Sustaining a Reasonable Faith

There’s an old story about a congregation that was disturbed when a bar opened up right next door to the church. The preacher got up Sunday after Sunday and railed against the presence of this bar and all the sin that the church members imagined was going on in there – right next to the church. One week, the preacher said, “I want you to pray with me that God will burn that place to the ground.”

Well, wouldn’t you know, that very night a lightning bolt came and burned that bar right to the ground. The bar owner had heard about the prayers being offered by the church and he went to court – sued the church for damage to his property. The church members protested. They told the judge, “You can’t seriously blame us for a lightning strike! We had nothing to do with it.”

The judge finally settled the case in the church’s favor but her final remark was, “I think it’s very interesting that the bar owner believes in the power of prayer more than the church does.”

As Christians we used to live in a world where we believed that great powers are at work. We lived in a world where God was active and present and yet so were dark, shadowy forces that opposed God. We prayed, not just because it was good for our minds and our bodies and calmed our nerves, but because something was at stake. There was some great drama going on and we wanted to enlist God on our side or to enlist ourselves on God’s side.

But then we became reasonable people and we had to give all that up. Or so we thought. Lightning strikes are no longer acts of God, they’re lightning strikes caused by an imbalanced electrical differential between earth and sky. (I think…my scientific knowledge is pretty limited.) The causes of things have more reasonable explanations. When we try to talk about that God-filled world which is filled with drama and wonder and enchantment we find ourselves stumbling over our words, unsure of what our neighbors will think of us.

Last month in Britain there was another court case – this one a real case. A Christian counselor in Bristol with five years of experience was sacked, as they say in the UK, fired, because he was asked to do something in conflict with his Christian beliefs – in this case, to provide psycho-sexual therapy to same-sex couples. It was the policy of the agency he worked for to provide this therapy to everyone and when he asked to be exempt from the policy on religious grounds he was fired. He then sued to agency for unfair dismissal and discrimination.

This background to the case is interesting in its own way because of the questions it raises about what Christians believe and how they act in situations where their beliefs are challenged and whether the agency should have interpreted the counselor’s behavior as discriminatory against same-sex couples. But the case was raised to a whole new level by the judge’s ruling in the case which denied the counselor the right to appeal his firing. Lord Justice Laws said that “the promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot…be justified. It is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”

Now, I’m not really qualified to comment on British legal opinions, but as I read his ruling I saw the groundwork being laid for denying a place for any kind of religious reasoning in the public square. He said that laws protecting positions held because of religious belief are irrational, but the judge also believes that religion itself is irrational. Earlier in the same statement he said that “in the eye of everyone save the believer religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence.”[i] He says that doesn’t make religious faith untrue – it’s just not something you can prove rationally.

Let me be clear about this. I understand the dangers of having a public space overrun by religious authorities. Jesus saw that in his own day. When you give Pharisees and Sadducees and Ayatollahs political power they generally mess things up. Britain, like the United States, is a pluralistic country with lots of different kinds of faiths, lots of different kinds of Christians and lots of people with no faith commitments at all. So, yes, the law needs to remain neutral with regard to religious belief.

Suggesting that religious belief is irrational or opposed to reason is something entirely different, though. It’s the same sort of thing that the so-called New Athiests have been saying in their writings in recent years. Writers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have been dismissing Christianity and faith in general as something like “believing impossible things.” Hitchens has been so dismissive as to say, “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”[ii] And by evidence he means a very narrow range of scientific evidence – a sort of “I’m from Missouri, show me” kind of evidence. The evidence of a heart strangely warmed or a life transformed or a conscience formed by a Christian community and by scripture is not evidence for Hitchens and it is not communicable in rational society according to Lord Justice Laws. It is just subjective experience and therefore useless to society.

