“Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain–particularly the frontal lobes and anterior cingulate-where empathy and reason reside. Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is “filled with aggression and fear.” It is a sobering concept: The God we choose to love changes us into his image, whether he exists or not.”

Michael Gershon, reviewing Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman’s, How God Changes Your Brain.

I’ve come to believe that the human condition is very simple.

A friend of mine sent me the following video, which is now at the top of all the videos I’ve ever seen on humanity.  It’s that good and that important.  If you have 20 minutes to spend today on anything, make it this video.  Brené Brown shares the science of shame and what really makes up those who find value in themselves and those that don’t.  A few choice quotes that really stood out to me.

Stories are just data with a soul.

People who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe their worthy of love and belonging.

Courage is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

Blame is a way to discharge pain and discomfort.

You are worthy of love and belonging.

In my coaching role, I work with so many people who become captivated by shame.  But behind all of the wounds and fears is the captivated judgment that cripples someone with shame.  Something happened that invalidates the self.  But the one holding onto the judgment is not the oppressor, but the oppressed.  We see the event as defining.  Forgiveness is letting that judgment go.

But what is interesting is that shame is self-reinforcing.  As Brené found, only those who have a sense of self-worth embrace self-worth.  Once we become invalidated, its very hard to step out of that pattern.  The shame, which is a judgment of invalidation based on a subjective evidence, consistently stands out to us. Our minds reinforce it because it’s what we are holding onto.  Agreeing to it gives it life.

What is so interesting to me is that science is beginning to understand and even validate the very simple story God presents in Genesis 1-3.  Everything comes down to our relationship with reality, specifically and initially with the self.  If we’re good, everything is good.  If we’re not, everything becomes skewed.  And shame is the outcome.

If you’re dealing with the destructive nature of shame, I want to invite you into a conversation of restoration.  You don’t have to live this way.

I’m a huge proponent of experience.  I’m a thinker but I’m learning that the stuff that produces consistent changes in my life are the experiences that gives me tangible emotional content.  Turns out science is confirming this reality.  I was reading the Heart Math Institutes understanding of the heart and its role in cognitive functions.  Turns out change happens better when we feel something.

“Likewise, experience reminds us that the most pervasive thoughts – those least easily dismissed – are typically those fueled by the greatest intensity of emotion. Because emotions exert such a powerful influence on cognitive activity, at IHM we have discovered that intervening at the emotional level is often the most efficient way to initiate change in mental patterns and processes. Our research demonstrates that the application of tools and techniques designed to increase coherence in the emotional system can often bring the mind into greater coherence as well.” (source)

As I read that my first thought were the words, “Come follow me.”  Maybe Jesus got that we need an emotional experience as opposed to smart people telling us the right answer.  It made me think of so many people who have said to me, “I come for the worship.”  It made me think of the powerful moments of change in my life, which were virtually all accompanied by some heavy emotional content.  Maybe God likes to speak through the heart, or the process God uses to speak to us is through the heart.

What do you think?

One of the central tensions I ran into while writing Discovering The God Imagination, was the confrontation with the traditional stories that informed my understanding of the Gospel. I had reached a point where I could no long live with the “traditional” theories of penal substitution, or even ransom in their existing form as reasonable alternatives.  I believe Scripture was communicating an idea of ransom and substitution but logic suggested to me that our understanding of these terms was deeply flawed.  So all I did was open myself to the possibility of another way of seeing the story.

Buddhism begins with a serious commitment to reality.

At the heart of my desire to understanding the Gospel was a desire to know God.  I have never really doubted that something happened in both the Garden of Eden or at the cross.  I have always been profoundly impacted by the cross and what Jesus did.  I just wanted to give in meaning that reconciled.  I chose to seek out and hold onto a commitment to reality.

And then I ran into this little audiobook called, The Universe In A Single Atom by His Holiness, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  Its a somewhat autobiographical account of the Dalai Lama’s interest and exploration into the world of science.  It’s a fascinating work to say the least for many reasons but one has consistently hit me square in the face as I’m listening.  Buddhism begins with a serious commitment to reality.

As he recounts his encounter with science, the Dalai Lama reveals that even the Buddha suggested that his followers use experience, then reason, then the Scriptures as a basis for reality.

