The Table Video

Dr. Curt Thompson explores the relationship between neuroscience and warranted belief in God.

Transcript:

I first want to say, how grateful I am to Steve, Evan, Rachel, I don’t know where Rachel is, like he fifth Oh, there she is. She’s everywhere. Like the Holy Spirit in a green dress it’s just. But I’m really grateful to be here. To be part of this conversation, and I know that I’m going to yap at you for a while, but I really want this to be a conversation. If we can make it that. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be here.

I’m grateful for the material that we’re going to talk about. I’m grateful for a group of friends of mine who are here to support this. You’ve heard some things about me. You’ve heard that I’ve been married for 26 and a half years. which is really an impressive thing on my wife’s part, given that it’s me that she’s married to.

I have a daughter who’s in her first year at Duke Divinity School and a son who’s in his first year of Undergraduate School. And I’m also from Washington D.C., which as many of you know, there’s this small word going around called sequestration. The sequestered. You’ve heard this word? I think I heard that word like 10 times in my life and now it’s 20 times a day.

But I have to say, if you’re from Washington and there is a sequestrar going on, everybody is anxious. This is really good for psychiatry. But it feels kinda bad knowing that people being anxious about losing their jobs means I’m more likely to keep mine. But this is who you are dealing with and in addition I would say this: I am professional at one thing in particular. I am a professional sinner.

For you Calvinists, are the Calvinist here? Yes. So for you Calvinists I am really good at being depraved. For you Arminians I’m really good at backsliding. For you Contemplatives I’m really good at just being mindless, but all that to say that we are all in this place longing for God to continue to work in us. That we may be his vessels to work with him to Usher in the kingdom of God.

And what I hope for us to do today, is to spend some time talking about a particular part of God’s good creation. That he is using to light the path where by which we may be more effective in that journey. I’d like to do three things. Sermon right, three things right? First thing we’re gonna talk a little bit about neuroscience. We’re gonna talk about Neuroscience as a cultural dialect and what that is.

The second thing we’re going to do is, we’re going to talk about what does it mean to proclaim the gospel in the language of neuroscience. and the third thing we gonna talk about is what does it mean for us as followers of Jesus to embody that proclamation. We can’t really talk about that which we are not becoming, very well or very effectively.

So those three things but I wanna couch it in these terms: That this is not intended to be 30 minutes of information download. This is intended to be a space where, in the time that we have together, Jesus is here to work and I invite us to be aware of and attuned to what the Holy Spirit is doing in and among us, literally, while we are together. Because this is not about me. This is about Jesus coming in his fullness.

We have only part of that story, somewhere in that story we are. I don’t know where exactly but were here. So let me start with this idea, the first thing is we’re gonna talk about Neuroscience as a cultural dialect. And when I say neuroscience let me be more clear about what I’m talking about.

You can say neuroscience and meet a range of different things. It can mean people who are just working with neural bundles in Alzheimer’s disease in the brain. Now that might not sound very exciting to someone, but if you’re married to the person with Alzheimer’s, it’s very important stuff. Or you may be talking about someone who looks at the brain changes that take place in attachment disorders. It’s much more relationally driven.

That’s neuroscience as well. So there’s a whole range of different disciplines that are converging that are all kind of a part of this thing we call neuroscience.

So what I wanna suggest is out of the discipline that I work, which is what we call interpersonal neurobiology. Those two words interpersonal neurobiology tend to help us bring together these different disparate disciplines.

That all look at the function of the mind and relationships, as they interact with each other. this phrase comes from my friend Dan Siegel and he coined this a number of years ago and it’s just everywhere now. you can hear about it. So one of the reasons that we wanna talk about neuroscience, it’s going to be shorthand for interpersonal neurobiology, is because whether you know it or not, it has become it has become the language that culture uses to talk just about everything.

