By Dr. Flavius Raslau
You may have heard talks that are only about science or only about faith, but I don’t think in that bisected way. For me, science and faith make sense together, so I always bring them in conversation with each other to find how they inform one another. In this brief article, I want to give you a glimpse into that way of seeing the world. I think that some insights about how the brain works will give you a better understanding of how the Christian mind works. I will go through six points.
Point 1: Everything you do, you do with your brain.
Point 2: Everything you do with your brain is an experience in the present.
When you remember a scene from the past, you are actually recreating a simulation of that reality and experiencing it now in the present, and from the brain’s point of view, it is as if it’s really happening right now.
Point 3: Experience changes the brain.
What about imagining playing the piano? Does that do anything? Yes. Mental experience changes the brain.
Point 4: It matters what you imagine.
It matters what you are imagining, because whatever story you are telling yourself, you are simulating that reality and exercising the becoming of that kind of person.
Point 5: There are demons in your head.
Imagination creates an experience of that reality, and that experience rewires your brain. It works on the unconscious level to form habits. And habits increase the efficiency of actualizing that reality. And that means you move faster and farther than you thought you were going.
When you find yourself on a transformative path away from God, creating habits that move you faster and farther away, that is another force carrying you along. We can call that a demonic force. It’s a demon because it gets a grip on you, and you want to get away, but you can’t. We are the ones who summon these demons into our mind. We worship them. We become addicted to them, and then we don’t know how to get rid of them.
Point 6: Imagination is an act of worship.
You become that which you worship. You become that which you imagine. We become intentional in our worship when we cultivate practices of the imagination, by which we stand in the presence of God.
In the project of spiritual transformation, here is what brain science tells us: the most important thing is not questions and answers because that just gives you facts, and facts (even true facts) don’t get you very far. The most important thing is the experience of standing in God’s presence, knowing Him and being known by Him. You will always stand in the presence of something or someone. The only question is: in whose presence do you stand. When you stand in God’s presence, that’s when God starts to do something really transformative in your life.