What is it that we believe reason is? Is it only knowledge? Knowing what things are made of or how to put them together in interesting combinations – does that constitute real reason? Or is there something more? Don’t we value reason because it helps us evaluate what we know, helps us guide our actions, helps us live more fully human lives? Someone who knows how to split an atom may know a lot, but reason tells us that knowing how to make an atom bomb doesn’t qualify you to be a reasonable person. As the theologian David Bentley Hart says, “It is even easy for educated persons to believe…that knowing how genes work is the same thing as being authorized to say what a person is or should be.”

We want to say that reason is more than manipulating information or reducing the universe to a formula. And the truth of the matter is that reason, in this larger sense, is something that Christian faith has given birth to. Again David Bentley Hart says, “Reason…is a whole way of life, not the simple mastery of certain techniques of material manipulation, and certainly not the childish certitude that such mastery proves that only material realities exist. A rational life is one that integrates knowledge into a larger choreography of virtue, imagination, patience, prudence, humility and restraint. Reason is not only knowledge, but knowledge perfected in wisdom.”[iii] This is why reason became such a value for Christians. It was not something we reject so that we can believe any old silly thing that we want. It is something that hones our faith so that we can love God better. Knowledge is always brought back to the love of God.

So universities owe their birth to the Christian love of reason. The study of astronomy was guided by Christian pursuit to understand the mysteries of the universe. The practical engagement with the stuff of the world is a legacy of Christians who did not see the material world as something evil that needed to be sloughed off, like some of their pagan contemporaries in the ancient world, but rather they saw the material world as a part of God’s revelation of glory.

One of the places where the Bible talks about this is in the book of Job. In the midst of all the bewailing of miseries, there is a song n chapter 28 about wisdom. After talking about its great value – “more precious than gold, silver and sapphires”! – the song asks, “Where does wisdom come from then? And where is the place of understanding?” The only hints of it come from Destruction and Death who say, “We have heard in our ears a report of it.” And we suspect the same thing, that in suffering and death, we might get a glimpse of some deeper meaning.

Ultimately, though, even these can’t reveal the mystery. “God understands the way to it and God knows its place.” After stretching out the heavens and giving thunder its voice, God looks to humanity and says, “The fear of the Lord – this is wisdom, and turning aside from evil is understanding.”

The great danger of a world that imagines that its religious roots are irrational and primitive and mere superstition – incommunicable to the larger world – is that it will start to see life as less than the miracle that it is. The horrors of the world wars were constructed by people considered reasonable by the standards of their day. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot – they built their terrors on the back of reason divorced from religion. But reason is more than that. Reason joined to the love of God and the fear of the Lord – that is wisdom, and what the world needs is wisdom.

At the same time that we are reminding ourselves of the rationality of faith, we can also reclaim science as our own. David Wilkinson of St. John’s College of the University of Durham says, “Christians need to stand against the tide of the current trend of science bashing. The birth of modern science came from the Christian conviction that science was a gift from God for exploring the world and in bringing healing to creation. Responsibility was given to use this gift wisely…We need to recapture that sense of gift and responsibility.”[iv]

So having travelled this far – four weeks now we have been talking about the intersection of science and faith – what can we say? That science is not necessarily an enemy of faith. Science, in its modern form, is a remarkable human achievement for describing the world and explaining how it works. But science is, like all human things, fallible and still developing. And it will always lack the instrument for determining why we are here and what the meaning of life is.

Science can lead us into wonder. At its best it doesn’t reduce life, but enriches it – giving us new words and ways to love God and this world which God has made so that we can yet be “lost in wonder, love and praise.”

Finally, science should spur us to be just as diligent in pursuing knowledge of our faith as scientists are in pursuing the objects of their research. We should not be afraid of hard questions or where they might lead. What we should fear is God. Not the fear that has us cowering in the corner or failing to be what we are. But the fear that overcomes us when we are in the presence of something awesome – like the bend in the road that puts us face to face with a mountain peak. The fear of the Lord, who is greater than all things, this is wisdom.

You remember that church that prayed for the bar to be burned down? This is how Annie Dillard writes about the kind of spirituality we find in that church and sometimes in ours. She writes:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”[v]

The waking god may draw us out where we can never return. What will call us out there to truly live in this amazing world? What wisdom, what understanding will help us see the wonder and the danger? What role will you play in the drama? And when will you believe? Thanks be to God.