You know this. People know this at the Washington Post. This is Tuesday February 12th. That’s two days before what important day? Valentine’s Day. Love is in the brain not in the heart. I mean we’ve even got to like talk about Valentine’s Day with using the brain. There’s you know we have all these research pieces that are done now that says: if you write an article. It could be about making yogurt and you have a picture of the brain in the article, people are more likely to believe you. I don’t know why the Democrats, Republicans haven’t figured this out yet. Why aren’t they just sending white papers with like little pictures of the brain on them. It’s everywhere. How many of you know of Brené Brown’s work? Some of you here, right. It’s common, it’s just everywhere.

But it’s not just that it’s everywhere, it’s become authoritative. It has become authoritative. It isn’t just out there. It is out there telling us what is good and what is right. You’re following me? It’s telling us what is good and what is right. You may not know this but starting tomorrow, there is a major conference at UCLA, being run by my good friend and a number of others, called How People Change. Dan Siegel and his friends are running this program, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. How People Change. Relationships and Neuroplasticity in Psychotherapy.

Now I wanna say, it’s gonna be an important conference because there’s gonna be alot that we learn about how people change. But I want to suggest to you that there are probably those of us in the room who would like to say that if we wanna talk about how people change it wouldn’t be a bad idea if Jesus shows up in that conversation.

I will tell you I don’t think Jesus is going to be showing up at that party. Not in person because I’m sure he’s going to be there. I just don’t know if people are gonna talk about him from the podium and that’s because we live in a world where most of the world is listening to my friend Dan Siegel as much if not more so than they are listening to those of us who are preaching from pulpits. You following me? It’s everywhere and it is authoritative. But I want to I want to draw attention to something.

It’s been very helpful for me to read a guy named Michael Polanyi and if you should know him Michael Polanyi and Lesslie Newbigin. And they talk about this idea called the prevailing plausibility structures of the world. This idea that there are many, many different possible structures. Many different lenses through which we can choose to understand the nature of the universe. And how the universe operates.

It is important to know that we in the West have for many, many years now lived and do live still under the authority of the plausibility structure of science. We don’t go to the bathroom without having research telling us that this is the right toilet. Like the last time you used the toilet someone researched that.

Oh, you laugh until the toilet overflows and because we’re in America then somebody needs to be sued. It’s just the way it is but that makes people anxious and that’s why psychiatrist have jobs. But you see you see what I mean. There is nothing that we do that doesn’t have some homage to be paid to that particular way of seeing the world. Do I make sense? And like a fish who doesn’t really know that it’s swimming in water most the time were not paying that much attention to this.

And in fact we in the church now we preach our sermons this way, we build our building this way. We do a whole range of things living under that auspice. Now there’s something to be said for science that is good because we’d say it was around 300-400 AD that the Cappadocian fathers started to write theology that lead us to science.

I mean Gregory and Basil and Gregory were some of the first great, thoughtful scientists in that sense, because they believed in a world that could be observed and could be studied and could be thought about. And so another reason why this center for Christian thought is so crucially important to be thinking about these things. But even before that we would say this: Saint Paul in Romans Chapter 1:20 says this ,paraphrased,: From beginning of time if you look at creation, creation points you to God.

From the beginning of time we’ve known this. And so it’s important for us to be aware that the discoveries of science are helpful because they are now giving us an additional language by which the Gospel of the biblical narrative can be described and unveiled to a culture that listens to science. Does that make sense? When I wrote the anatomy of the soul there are basically five points to this book.

One is, we all long for a world of goodness and beauty. I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t want that, number one. Number two, if we pay attention to the emerging data, that interpersonal neurobiology is pointing us toward, that data points us to the very world we long for. Number three, that same data not only reflects but energizes the biblical narrative. It reflects and energizes the biblical narrative and as such it changes our very experience with God. If we are willing to pay attention to it and do what the data asked us to do. Fourth, a crucial element of implementing this data is completely dependent upon human beings engaging in the process and practice of being known. The process and the practice of being known. In 1 Corinthians 8:3 Saint Paul says, “The person who loves God is known by God.”