“If when we investigate something we find there is reason and proof for it, we must acknowledge that as reality, even if it is in contradiction with a literal Scriptural explanation that has held sway for many centuries, or with a deeply held opinion or view.  So one fundamental attitude shared by Buddhism and science is the commitment to keep searching for reality by empirical means and to be willing to discard accepted or long held positions if our search finds the truth is different.  By contrast with religion, one such significant characteristic of science is the absence of an appeal to Scriptural authority as a source of validating truth claim.”

Hearing the Dalai Lama say that kind of blew me away.  The Buddha himself was suggesting each person wrestle with the experience of reality, even if it contradicted the Buddha.  That my friends is ballsy and a deep commitment to honesty, even at the expense of the ego.  He explores the nature of science which includes a sense of healthy skepticism that continually tests theories for the sake of reality.

I do believe Christianity has a commitment to truth, but many times it seems to begin with long held theories that are sacred cows.  And instead of listening with healthy skepticism, even with long standing theories, we begin with those theories as already established in stone.

What would happen to Christianity if we held the same ethic as Buddhism?

This is the second part in a series of posts that explore my subtitle, Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity.

Part 1 explores the word “New”

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So why did I choose the word “Reconstructing” in my title.

Over the last five or six years I’ve been exploring the concept of Emergence.  I’ve written extensively on it because I believe we are continually reforming our understanding of the faith and what it means to follow Jesus in today’s world.  Emergence finds its roots in a biological process long before it ever made its way into the church dialog.

A central part of Emergence has been the deconstruction of our faith.  We have reached an unprecedented moment in history where two things have taken place.  The advent of media to empower the individual with information and the loss of the church’s power to excommunicate.  I wrote about these ideas in Listening To The Fruit Of The Church.

I suggest that much of our wrestling with theology is a Quest To Understand Ourselves.  As human beings created in the image of God we are continually informed by a story.  Deconstruction is a process of stepping away from our old embedded stories that didn’t work…for the sake of discovering a new one.   We search for God because we are informed by God. But deconstruction is NOT the end result.  Biologically we need a story, so to step into the void is to step into an uninformed space.  This liminal space allows us to see a new story because our brains are prewired to search for evidence that supports the existing story and ignore evidence that conflicts with it.  This works really well in a state of wholeness but not in a state of conflict. I never entered into the conversation for the sake of living in the void.  I wanted a story that reconciled.

In order to reconstruct a new story I had to step away from the previous assumptions that were made in history.  I had to consider the possibility that there was a new way of being informed by the story that we already there.  And there was.  What blew me away was that it coincided with what I was learning about our biology through neuroscience.  In other words, the advent of our understanding of our brain actually helped me see what was already there.

And what I found was liberating.  When I could see the problem God was solving it invited me into relationship and engagement with God’s mission.  I could participate with God in a way that was deeply meaningful and hopeful.  It informed my understanding of the story in a way that gave me life.

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Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity offers a sweeping new interpretation of the narrative of Christianity, Jonathan Brink explores the remarkable dissonance between our historical understanding of Gospel and what the story in Scripture actually reveals.  It offers a compelling possibility for those looking to reconstruct their faith in a whole new way. Available today from CreateSpace and Amazon. Order from CreateSpace and use code 5GFARGT9 to receive a 15% discount.

What if philosophers got it wrong? What if the basic notion that we are hard-wired for narcissism and self-interest is not as true our our forefathers adamantly ascribed?

I’m deep into The Empathic Civilization, a profound work of human understanding. Jeremy Rifkin suggests that science is now calling into question just about all of our pre-existing notions of human enlightenment and philosophies, many are built on the notion that humans are selfish brutes.  Science is now revealing a little thing called mirror-neurons, which reveal that we are hired wired for connection.  It doesn’t mean we don’t have selfish interests.  It suggests that our bodies are hired wired to transcend those selfish interests automatically.

Mirror neurons work very simply.  In order to understand the world, we internally reconstruct what we see happening outside of our bodies.  In other words, our bodies create meaning by reliving what we see in others.  This ability reveals that we are hard-wired to connect, to feel what others are feelings, to engage other’s pain and suffering, and to help transcend those maladies.

“The essential point is that mirror neurons underwrite the ability to recognize what helps or distresses others, what they suffer and enjoy, what they need and what harms them.” – A.C. Grayling

Rifkin begins his great work by suggesting that there is a strange relationship happening inside the body.