Job 28:12-28

Where will wisdom be found?

And where is the place of understanding?

Humanity does not know its value

And it is not found in the land of the living.

The deep says, “It is not in me.”

And the sea says, “It is not with me.”

Fine gold cannot be exchanged for it

And silver cannot be weighed out for its price.

It cannot be measured against the gold of Ophir

Against precious gems or sapphires

Gold and glass cannot equal it

Nor can it be exchanged for articles of refined gold

No thought shall be made of coral and crystal

The drawing up of wisdom is better than corals.

The topaz of Cush cannot compare with it

And it cannot be weighed in pure gold

From where does wisdom come then?

And where is this place of understanding?

It is concealed from the eyes of all living things

And hidden from the birds of the air.

Destruction and Death say,

“We have heard in our ears a report of it.”

God understands the way to it

And God knows its place.

For God looks to the ends of the earth

And sees all that is under the sky.

When he made for the wind its weight

And apportioned the waters by measure

When he made for the rain a decree

And for the thunderbolt’s voice a way

Then he saw it and recounted it,

He established it and sought it out

And he said to humanity,

“Look, the fear of the Lord – this is wisdom

And turning aside from evil is understanding.”

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[i] Quoted in “Lord Justice Nero” on the blog Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, May 7, 2010, http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2010/05/lord-justice-nero.html.

[ii] From GoodReads, http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3956.Christopher_Hitchens.

[iii] David Bentley Hart, Athiest Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, [Yale University Press: New Haven, 2009], p. 236.

[iv] David Wilkinson, quoted in Paul E. Stroble, What About Science and Religion?: A Study of Reason and Faith, [Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2007], p. 48.

[v] Annie Dillard, from Teaching a Stone to Talk, quoted in “An Annie Dillard Sunday,” on the blog Through the Glass, Darkly, “ 10/17/2004, http://throughaglass.net/archives/2004/10/17/an-annie-dillard-sunday/.

Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of Miracles

It was a sad day when Pastor Parker got pulled over while driving home one night. The police officer came to the driver’s window and leaned in and said, “Pastor Parker you were weaving back and forth a little bit on the road there. You haven’t been drinking have you?”

“Oh, no,” said Pastor Parker. “Certainly not.”

“Well, what’s in that bottle there in the passenger seat? It looks like a wine bottle.”

“Oh, no,” said Pastor Parker. “Just water. It’s only water, Officer.”

“Then may I have a look?”

“Absolutely,” the pastor said and he handed over the bottle.

The officer sniffed it and said, “Pastor Parker, I know you’ve got connections with Jesus, but that’s wine in this bottle.”

Pastor Parker looked up to the heavens and said, “Glory be, he’s done it again!”

Turning water into wine, of course, was Jesus’ first miracle, or sign, as the gospel of John calls it. It happened at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, which also happens to be the place where he did his second Galilean miracle, or sign, as we heard in the gospel reading today. So Cana is a good place for us to go today because the thing I want to talk about is miracles. What are they and how do we understand them?

We are now in the third week of this series on faith and science. In the first week we talked about the big bang and evolution. Last week we talked about psychology and faith. And what I have learned is that this series is opening up a huge area for exploration. A sermon series that was three months long couldn’t begin to touch all the issues raised by the intersection of faith and science. But it has been fascinating and I hope that by just beginning this conversation it will lead you to do some more exploration. If we are thoughtful about our faith, this conversation is unavoidable and I hope this will give you some confidence to see that your Christian faith is not something you have to hide when you are confronted with scientific discoveries.

No area has been more troubling to the scientific mindset, however, than miracles. We read the biblical stories and miracles are all over the place. Moses and the people of Israel cross the Red Sea by walking between walls of water that God has piled up. Joshua commands the sun and the moon to stop and they do. Elijah calls down fire on a sacrifice soaked with water in a contest with the prophets of Baal and the fire comes. Jesus turns water into wine, walks on water and feeds five thousand. Peter and John heal a lame man so that he goes off leaping and praising God. Miracles are the stuff of Bible stories.