He does not say the person who loves God, knows God. The person who loves god is known by God. Let me ask you this question: For each of you and this is something I would invite you to consider doing as an experiment. For each of you, I would like for each of you to give me three names. Three names of three people who if I were to ask them about you they could collectively tell me everything there is to know about you. Everything. Not just your vital statistics. They would tell me what your worst fear is.

They would tell me the number of times you felt ashamed today. Which it would be hard for them do because of how ubiquitous that affect is. But who knows us that well and get this, who knows us that well and we are aware of it. Like I’m aware of being known that well that I can step back and say wow this person knows me with all my stuff and they are still in my life today. Could you give me three names?

Some might be able to. Some of us would find that hard to do. But I want to suggest to you that the degree to which we love God is associated deeply with the degree to which we have the experience of being known by God and the degree to which we experience being known by God is directly related to how well we are known by embodied people. This is really important because one of the things we come to find out is that it is in the process of being known that so many other important things begin to happen in the brain that leads to health. A process that we call integration that we’re gonna talk about more of tomorrow night. That’s fourth, here’s fifth piece of this book and that is we live in a world that is increasingly atomistic. Individuals want to kinda go and do their own thing.

That’s not a biblical picture of the universe. Anatomy of the Soul was not written primarily or solely for people’s individual personal growth. Because growth never ever occurs only individually. It only occurs in the context of community. But we live in a culture that wants to tell us that I by myself can know everything I need to know, logically and linearly as longer just study hard enough.

nd that I don’t need to be known in order for me to have an awareness of myself. We can’t know ourselves until as we say in the business, I see myself in your eyes. Which of course is completely consistent with this idea in Genesis 1:26 and 27 where God says, Let us make man in our image and then let’s let man live like we live. It’s paraphrased. Let us make man in our image. In the context of community, what’s really interesting, in the context of being known my anxiety drops.

And if my anxiety drops it is possible for me to be more creative. This is not just about my own personal welfare, this is about my capacity for being creative and thoughtful about my vocation. This is about who am I called to be in the world, who are we called to be and how do I use the “we” in order to help me figure out who I am called to be in the world It is a way of living out that Genesis mandate, if you will.

And so paying attention to the neuroscience is really helpful and important because the more we do, the more we don’t just grow personally, the more we become the kingdom of God on the Earth. And prepare for the Kingdom that is coming. As Dallas Willard said at a conference back a few months ago I believe God, just like this like I didn’t know. From Missouri, I didn’t know that Missouri was in the south but like I believe God will let anyone into his heaven who can take it.

And you know here’s the thing with all my professional sinning I’m not sure I’m going to be able to take it. But god does not leave himself without a witness and for such a time as this when the brain is so sexy. It is. You know 10 O’ clock at night, Tuesday, I just roll a picture of the brain. No, I don’t. Really, I don’t do that. We have other methods and so I completely forgot my train of thought. He does not leave us without a witness and so we’re at a place where his creation now opens itself in order for us to access it.

To use that information to help point people to the story as we understand it. As God has been bringing it to pass from the beginning. Does that make sense? Again another reason why the work that you are doing here at CCT is like so crucially important not because it’s just a bunch of smart women and men doing things but because it adds to this rhythm of using my left brain and my right brain.

This rhythm of being rigorous theologians, being rigorous philosophers and being rigorous people with boots-on-the-ground. That’s how we live. What does it mean for us to proclaim the gospel using this language? This is a part of my little talk that we can just go on forever and ever and ever. I’m just gonna name a few things why is it important to pay attention to this. In no order of importance, one thing that strikes me is that about Jesus telling stories and parables and so forth is that he used a lot of different medium a lot of different motifs for the stories that he told.