“At the very core of the human story is the paradoxical relationship between empathy and entropy.”  Rifkin,  (p 2)

Empathy is the fullest realization of our design as human beings created in the image of God.  Entropy is the fullest negation of it. So the question is then what keeps us locked into a state of entropy?  What keeps us from realizing what our bodies are already designed to experience?

I wonder if we’re afraid of empathy because if we experience what the other person is experiencing it may just captivate us.  This is the tension of the human story.  Does the experience of evil make us evil? Can we change reality?  I would suggest that this is the underlying tension of the human experience.  Can God transcend what we’ve done and love us then? I would also suggest that the basic human journey is to participate with Jesus in overcoming this death.

This is the brilliance of grace. Grace is the original framework that allows us to live in the midst of chaos and not be defined by it. Actions, or what we’ve done was never the basis for human dignity, or value.  God’s declarations were.

So my question is this.  What keeps you from experiencing what you are already designed to do, which is connection and relationship?

Prepare to geek out for about 10 minutes. ;-P

This is a video by author Jeremy Rifkin and explores the idea of empathy.  He makes the assertion, based on neuroscience that we are soft-wired with something called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons allow us to construct a sense of empathy by recreating in our own brain what we see someone else experiencing. These neurons help us connect with the other in a way that is biological.  Rifkin suggests we are wired for relationship.

What caught my attention is what could be described as his essential argument.  He maintains that we are an empathic civilization.  The final three minutes of the video explores how we construct identity using false realities (blood ties, religious ties, nation-state ties).  He suggests seeing beyond these constructions to the human ties and actually brings in Adam and Eve.  He creates an intriguing narrative for people exploring the ties of science and the creation story.

My friend Mike Todd turned me on to this video.  He explores how we’re wired to return to our true image.  Fascinating stuff.

I think neuroscience is going to play a huge part in reshaping our understanding of what it means to be human.

One of the central arguments I make in Discovering the God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity is where we locate the problem.  Historically we’ve cast the problem outward onto Satan or God.  I make the argument that the problem is located in the mind. I use the story of Scripture to show that the problem arises when humanity “realizes” a perspective of reality that is different from God’s.  This dissonance creates the distinction of “sin” which is a disorientation of reality, a lie if you will.

But recently I was reading a very important book that seems to provide further evidence supporting this idea.  Its called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Human Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  I’ve mentioned it before in regards to how we see community.  Mihaly (his first name, because you can even say his last name) explores the idea that the brain operates in a state of chaos.

“Contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos. Without training, and without an object in the external world that demands our attention, people are unable to focus their thoughts for more than a few minutes.

The social roles culture prescribes then take care of shaping our minds for us, and we generally place ourselves on automatic pilot till the end of the day, when it is time again to lose consciousness in sleep. But when we are left alone the basic disorder of the mind reveals itself.”

The mind begins in a state of chaos.  I argue that this disorder of the mind does two things.  One it locates the problem for us.  It gives us a constant physical experience of where the problem actually is.  Its not in God.  It is in us.  Two, it invites us into the God imagination, a way of seeing reality, and to mimic God by bringing order to the chaos.  This act of bringing order to the chaos is only possible through love, which is the judgment of good.  It begins when we align our logic system to how God sees us.

Mihaly then suggests something startling, which I also touch on in my book.  The problem is designed to hide by our own distraction.  We in essence participate in our own oppression by avoiding the problem because it is located in the self.

“To avoid this condition, people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is readily available, as long as it distracts attention from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings.”

Unless we listen to the problem we can’t solve it.

This is a very interesting video of Jon Stewart interviewing Marilynne Robinson.  She explores the tension between science and religion and suggests that scientists are not being honest about their own science.  For the sake of good atheism they need to admit their limitations.

Stewart is a great interviewer here asking who is more afraid.  He suggests, “the more you delve into science the more it relies on faith.”

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A Spanish mathematician crunches the numbers on successful relationships:

The results of the mathematical analysis showed when both members of union are similar emotionally they have an “optimal effort policy,” which results in a happy, long-lasting relationship. The policy can break down if there is a tendency to reduce the effort because maintaining it causes discomfort, or because a lower degree of effort results in instability. Paradoxically, according to the second law model, a union everyone hopes will last forever is likely break up, a feature Rey calls the “failure paradox”.

According to the model, successful long-term relationships are those with the most tolerable gap between the amount of effort that would be regarded by the couple as optimal and the effort actually required to keep the relationship happy. The mathematical model also implies that when no effort is put in the relationship can easily deteriorate.