Here’s the thing about miracles, though – for many years modern science has operated under the presumption, the firm presumption, that the universe is predictable. There is an order to things. There are natural laws that govern how things operate. For something to be true it must be true always. To prove that something can be done I not only have to do it but someone else has to be able to replicate it. Most of us would accept that that’s how science works and that that is how science needs to work in order to arrive at scientific truth.

Science has a hard time with miracles. They don’t compute. The doctor comes in with a report and says, “Mr. Conrad, I don’t know how to explain this but your latest CT scan shows that your tumor has completely disappeared.” Mr. Conrad may think it’s a miracle. Mr. Conrad may believe that God has intervened in answer to prayer. The doctor may believe the same thing. But science would look for an alternative explanation.

It is a wonderful thing that Mr. Conrad no longer has cancer, but modern medicine would want to know what happened in this case and how it might be replicated for other patients. Science might do a study on prayer and its effectiveness in healing patients. A few studies have been done with mixed results. More likely the doctor’s scientific side would say, “With a little more study one day we will know why Mr. Conrad’s tumor reacted the way it did.” God doesn’t have to be part of the equation. And the more science discovers, the fewer gaps in knowledge there are for God to fill. So goes the story.

Albert Einstein, the great 20^th century physicist who took science to some very weird and wonderful places as he unfolded his great scientific theories, had a great confidence that this way of talking about science that I’ve just described would go on. Even in his universe of black holes and a space-time continuum there was predictability. Einstein said famously, “I do not believe that God plays dice with the universe.”[i] Einstein didn’t have a traditional belief in God, but he did talk about God as the underlying order of the universe. That’s what he’s getting at with that statement – the universe is predictable ultimately. He felt there must be an objective reality that could be understood if we just had the right equations or the right instruments of observation.

Science, however, is changing. The weird physics of Einstein have gotten even weirder. On one level, Isaac Newton’s laws of physics are still true. An apple that breaks loose from a tree will still fall down and hit you on the head if you’re sitting under it. The theory of gravity is still pretty useful for understanding situations like that even after three centuries. But when you get down to the atomic level it’s a whole other ball game. At that level, we’re discovering that “anything can happen,” as the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg said.[ii] At that level the apple, instead of falling, might appear over there or in San Francisco or split into two, or disappear. All bets are off. And even stranger, it seems that, at the atomic level, because something is being observed it behaves in unpredictable ways.

So what am I saying? Has quantum physics made it possible to talk about God again? In a sense. Two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson, who was a great scientist himself in addition to being the founder of the University of Virginia and, oh, yes, president, was cutting up his New Testament, taking out the stories of Jesus’ miracles and republishing what was left as an acceptable Enlightenment book to give to members of Congress. He thought Jesus was a great teacher but could never reconcile himself to the idea that God would be actively involved in the world in a way that would defy the laws of nature, in other words God’s laws. God was very remote for Jefferson and Einstein.

Now, however, we have a whole new way of seeing. The physicist Paul Davies says that “when one gets to an indeterministic universe, if you allow quantum physics, then there is some sort of lassitude in the operation of these laws…God could load the quantum dice…this is one way of influencing what happens in the world, working through these quantum uncertainties.”[iii] It’s still a pretty remote God, but it opens the door for a much more complex understanding of how the universe works that could have more scientists talking about how God could be at work.

From a Christian understanding, though, we want something more. We need something more. What are miracles? Are they just magical things that prove how awesome biblical characters were -- like superhero powers? Moses with the Staff of Power!

The preacher and writer Frederick Buechner defines miracles this way:

“A cancer inexplicably cured. A voice in a dream. A statue that weeps. A miracle is an event that strengthens faith. It is possible to look at most miracles and find a rational explanation in terms of natural cause and effect. It is possible to look at Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus and find a rational explanation in paint and canvas.