So he told stories about people who planted things, right? I don’t know how expert he was in the vocational field of farming but he knew enough to know that you throw seed and it grows or doesn’t and there might be some reasons why. And there’s probably some people here, most of us here would have some sense of what it would take to grow plants. But we aren’t all horticulturist. But the point is that he knew enough about those motifs that were important in his day to use them effectively. And so to proclaim the gospel means it is important for us to be familiar with the cultural dialects of our day. In order for us to use them effectively. You don’t have to be an expert in brainstem activation. You don’t, I’m sure you might have thought that you needed to be. You didn’t. It’s disappointing.

But it is important to know some fundamental basic things about how this is working because this is the language of your day and it’ll be important for Believers to be able to name and tell people what the purpose of this language is. As opposed to people who develop the language deciding what the gospel is. Which of course is what happens. I have many friends who are what we might call reductionists. If it’s in the brain and we can take it out then it doesn’t exist in the universe. If I can find that set of cells that represents my experience of God and we eliminated it. Then apparently God goes away.

Not withstanding the fact that I say well gosh I could probably also find the cells that represent my wife but those cells go away I think my wife is still gonna be there. But you see what I mean, there’s a reductionism with which we live and it’s important for us to know enough to be able to have that conversation with folks. There’s some other ways that are important for us to keep things of the mind in mind.

For example: How many of you here are preaching sometime between now and Sunday night? A handful of you, okay. How many of you still have some prep work to do on your sermons? Yeah buddy, all right. So let’s just keep this in mind, I mean I don’t know how this will sound. When you are done with your sermon, I mean not just preparing it but preaching it. Within two hours people would have forgotten probably 85% of it. Is that not encouraging news? I went to seminary, I got to homiletics class.

No, it’s not to suggest that what we say is unimportant, it is to suggest that things like how we deliver sermons is important. That people remember things that they experience as much, if not more than things that they just simply hear. So the stories we tell are crucially important. Including things in our worship services that embody the body are crucially important because you’re not just simply in sermons either trying to download information. That’s not what we’re trying to do. We want to offer a gift that people may take in and eat and walk out and be changed. Amen? This is hard work. This is really hard work. Here’s another thing, how many of you are part of churches in which when people come in and sit down, they’re sitting in pews or chairs that are lined up or curved or chevroned?

But where most of the folks, except the people who are sitting in the very front row, are looking at the backs of other people’s heads. Okay, I mean that’s what we do. You know I’m not thinking that this is a good idea for people be looking at the back of my noggin. So here’s something else, if you take a group of people and you sit them in a circle, it means that they are going to be far more aware of the presence of other people because they are going to see whether they are consciously aware of it or not.

They are gonna sense all the nonverbal cues that are coming from other people in response to whatever is happening in the room. That’s why what’s happening in this room right now. There are things that you were sensing not just that I’m saying. You’re already sensing things that other people at your table are sensing. Now you weren’t aware of that like seven seconds ago, but now you are.

Notice that this room for instance is almost full to capacity. If we took this group of people and had an auditorium that was twice the size, we would not be having the same exchange. Your brains would be having a completely different experience.

These are small things but these are things that are big deals and these are things that God’s good creation and information that we are gathering from it is being laid before us in order for us to proclaim the gospel. Not to mention other ways that we proclaim the gospel, we proclaim the gospel with artistry. Oh, my gosh! The CCT offices, you do, you have to take them all on a tour of just these two rooms. It’s unbelievable. Somebody did some real thinking in designing a room where by which the very physicality of the room itself, not this room, although this is a good room. It’s a great room, I love this room. It’s my favorite room in the world. The very physicality of the offices like you walk in and you feel a change.

Somebody is paying attention to these things. It’s really good stuff. I have a friend here Nicole Johnson who is an actor, a dramatist and she does the kind of work that is not preaching from a pulpit but that grips people in such a way that the Holy Spirit has access to make change. So things like acting and dance and music and literature, all those kinds of things are all important and the more we pay attention to how it effects the mind, the more we line up with what God is wanting to do in the world.

That is intended to be encouraging. But it takes work. And it takes work for us to figure this out together. Again another reason why places like CCT are so important, Have I done a good job on the marketing thing? Okay, I’m just checking. You call me, as long as it’s not about me, I can market anything. So it’s hard work but when done together God is like so stoked about this. Those are just examples of what it means for us to proclaim. One last thing I’ll say about that, Is my friend Dwayne here in the room? There he is, right. So my friend Wayne is a Spiritual Director and there are others in the room who may also do this work but one of the things that directors, and I’d had one for 16 years, one of the things that directors do is, they invite us into spiritual disciplines.

You know I really have to say I hate fasting. Anybody else with me on this? Wow, I’m so glad I’m not by myself with it. It would be really embarrassing if I’m the only one raising my hand. It’s really hard work but there is work that gets done by that process. But not just when I’m doing it by myself.

When I’m doing it with the three other guys that I meet with on a weekly basis for prayer and confession when we do this together. So like we all hating it. It’s great. But these kinds of things open us. These kinds of things open us to the work of the Holy Spirit and it is a way for us to pay attention to things of the mind that neuroscience would now suggest is really taking place literally in your brain.

This is not just some abstraction. So when Saint Paul talks about renewing your mind, he’s not kidding. Last piece and then we’re gonna have some Q and A. How do we embody this? It’s one thing for us to know about interpersonal neurobiology and that it exists in the universe. God’s creation is out there and open to us and we can learn more about it. We can also begin to work at making this possible and doing things with it in our work as scholars in our work, as pastors. But it will be difficult for us to do either of this, if we are not personally embodying this in our lives.

So here’s the story: He’s 42 years old and he’s married with five kids and his church, naturally, because he is who he is. And who is he? He’s bright. he’s articulate. He’s thoughtful, He’s kind. Tireless worker, funny, engaging because of this of course, he’s church is involved in a building project.

It is inevitable coz if you’re really good this is the benchmark, right? If you’re a really good Pastor at some point you have to have a building project. But it starts to drive him crazy because with the building project people have opinions. Now they’re not just having opinions about following Jesus.

Now it’s about like how many square footage. And things start to get overwhelming and he reaches this place, that now even there is literature about this, called burnout. Right? And I would guess that there are people, who are in this room, who either if they have not been there in the past may be close to that now or are headed in that direction. And he comes to see me. Now of course this is the other thing about Pastors. I don’t know of many other professions, where it’s just not easy to go talk to the other Pastor down the street. To talk about how your ministry is blowing up.

This would be like if somebody from, I don’t know, the Redskins going to somebody in the Eagles camp and saying how can we do better to beat you next year. It’s not working very well. But here’s the thing, with all of his travail and with all of his effectiveness living as a human being.

There were certain things that he had never paid attention to. After having become a Believer as a college student, he worked through some of the stuff but he hadn’t worked through all the beatings as a kid. He hadn’t worked through all of what it felt like to be in isolation because his marriage was not really in reality what it looked like to most folks who saw it. I really don’t have to say much more than this, right? And he’d been to his Primary Care physician. He’s already on an anti-depressant, right.

So he’s getting all the help from culture. But we began to pay attention to things like what he was paying attention to. And to memory and to emotion and to his attachment. And to a range of different things that gave him language for contending with and needing those elements of his mind that were a wrecking ball for him. We also were able to say healing is not gonna happen just with you and me in this office, coz I’m just not that good.

Don’t tell people I said that. This is going to require your being able to talk with other people. Whereby which this shame stuff that you carry with you can be known and as the Hebrews letter says can be scorned, can be disregarded. Just as Jesus did that at the cross. This became a project were in which his taking on these elements of the mind, gave him an opportunity to, albeit slowly, climb out of this place that he was in.

But it required him beginning to connect with other people in the community. This is really hard if you’re a pastor. Coz pastors just don’t have that many places to go, where you can really be known. Coz word gets out, the building project goes away in a heartbeat. You follow me? So the question I have for us today: To what degree are we known? To what degree have we incorporated all those different elements of what it means to love God with all of our mind.

