Last week we began a series on faith and science and I have to say, it looks like we were ready for it. I have received a lot of comments, most of them appreciative, which told me that this is a topic that is just below the surface for many of us. We live our lives in a world formed by the insights of science and with commitments born of our faith and there are many people on both sides who tell us that we can’t let the two talk to each other. We’re told that they don’t get along. But as I said last week, I think they have to and we ought not to be afraid to create space for that to happen.
So last week we looked at what astrophysicists and biological anthropologists are telling us about the origin of the universe and the origin of the human species. We learned that in the grand scale of things human beings can seem very small, but we were also reminded of God’s promise. Even though we have come so late to the universe and to the earth…even so we have been chosen to play a unique role in the drama of creation and salvation.
Today we’re going to look at a different branch of science. Psychology and neuroscience are making incredible discoveries about the nature of the brain and the way that our thought processes work. They are challenging the notion of who we are as human beings and how we operate, but they are also opening up new frontiers for research into things like prayer and meditation. What does Christian faith tell us about who we are and how might it intersect with this emerging science? It sounds like the intro to a TV show, but it’s really just the intro to this sermon.
I want to start, though, with a picture of mental turmoil from the gospels. In the reading from Mark for today, we see Jesus confronting a man who is, as we would say today, out of his mind. Mark says that he has an unclean spirit. That sounds like a pretty archaic description to us. Nobody goes to the doctor these days and is told, “Well, I’m afraid to say you’ve got an unclean spirit there, Alex. We’re going to have to send you over to Rayfield’s for a prescription of Penicillin to take care of that.” Doesn’t happen.
So how would we describe it? The man tears his clothes. He’s got incredible strength. He breaks the chains that people put on him to restrain him. He lives among the tombs, an interesting place to hang out, and wanders along the mountains. He howls and does injury to himself with stones. And when Jesus confronts him he, or the unclean spirit within him, says, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” So what’s your diagnosis? Schizophrenia? Multiple personality disorder? Dementia? A little bit of depression thrown in? Let’s pull out the DSM-IV, the manual of psychiatric disorders, and see if we can’t put a name on this.
Jesus, of course, doesn’t do this. He recognizes that there is a spiritual battle going on and so he deals with the man on that level. He calls the demons out and sends them into a nearby herd of pigs that go racing over the cliff side to their death. The man is restored in his mind and, maybe just as importantly, he is restored in his relationships as the villagers come out and find him “clothed and in his right mind.” They’re scared at first and the healed man wants to leave with Jesus, but Jesus tells him to stay and to tell his friends what God has done for him.
Now what are we to say to this story? Is this a condemnation of how we address mental health concerns in our day? Should we use pigs instead of Prozac? Exorcism instead of Excedrin? (Actually I don’t think many psychiatrists are prescribing Excedrin for unclean spirits these days but it sounds better with exorcism, so we’ll go with it.)
It seems to me that at least some branches of psychology and psychotherapy have been evolving towards a model of healing that bears some resemblance to what Jesus was doing. It doesn’t talk in the same language that Jesus did, but it recognizes that often what is really troubling us is below the surface and maybe beyond our ability to consciously comprehend. And after a long period when industrialization and mechanization and urbanization and social dislocation and secularization had disrupted and uprooted people in Western cultures, psychotherapy developed as a way to give people what they critically needed – someone to talk to. A relationship with someone who really listened and tried to understand what was happening. What was the Gerasene demoniac except a hopelessly dislocated guy who had lost all of his connections to other people and to God? And what did Jesus do except to confront him where he most needed to be confronted – to comprehend what was going on at the level of his spirit and to restore his relationships?
It’s hard for us to remember that psychology, in its modern form, is a fairly young science. It’s only been a little over a century since Sigmund Freud started to spin out his theories of psychotherapy but think how influential he has been. Even though his method has been fairly thoroughly overhauled and in some ways discredited, all I have to do is say psychotherapy and many of us get images of a therapist with a pad sitting by a patient lying on a couch asking him or her to share their dreams and talk about their mother. It’s the stereotype of Freud’s method, but he touched on something deep. We do have a powerful subconscious. We are not always aware of why we do things. We do have drives – for power, for sex, for acceptance, for survival – that cause us to do things we’re not even aware we are doing.
Actually Freud was onto something that the Apostle Paul had observed almost 19 centuries before. Paul said, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” [Romans 7:15] Paul called it sin working in his flesh. Freud called it the subconscious but they were working in the same ballpark.
Over the last century there were others who advanced the field of psychology. Carl Jung saw the deep power in the archetypes of our ancient stories and in religious symbols and how these archetypes worked their way into our dreams. Jungian psychology introduced deep storytelling into the field. Then there were cognitive-behavioral therapies that emphasize analyzing our thoughts because, the theory goes, these control our feelings and behaviors, not external circumstances. And along the way hosts of other methods – transactional analysis, hypnotherapy, family systems theory, primal scream therapy. All of them pick up on some area of what it means to be a human with this mysterious thing we call a brain.
Psychiatry also contributes a huge number of drugs that have been very helpful to very many people. But we still don’t understand exactly how they work. By trial and error we have found some helpful things, but we have a long way to go to try and understand it all.