Faith in God is less apt to proceed from miracles than miracles from faith in God.”[iv]

What I like about Buechner’s definition is that it doesn’t make miracles into superhero powers. They are events that show us that faith is already there. They are visible when we have the eyes to see them.

Which brings us back around to Cana. A royal official comes to Jesus in Cana. He lives in Capernaum, at least a half-day’s journey away. The man works for the king. Jesus is a nobody, only just beginning his ministry. His only public act in the area has been to be the best wedding party guest ever, turning six huge vats of water into truly excellent wine. There were stories. Stories of how he had overturned tables in the temple in Jerusalem. Of how he stirred up the crowds with signs. But in Galilee it was just the wedding feast trick.

The royal official comes because he has a sick son. Every desperate parent knows what it’s like to have a sick child. You do what you need to do to get help – even if it means trying out the new miracle worker. So he goes to Jesus and begs him to come with him to Capernaum. To heal his son because the boy was at the point of death.

The official is interested in one thing – a healing – but Jesus seems interested in something else. He turns to the man and says, “Unless you see signs and wonders you won’t believe.” It’s pretty much what he says to Thomas, his doubting disciple, after the resurrection. “You need to see so you can believe.”

If it’s a rebuke the man doesn’t catch it. He says, “Sir, come down and my son will live.” The important thing is to get Jesus to the boy. Get Jesus to the boy and everything will be alright.

But Jesus is not going. “Go,” he says. “Your son will live.” First, go, then your son will live. The man gets it. Believe first and then you’ll find life. Jesus had just told Nicodemus, a religious leader, pretty much the same thing a chapter earlier – “God sent the only begotten Son that whoever believes in him will have life everlasting.” Whoever believes lives.

So it’s really no surprise when the servants show up with the news that the boy was alive. In fact, he started to revive at exactly the hour that Jesus said he would live. The man had gone because he wanted the healing. Only then would he be able to think about who Jesus was. But when Jesus asked him to believe first and to act on that belief, the miracle followed.

Science is discovering that the way you see things really does make a difference. The lens you take with you into the world affects what you see. A scientific theory…and ‘theory’ is a word that goes back to the Greek word that also gives us ‘theater’ – it’s about watching and observation…a scientific theory is a way of looking at things that helps us understand them. Science moves forward by coming up with new ways of looking at things.

Guy Consolmagno is the curator of the Vatican’s meteorite collection. He’s a scientist and a priest and he sees how this happens in earth science – his field of specialty:

“While there's a lot of places where we can put measures and write equations, an awful lot of it is still being able to look at a road cut and saying these layers came before those layers and I can see it. And either you see it or you don't. There's a geologist friend of mine who came back from one of these trips saying, ‘You know, if I hadn't believed it, I'd have never seen it.’”[v]

“If I hadn’t believed it, I’d have never seen it.” Wasn’t that the experience of the man seeking healing for his son? Isn’t that the experience of so many miracles? They illuminate the miracles that pervade the universe.

Wendell Berry is a kind of modern-day prophet who continues to push those around him to see the dangers of our contemporary lifestyles. He lives on a farm and insists that only by cultivating the land and community can we find our way forward. He is also a critic of the way science has systematically reduced our understanding of life from something rich and mysterious to something mechanical. When he looks at new technologies like the human genome project that maps the building blocks of the human animal or the cloning of sheep, Berry worries that we will begin to think of animals less as creatures and more as machines:

“Though we have life, it is beyond us. We do not know how we have it, or why. We do not know what is going to happen to it, or to us. It is not predictable; though we can destroy it, we cannot make it. It cannot, except by reduction and the grave risk of damage, be controlled. It is, as [William] Blake said, holy. To think otherwise is to enslave life.”[vi]

For Wendell Berry, miracles are not just rare things that interrupt the world as we know it, they are necessary things, essential elements of everyday life. The most important things we have in this life are not reducible to formulas and chemical compounds. Life, love, soul, spirit – such things are mysteries that demand a different way of seeing. All good science begins with the recognition that every scientific exploration is ultimately a journey into the miraculous. And miracles are ultimately not about believing impossible things – they are about seeing the world through the eyes of faith.

A great contemporary novel for exploring miracles is Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River. Told through the eyes of Reuben, a young boy growing up in Minnesota in the middle of the last century, the book introduces us to a character who can do miracles--his father. A skeptic might say that the boy is really just seeing his dad through rose-colored glasses, but reading this story you believe right along with Reuben.

The first miracle is Rueben’s birth. He is born with his lungs filled with fluid, unable to breathe. At the moment of his birth his father, who is outside pacing and praying, senses that he is born and comes racing to the delivery room of the hospital. Here’s the scene as described by Rueben based on the stories his dad has told him about his birth:

“Dad lifted me gently…A little clay boy is what I was.

‘Breathe,’ Dad said.

I lay in his arms.

Dr. Nokes said, ‘Jeremiah, it has been twelve minutes.’

‘Breathe!’ The picture I see is of Dad, brown hair short and wild, giving this order as if he expected nothing but obedience.

Dr. Nokes approached him. ‘Jeremiah. There would be brain damage now. His lungs can’t fill.’

Dad leaned down, laid me back on the table, took off his jacket and wrapped me in it—a black canvas jacket with a quilted lining, I have it still. He left my face uncovered.

‘Sometimes,’ said Dr. Nokes, ‘there is something unworkable in one of the organs. A ventricle that won’t pump correctly. A liver that poisons the blood.’ Dr. Nokes was a kindly and reasonable man. ‘Lungs that can’t expand to take in air. In these cases,’ said Dr. Nokes, ‘we must trust the Almighty to do what is best.’ At which Dad stepped across and smote Dr. Nokes with a right hand, so that the doctor went down and lay on his side with his pupils unfocused. As Mother cried out, Dad turned to me, a clay child wrapped in a canvas coat, and said in a normal voice, ‘Rueben Land, in the name of the living God I am telling you to breathe.’”

Which he did.

Rueben’s learning from this is that “real miracles bother people…they rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in.” He credits his little sister with the insight that “people fear miracles because they fear being changed—though ignoring them will change you also…No miracle happens,” she said, “without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.”[vii]

A scientist’s job is to approach this miraculous world with the best tools available to try and see where the inquiry will lead. If they go into it with the naïve belief that scientific truth is the only kind of truth there is, more’s the pity for them that they have such an impoverished view of the world. And more’s the pity for us because we know how monstrous science can turn when it loses its wonder at life.

As people of faith, our job is to go into the world expecting that miracles will happen and to be unafraid to call them forth from this enchanted world, full of the presence of God. With the eyes of faith we can see incredible things happening. As Jesus told the man that day in Cana – Go. Believe. Life will come. And when it does – tell somebody, because miracles need a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will. Are you ready for a miracle? Go. Thanks be to God.

John 4:46-54 [NRSV]

Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe."

The official said to him, "Sir, come down before my little boy dies."

Jesus said to him, "Go; your son will live."

The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, "Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him." The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he himself believed, along with his whole household.

Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

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[i] Quoted in Krista Tippett, Einstein’s God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit, [Penguin Books: New York, 2010], ebook location 419-425.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid, ebook location 605.

[iv] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, [Harper Collins: San Francisco, 1973], p. 74.

[v] Guy Consolmagno, interview with Krista Tippett on “Asteroids, Stars and the Love of God,” Speak of Faith, American Public Radio, broadcast April 1, 2010, transcript at http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2010/asteroids/transcript.shtml.

[vi] Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition, [Counterpoint: Washington, DC, 2000], p. 9.

[vii] Leif Enger, Peace Like a River, [Grove Press: New York, 2001], pp. 2-3.

Body, Mind and Spirit: Engaging Psychology

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 4^th 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

Therefore I call upon you, brothers and sisters, because of the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, a real evidence of your service. And 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.

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[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.