When we know for a fact that most of our mind operates in ways that are non-conscious and we’re not aware of. And who is with you such that, that healing and regeneration and creation can come to fruition. My invitation is for you to take this and by this I don’t just mean the stuff I’ve said but the things we’re going to be asked about now. And not simply forget it. As you are likely to do just because you’re human. Not because you’re not serious about it. Not because you don’t care. The people who listen your sermons they care. They like your sermons by the way, they do. They wouldn’t keep coming back if they didn’t.

My encouragement for you is to take this and allow Jesus to knead it into your lives. That you and those around you may be changed. You’ve been a lovely audience. Thank you very much. I think we’re going to take some time for Q and A.

I was, Doctor Thompson, I was intimidated when I enter the room because of this august body of theologians and experts. I’m not an expert.

Me neither. I love this is great.

Anyway, I had a very interesting experience. That came back to mind not to long ago. I have a son-in-law who is a messianic Jew and when he heard that my wife who had done some of her post-graduate work in Denver seminary.

She kept telling me that maybe we should experience living in a four-season place. So I said I’m going to Denver. He said can I go with you Dad. He calls me dad that’s how close we are. And he kept on driving my wife’s SUV and after midnight there was a radio talk show host who you understand my action?

I believe so, so far.

Well I’m an alumnus of here at least.

We’re good.

Well he was interviewing the chairman or chairwoman, to be politically correct, enabling Social Science Department or Psychology Department. And she say that we have done all kinds of sonograms on the brain but up to now we cannot find where memory is stored. And I said that’s interesting.

He say Dad what’s interesting? She does not know where memory is stored because she is a secularist. Because as a humanist and humanist being that it is the measure of all things. While I was talking, I was talking to my son-in-law, I remembered Dives and Lazarus having a conversation across the gulf in their disembodied spirits, right? So I said to him that I believe that memory is stored not in any brain lobe but in the spirit. Am I right or wrong sir?

That’s a great question. I’m going to refer that to the philosophers over here. It raises a great question. Again, we find it to be really helpful and interesting for us to ask where is memory stored? Frankly, where is anything stored? Right? I wanna suggest this: That the pursuit of knowing things is something that we do with mixed motivation. Part of what we do to discover things, to know where memory is, to know where thoughts are, where feelings are and so forth. We do that because we long to inculcate that. To make that a more conscious, intentional part of our life.

But frankly, a lot of, in fact for me personally, most of why I want to know things is because I like Eve and Adam before me want to know that I know that I know. It is about the knowledge of everything. I’m much more interested in being able to know certainty, than I am to live in a world of probability. Now with Newtonian physics, we thought we had certainty. Am I right? And with quantum mechanics we now know for certain that we don’t have certainty. Did I get that right? Or we think there’s a good probability that we just have probability. My point is this: Probability about anything, for instance there’s a good probability that short-term memory is housed, is highly correlated with the activity of the cells of the hippocampus. There is good evidence to that in fact.

Because if we cut them out or if they die off while you have your sleep apnea episodes, which they will. You don’t remember things as well in your short-term memory. You don’t encode things as well. But why do I need to know that, that’s where they are? Sometimes I need to know this because I wanna do new interventions on behalf of people. But I know that lurking underneath all that is my old Adam that wants to know things because I’d rather know than to trust.

I’d rather live in a world where I can in my isolation control all my variables rather than have to live with the specter of a God who is moving in the cool of the day and who gets to ask me questions and who tells me things. You follow me? Great question. Yeah?

Thanks for being here Doctor Thompson. As a teaching pastor you encouraged us to consider how we can incorporate neuroscience into the preaching event or into the sermons. And I would love to do that and I elicit with the 15 other disciplines that I’m supposed to be and expert on.

And I preach so I can give 15-30 minutes to try and understand neuroscience which we don’t think will be sufficient. And most of the neuroscience information I get is filtered through some sort of popularization. A TED Talk, a NPR interview, something more conservative than NPR to make people feel more comfortable.