Let me be very clear about this. I don’t lift up all these things to say – “Wow, look what a junkyard this history of psychology has been.” I not only believe that there is value in the insights of psychology, I have had some of my most profound moments of transformation and some of my deepest spiritual experiences as a result of being in therapy. As someone who has struggled with depression in the past, I know how valuable the therapeutic process has been for helping me recognize it and deal with it. It should not be a sign of weakness or shame to seek help when we are hurting in our minds, just like it is no weaknesses to see a doctor about a strange pain in your chest.
Here’s the thing, though. I believe psychology works for us because it offers us two things that the modern world has taken away – it affirms the worth and importance of the inner life and it gives us a relationship of deep listening. These are also things that the church cares about and which the church can offer. In fact, we can offer this and something more – an understanding that our lives are only rightly ordered when they are directed toward God.
The first psychologist was actually not Sigmund Freud. It was Augustine of Hippo, the great Christian thinker of the 4th century. Augustine knew that what was going on in his soul was the most important thing he could listen to. He knew that what the desires of his heart and his body were deep and inescapable and they weren’t to be denied but redirected toward God. And the way they get redirected is to fall in love with God.
Augustine was drawn to Paul’s description of who we are as described in the letter to the Romans. In chapter 12 of that letter, in the section we read for today, Paul says, “Do not be formed by this age, but rather be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you may test what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and whole.” Do not be formed by this age – conformed to the world around you, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. How does this happen except by believing that what this world offers is often deception and lies and that truth and true personhood comes when we love God and what God loves.
Ellen Charry, who has referred to Augustine as the first Christian psychologist, says that what the early Church came to believe was that “God is the origin and destiny of human happiness, that knowing and loving God are the foundation of human self-knowledge and direction, and that life’s goal is conformation to God.”[i] Psychology does not have to be antithetical to this. For me it has been about freeing me from the distortions and the fuzzy thinking that keep me from seeing myself honestly and helping me see how the true desires of my heart can help me love God. But psychology, by itself, will not lead us to God. It takes the Christian story to give us the greater picture. It takes trust in who Jesus is and the love of God to help us look forward to the day yet to come. As 1 John says, “What we will be has not yet been revealed, but we do know this: when Jesus is revealed, we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is.” [1 John 3:2] We shall be like him. We can’t understand who we really are without that God connection.
That’s why involvement with small groups within the church is such a crucial thing for helping us remember that. Our Elijah House Prayer ministry is a great resource for opening ourselves and our wounds to two other Christians who can meet with you and help you remember who you are in God’s eyes. Accountability groups that put you in regular connection with fellow Christians do that as well.
Here’s an exercise to close, though. Dr. Daniel Siegel has written a book recently on the amazing capacity of the human brain to change itself through mindfulness. In Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation he gives a very helpful visual model of the complexity of the brain and you can do it. Just put up your right hand. This is going to be your model of the brain.
If you put your thumb on your palm and fold your fingers over it, you’ve got a good rough model of what’s going on inside your head. Your fingertips are the front of your brain and the back of your hand is the back of your head. So there are three major parts to your brain.
Your wrist represents your brainstem, or what is sometimes called your reptile brain. There are some basic functions going on here. Your brainstem controls basic processes like your heart and your lungs. But it also controls our states of arousal. It’s the part of our brain that says, “I want that,” and moves us to get it. Caveman brain. It’s also the part of the brain that controls the fight-flight-or-freeze mechanism. If all we were were a brainstem, we’d just be pretty much reactive to stimuli – in survival mode all the time. It’s important, because it helps us get what we need to survive, but thank goodness it’s not all we are.
Above that brainstem is the deepest part of our brain, represented by your thumb. This is the limbic system. Here you have a region that helps us evaluate our condition. As Siegel says, “’Is this good or is this bad?’ is the basic question the limbic area addresses.”[ii] It helps us form emotions to answer that question and it is a crucial area for helping us form relationships with others.
Finally, the third part of your brain is the cortex and the cortex helps to keep us from being entirely led by the emotions of our limbic region or the drives of our brainstem. And that most interesting part of this part of the brain is represented by the middle two fingers in the front – your middle prefrontal cortex. Here is where your brain bends back around to touch the brainstem and the limbic region. This area allows us to have ideas and concepts and to develop moral judgments and a sense of self. Siegel says this area is “literally one synapse away from neurons in the cortex, the limbic area, and the brainstem.”[iii] And amazingly this is the region that allows us to connect – to have that feeling that we are in touch with other people, that we know what they are thinking. It is also the region that lights up when we pray or mediate and try to connect with God.
All of this complexity is something that neuroscience is just beginning to understand in the last decade or so. And it might seem from this that all of our experiences, even our spiritual experiences, can be reduced to brain wiring and chemistry. But that’s not the case. The most amazing thing that brain science has discovered is the uniqueness of the human brain. There is something more than biology and determinism at work. We have the ability to think about thinking – to meditate and to pray – to regenerate connections. Through mindfulness we can change our brains. As far as we know, no other creatures can do that. And there is no “place” where this ability resides. We are not just brains – we are body, mind and spirit – we are souls who live in relationship with God and with each other. Brain scans can show us amazing things going on, but they can’t show us our worth and meaning in God’s eyes. They can only lead us deeper into wonder.
Psalm 139 says that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” We are called to love this God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind. And the more we love God the more we will know our selves. Thanks be to God.
Romans 12:1-3
[i] Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], p. 4.
[ii] Daniel Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, [Bantam Books: New York, 2010] e-location 473.
[iii] Daniel Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, [Bantam Books: New York, 2010] e-location 552-556.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment