As a pastor I have often urged people to "get closer to Christ," but I'm not so sure I've helped them know when they have. How can we help people know when they've gotten closer to Christ? Do external changes confirm that growth? What internal ones occur, and how can we recognize them?
To ask the question in theological terms: If glorification is the goal of God's work in our lives (Rom. 8:30) and grace is the means (Eph. 2:8) and sanctification is the process (1 Thess. 4:3) then what results are observable? How does intimacy with Christ change us? What impact does conformity to Christ have on our behavior and … our brains?
I've had long conversations with other pastors and leaders over the years about spiritual transformation. Who else would you talk with about such a subject?
Well, how about a couple of neuroscientists?
That's exactly what I did. The results were surprising and enlightening.
The brain guys
Dr. Andrew Newberg of Thomas Jefferson University is considered the world's foremost authority on the science of spirituality and the brain. He's researched it for some twenty years. Although our discussion dealt with a bit of science and empirical research, it tapped a deep sense of wonder in me over just how limited my view of spiritual growth and sanctification may have been. (The interview "Faith and the Brain" is in this issue.)
If you contemplate something as complex and mysterious as God, you're going to have incredible bursts of neural activity.
Later I spoke with another "brain guy," Dr. Daniel Amen, coauthor with Rick Warren of The Daniel Plan, the bestselling book on faith-based healthy living. Amen is perhaps best-known as a favorite TED talk presenter on the subject of brain functioning. His clinic in California has carried out some 90,000 brain scans, including some on his own children, and he has discovered much on brain function and human behavior. His team also did the much-reported and discussed research not long ago on the National Football League and brain damage issues with its players.
Most of what I've learned (and included in this article) comes from these two researchers.
Loving God with your brain
The brain is involved in the pursuit of God. Newberg says, "Whatever happens to you as a person spiritually or soulfully still ultimately has to be comprehended emotionally and understood by your brain. If your soul has changed, it has to percolate up into your brain."
If sanctification is not an event but rather a journey, then one aspect of that journey is certainly the development of spiritual intimacy, of coming closer to Jesus. While that increasing "closeness" may be practiced in our spiritual disciplines, it is, of course, also perceived in our brain. "Come near to God, and he will come near to you" (James 4:8).
Amen, a professing Christian, correlates the health of the brain and the health of the soul. He views service to God and even sin through a biological lens: "A healthy brain increases the chances of having a healthy spiritual life," he says. "But if your spiritual life is not developed, it can have a negative impact on the spiritual functioning of the brain. For example, if you engage repeatedly in pornography, it has a negative effect on how your brain functions. If you repeatedly give in to temptation, it makes you more likely to give in to it in the future. Conversely, prayer and meditation on the Bible have a positive effect, and more of it makes you more likely to practice it in the future."
The association of the mind and our spiritual life is not a new idea, although it is a new science, one Newberg refers to as neurotheology. The Apostle Paul associated life "in the Spirit" with changes in the "mind" (Rom. 8) and urged believers to be "transformed" (metamorphoo) by the renewing of their minds (Rom. 12:2). He also wove the role of the mind into his appeal to sanctification to the Ephesian church:
"No longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. … assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Eph. 4:17-23, emphasis mine).
The word Paul uses repeatedly for "mind" is nous. The essence of this word is "the faculties of perceiving and understanding and those of feeling, judging, determining; the intellectual faculty" (Strong's).
How God changes a brain
Brain plasticity is a rapidly emerging field and an interesting one in light of the process of sanctification. Amen says that plasticity "means your brain can respond to change. You're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better; regardless of your age. I can prove it with the imaging work I have done."
Nobel laureate Eric Kandel proved that neurons never stop learning, demonstrating the important field of neuroplasticity. Kandel showed that when any alteration in your environment occurs, your nerve cells will change in literally a matter of hours. When the stimulus around us is altered, the internal functioning of nerve cells changes, even growing new extensions called axons capable of communicating with other parts of the brain.
But what does neuroplasticity have to do with God? According to Newberg, "Everything. For if you contemplate something as complex and mysterious as God, you're going to have incredible bursts of neural activity firing in different parts of your brain; your brain is going to grow."
The Apostle Paul wrote that "letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace" (Rom. 8:6; NLT). While Newberg does not profess to be a Christian, his wonder-filled view of the brain's response to God and our thoughts about him is stunningly reminiscent of David's awe: "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Ps. 139:14).
The "God places" in your brain
In his book How God Changes Your Brain, Newberg cites specific areas of the brain that he believes help us grow in our understanding of God. He calls them the God "circuits." These varied neural systems seem to be affected by our growing perception of God based on our spiritual journey and faith experiences. When I first read over this list, I was intrigued with the correlations that emerged between our external proximities and internal perceptions of Jesus, the sanctified body and the sanctified brain.
According to Newberg one of the favorite phrases among neurologists is "the neurons that fire together, wire together." In layman's terms, when it comes to our spiritual development, the externals affect the internals and vice versa. The things Jesus did and said that drew people closer to him also changed things deeply within them, including the shape and functioning of their brains, or the God "circuits."
At the time I was working on a book, The One Jesus Loves, that reflected on the concentric groups of people in Jesus' life and the significance of their proximity to him. Neuroscience made this model came alive in a new way for me.
Consider this:
• The Crowds (the place of Watching & Listening to Jesus, a place of introduction to him) ignites the Occipital-Parietal Circuit in the brain. According to Newberg, this is the system that helps us identify that God exists. Interestingly, it is the area of the brain responsible for the assembly of auditory and visual stimuli.
• The 5000 (the place of Feeding & Healing, where we begin to receive from Jesus in our lives) fires up the Parietal-Frontal Circuit. This system helps us see ourselves and our comparative weakness and needs in light of God. It integrates sensory information such as touch.
• The 70 (the place of Working for & Serving Jesus, of us joining Jesus in his ministry to others) ignites the Thalamus. This system helps us apply our faith to our view of the world around us and its needs. It relays sensory signals to other parts of the brain and aids in motor control and movement, to engaging our bodies in the works of faith.
• The Twelve (the place of Leaving All & Following Jesus wherever he may lead us next) fires up the Frontal Lobe. This system "integrates all of our ideas about God" and helps us make ultimate decisions about life and about him. It is an executive functioning aspect that is associated with planning, motivation, and reward. It sends signals to other nerve cells and plays a major role in reward-motivated behavior.
• The Three (the place of Rejoicing & Suffering together with Jesus, best represented by the Mount of Transfiguration and the Garden of Gethsemane, the two places that the Three—Peter, James, and John—were exclusively permitted to go) ignites the Amygdala. Newberg calls this a "God circuit" that helps us to create our "emotional impressions of God." Located deep within the temporal lobes of the brain, it plays a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making, and our emotional reactions in life.
• The One (the place of Sacrifice & Surrender to Jesus, where only one disciple apparently went, namely John the Beloved, following Jesus all the way to the Cross,) ignites the Striatum & the Anterior Cingulate. This system helps us "inhibit our fears" or the unwanted activity in the Amygdala and allows us to build a more confident faith. Newberg says this part of the brain helps us "to feel safe in the presence of God." It also helps us inhibit unwanted or negative behavior and have a sense of empathy and wisdom drawn from all of our life experiences.
Sanctification involves not only proximity to Jesus but also other vital changes in us, those of perspective and perception. It includes not only loving God with our "heart," "soul," and "strength," but also with our "minds." Sanctification changes the design of our lives, and perhaps the very configuration of our brains.
Holy, Wholly Holy
No two brains, however, are identical, and our physiological makeup is subject to sin, suffering, and weakness. At the 2012 Desiring God Conference, The Christian Post reported that Dr. Ed Welch, a counselor, said that Christians should remember that everyone is "brain damaged" to a certain extent and that everyone forgets things at times and has certain limitations on their intelligence. He said that "though the brain offers these limitations on us, the brain essentially, fundamentally offers no limitation on our sanctification."
Biblically we recognize that the brain alone cannot save us (Eph. 2:8), but it is fascinating to consider how God has wired the brain to respond to the work of the Holy Spirit when our spirits are willing. Our hope is that the sufferings Jesus endured in his earthly biological frame to purchase salvation and the power that raised him up will also "give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you" (Rom. 8:11, NLT). Yet it appears that the process of sanctification that Scripture presents is one that science also is coming to confirm.
Sanctification is more than a creed we espouse. It is a transformation that remakes us spiritually in our practices and even physiologically in our minds.
Through their research on brain function, neuroscientists such as Amen and Newberg are clearly enjoying frequent discoveries in this field and gaining momentum in passing on these ideas.
Certainly I am not the only one who has lived with the question about the process of sanctification, of how we grow closer to Jesus and what characteristics evidence that change. The apostle Paul felt it deeply; so much so that he compared his concern to a mother in the delivery room: "Oh, my dear children! I feel as if I'm going through labor pains for you again, and they will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives" (Gal. 4:19, NLT). It was clearly something that weighed heavily on his mind.
Paul also understood, however, that sanctification was not ultimately our work, but something the "God of peace" would accomplish and something with which we are called to cooperate. Sanctification is more than a creed we espouse. It is a transformation that remakes us spiritually in our practices and apparently even physiologically in our minds and thoughts. It reconciles and reshapes us on all fronts, even above the neck. Paul's prayer for the Thessalonian Church broadened the dimensions of spiritual formation:
"Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it" (1 Thess. 5:23-24, emphasis mine).
The apostle had no intention of settling for half-growth in the lives of those he led. Neither should we. From the Crowds all the way to the experiences of the Beloved Disciple himself, sanctification was found in a place, a closer proximity to Jesus. But it also came in the perceptions those intimacies effected. For the earliest followers of Jesus, holiness was all about wholeness – about "spirit … and body." It was a process of grace that regenerated their souls and rewired their brains.
Robert Crosby is co-founder of Teaming Life and Church Conferences (teaminglife.com). He has pastored churches in New York, Ohio, and Massachusetts and is professor of practical theology at Southeastern University. His latest book is The One Jesus Loves (Thomas Nelson). @rccrosby.
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