Thank you, I was starting to feel a sympathetic drive system starting to.

But I would love to know because I hear you saying we don’t want to just filter it through a secularist lens, we want to have our own ability to look at it. But I don’t have the capacity or the time to read a neuroscience journal article.

Where can some of this be found that’s useful and what would you encourage us as teaching pastors so that we don’t just sound like we’ve read a time article and are trying to be an expert?

I think three things. First of all, my first suggestion is don’t sleep. Coz I think if you just don’t sleep you’ll have plenty of time to read the stuff you need to read. Secondly-

Male: You sound like a male.

Great, really? Well I’m an elder of my church so that’s probably why I sound like that. Secondly, again I would say that this is a conversaton. I think that you’ve raised, how many here would say that’s like a crucial question? What he just asked. Because we’re all being asked to do more with less. Right?

The sequesters just like the stamp on that or the government, right? In our church we have a guy who is a political scientist and every four years he runs a six week course leading up to the election that helps us pay attention to how to think about, how to be in the political process. Now I don’t have time to do all the work that my friend Jerry does.

But that’s the kind of thing that we’re talking about doing. You’re absolutely right. No pastor is gonna have the time, effort, energy to do all the kind of work to know all that you need to know about everything. But this is why places like CCT are so important.

And so I would suggest a thing to consider doing would be to say hey once every six months and this might even be to free but once every six months we’re gonna get together and we’re gonna have two or three of us as a group of pastors, we’re gonna get together for an afternoon lunch and we’re gonna sift through some stuff that we’ve seen.

And we’re gonna have a conversation about this. That’s a thing to do. Where’s Steve, where did he go? So I’m getting ready for this talk and I’m thinking to myself Oh my gosh, you could have a two day conference for pastors in which this is all we do. We could come back and have this whole, talk about all kinds of ideas, but this is what places like this are intended to do. So I think that question is relevant, it’d be like how can I be familiar with all of the important contemporary music that’s being played?

I’m with people all day. I don’t listen to the radio. I never listen to radio. How am I gonna know these things? Well there’s certain things I can’t know but it will be helpful for me to know people who are kind of helping me connect those kinds of things. Again it’s hard work but were trying to do that here. I’m sorry that I don’t have the the answer other than the sleep thing. I think that’s helpful.

Male: Is there anything to developing your talks for the community. Where as you bring your ideas you have a variety of people that are reflecting and interacting with it?

So I think that your question raises a whole host of options to consider. That would be creative opportunities to flush this out and like all ideas are born out of little things, I mean gatherings like this. All ideas that go someplace and are helpful and meaningful.

I have a quick question and then I’ll pass the mike when we’re done. Thank you again for your time. I heard you talking about community building in the language of neuroscience in your little talk about being known. In your research does it show that it takes a certain amount of time before someone enters a community and they can really start digging through their issues.

Coz as pastors we’re not only Preachers but we’re building Communities and people tend not to open up until a certain amount of time. I just don’t know if that’s different for everybody or science shows that they have to be in your parish for year. They must be in a small group.

So I’m gonna take this, help me with your first name.

Blake.

Blake , I’m really sorry, in advance.

We can do confession later.

That’s fine, we can do confession right now. But people have to go. I could be here for a long time confessing. What prompt your question? When you were talking about being known and the character, the 42 year old with five kids, I just immediately thought of pastoral ministry. I’m just thinking of a couple, a man in a small group that I’m in.

They don’t start opening up until a year or two in. Oh, a whole new person that I didn’t know before. And I was just wondering, I don’t do scientific research, if research shows a person does not start opening up, maybe it’s even one on one therapy until they’ve gotten to know them for a certain amount of time because as pastors people will come into your church and they’ll leave and you start this process of community building and it tears that, it rips it and it breaks it. I see the community part as huge and what you’re saying about being known and community it’s all very fascinating.

