Why? Because God possesses Heart — the emotional impulse to seek joy through love — ‘far more irrepressible than that of human beings,’ and humans inherited this Heart, however incompletely, by the principle of creation-in-likeness (God Is the God of Heart).
The fallen condition disconnects the joy-seeking impulse from its only viable channel (love). Humans still seek joy — cannot help seeking joy — but pursue it through money, power, knowledge, even crime, none of which can deliver. The pursuit is doomed structurally, not just morally: ‘most people the desire to seek joy remains unfulfilled’ precisely because they ‘do not realize that joy can only be obtained through love.’
This diagnostic has two strategic uses. (1) It makes evangelism a kind of psychological clarification: the audience already wants the thing UT promises (joy); UT just supplies the correct channel (love and Heart). (2) It dignifies even fallen behavior — the criminal pursuing joy in the wrong direction is still expressing inherited divine Heart, however distortedly. The doctrine humanizes without exonerating.
Lee uses Augustinian-sounding language (‘restless heart’) without the explicit citation, but the structure is similar: a created drive that can only find rest in its original source. Where UT diverges is in identifying the source not as God-as-end but as God-as-Heart — the impulse is communicated as inherited interiority, not just teleological orientation. Critics from naturalistic psychology engage on whether ‘joy through love’ is empirically the only path or merely a strong cultural pattern. Worth a thread once a counter atomic exists.
See also. heart-shimjung-as-core-of-gods-sungsang, concept-of-heart-emotional-impulse-seeking-joy-through-love, homo-amans-essence-of-human-nature