So there’s two level of what I’m hearing. There’s two layers of which things are happening in the room. Right now, quite literally. So one level there’s a question that’s put out there. A crucially important question. And once again we’d like to know the answer to that question because it’s going to help me make decisions down the line. You follow me? I’d like to know things because it reduces my distress. Right? Coz I wouldn’t be asking this question unless at some level it’s hard for me not knowing the answer to this creates some trouble. How much longer do I have to wait for this guy to open up? Right? Like it’s been 17 years because he’s a guy, right? That’s part of it but it’s also important to know time is a function of intention. Time is a function of intention.

Notice in the creation narrative the scripture do not say and God created mankind. It says and God said Let us create mankind. There is thoughtful reflective intention from the very beginning. Okay? So if we’re going to be in a group and we’re going to by intention, draw this group to a place of transparency and community and live out 1 Corinthians 12 and 13. There are certain intentional things we can begin to do to facilitate it being more likely that it won’t be 17 years before he talks.

That’s what I’m looking for.

Right. And that’s next year’s luncheon I think.

Female: I was just curious to hear your thoughts on the effects of technology on how that is forming our brains either toward or against community and if you see any hope.

It’s a great question and I go back to the wheel. The wheel does lots of really great things for us. It let’s us move things, places. It makes it easier to transport things. Like my wheat 10 000 years ago. But it also means when I want to, I can leave you more easily. Yes, it’s easier for me to get to my kids now when they’re in Durham, North Carolina.

But it means I have to get to Durham, North Carolina to get to my kids. So we can say with technology there’s always going to be this two edged sword element to it, right? The part that we can do good with it or we can do things that tend to be not so good. There those who would suggest that we have reached a different place with things like the internet. In that the more wired together we are, the less connected we are. And I would suggest it’s kinda like a perfect storm.

And we could talk all day about just this particular item but we would say that I know you think you do but you really don’t have 500 friends. I know that you think you’re all that but like it’s just not the case. But see there is a certain illusion with that, right? There is this illusion that as long as I have that sense of connection at a superficial level, I don’t have to be deeply connected to anyone. And I reinforce what I would call Shame Ages.

I’m in the process of doing a new manuscript for book on Shame. And we’re not gonna find a more primitive, negative, affective state than that. And things like technology, in the way we are currently using it, tend to reinforce that same affective effect. I could say more about that. I wish we had more time to talk about that.

Again you could develop another converse. Yes?

It seems to me that part of what we’re wrestling with, maybe the main thing were wrestling with, has been the gradual depersonalization of life, the world in general, since the rise of Science. Now science required a kind of depersonalizing of the pagan world to get rid of all those spooks and things that made things go where they went but the Christian world, if you take a look at the Christian biblical worldview, it’s inherently personal.

That it’s fundamentally personal not impersonal. It’s not a machine. It’s a creation by a living God and it seems to me that we need to get back to that. Which would put this thing were discussing today in a whole different context. That we would be approaching it from a whole different context because we modern folks have basically bought into what a bishop of the 1700, Bishop George Barclay said.

That machine that Newton has invented is going to get in the way of God and that’s exactly what has happened and we need to overcome that. I think that’s a doable project and I think it’s part of what we need to be doing right here. Does that make sense to you?

Does that make sense to other people? Fine and good.

Thank you.

I mean, I would say this: I would say that again like I said earlier and this is where our historians and philosophers would be far better at articulating this than I would, we have to recognize that science was born in the church. But as our friend Micheal Polanyi said in the end there really is no such thing as science.

There are only scientists. And it’s important that we keep that distinction in mind. Now it doesn’t mean that ideas don’t have impact but it’s important to keep in mind that when someone says neuroscience says, I gotta tell you it’s not neuroscience, like it’s John Green in a lab coat. And if you were to take John Green out and have a beer with him.

You can do that right? You can have a beer? I’m just checking. I couldn’t do that where I grew up. And you would find out some things about John Green’s family. We’re gonna tell a story tomorrow night about one such person like this. You’re gonna come to find that John Green’s thoughts on science are never just about science. I think I’ll stop with that.