Be Prepared To Be Profoundly Challenged

The God-Shaped Brain: How Changing Your View of God Transforms Your Life
Author: Timothy R. Jennings, MD

Publisher: IVP Books, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2013

Be Prepared To Be Profoundly Challenged

Any book that connects our brains, anatomy, and God automatically gets my attention. Such was the case with Timothy Jennings’ The God-Shaped Brain: How Changing Your View of God Transforms Your Life. The author’s credentials are impressive: board-certified psychiatrist, master psychopharmacologist, lecturer, international speaker and author. He is a Christian and voted one of America’s Top Psychiatrists by the Consumers’ Research Council of America in 2008, 2010, and 2011.

I was ready to learn and learn I did. Jennings sets out to show us how our beliefs change us mentally, physically and spiritually.

Early in the book, he shares an incredible technique for gaining insight into the relationship between the creation of “inanimate nature” or a time before humanity, and Love. That got me hooked.

In chapter 2, he compares Watson, IBM’s supercomputer synthetic creation that in 2011 beat the top two all-time Jeopardywinners, to the human brain. Some fascinating data is provided.

Jennings introduces us to fear and its origin, and ties that in with “believed lies” and then “broken love”. For those that like to gain some ‘medical’ knowledge, he does not disappoint. He shows us how we cannot ‘think’ clearly when we are ‘guilt-ridden’, and then reminds us that “We are not born guilty; we are born terminal.”

The book helped me to better understand some people that I know and love. Using science, he helps us understand, as an example, how “a child born to a high-stress mother will have a brain less capable of calming itself and turning off the alarm circuitry (when faced with danger that eventually subsides).”

Chapter 4 deals with our Freedom to Love. In it, Jennings shows us that if we violate liberty, we damage, and eventually destroy, love.

Some readers may be tempted, as I was, to part ways with him when it comes to some of his theology, but I assure you that if you hang in there, you’ll see that he’s not that outrageous at all – but rather, someone who has given a lot of thought and study (in Scripture and in research) to support almost all of his contentions. One such idea is that “to God, death is when the intelligent being is eternally destroyed.”

The author provides some good answers to the question, “What is God doing?” and gives us three ways God intercedes in the world and in each of us today.  You’ll find them on page 82 of his book and they’re well worth the cost of buying it.

Because of God’s interceding, Jennings says, two antagonistic principles are at war on planet Earth – love and survival of the fittest. In chapter 6, he tells us how we engage in that battle, and has one of the best approaches I have ever read to those who feel they’re just too “bad” to be worthy of God’s love.  His real counselling examples are very telling and very easily applicable to people we may know in our own lives.

The book is filled with great quotes and some of Jennings’ own adages, like “Insight does not equal change.”You’ll need to read the book to figure out how that plays into what he’s trying to get across. Jennings points us to the many lies many of us may have learned right in our own churches.  And he does it very well.

In one story, in dealing with a woman who feels badly about her sin, claiming she had “a choice when it comes to sin”, Jennings replies, “Not without Jesus. Not without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In our own human strength, we don’t have a choice. We are born into sin . . . a terminal condition that, if not cured, will result in death.” Each time, Jennings tells us how the various counselling cases ended. He doesn’t leave us hanging.

He also tackles the accusation of “How can a loving God be sending people to hell?” And he does it the best I’ve read or heard.  Again, well worth buying the book just to get this answer or to be able to respond to your friends who ask the same question.

And Jennings does not stop there.  He takes on the issue of “faith and miracles” responding to those who argue that miracles (e.g. of healing) are dependent on a person’s faith.  Read the book. Find out what Jennings considers “genuine faith” to really be.  The answer is something I’ve always maintained, but never ever able to formulate so well.

The author has an uncanny way of utilizing many great illustrations that we can all identify with to explain God’s love for us and how death enters the equation. He looks to history to explain how Constantine’s conversion and military successes resulted in the imposing of laws which gradually infected Christianity. As a result, he writes, “Christians lost sight of God’s (natural) law of love (a major theme of his book) and instead accepted an imposed law by a powerful potentate.” Ultimately, this negatively impacted our understanding of God.

The last part of his book addresses how we can “Embrace the Goodness of God”. Jennings reminds us that “biblical justice is delivering the oppressed, not punishing the oppressor!” And with that, he takes us into a great discussion on two views of punishment, namely utilitarianism and retributivism. He certainly made me reconsider some ideas that I hold near and dear.  He very carefully explains, with considerable success, why “an eye for an eye” is not what God expects today. He also answers very extensively the question many ask, “If a crackhead broke into my house and was threatening my wife and daughter, and I had a gun, should I shoot him?” You’ll be surprised at his answer. I’m still reeling from it.

Before concluding his book, Jennings takes on the issue of why Christ may not have returned yet. Again, his answer caught me off guard – but he may very well be right. And finally, he addresses the issue of “hell” and what that may really be. In his mind, it may have more to do with our ‘brains’ than with our ‘bodies’ and, in my view, his Bible research goes a long way to support his thinking.

In his addendum, the doctor provides us with 17 practical actions we can take to have “a healthy brain andrelationship with God.

I found Timothy Jennings to be an accomplished author and medical/human scientist, as well as a serious student of God’s Word. His ability to bring these strengths together is a great asset to his readers.  Highly recommended.

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·     Ken B. Godevenos, President, Accord Resolutions Services Inc., Toronto, Ontario, May 6, 2018, www.accordconsulting.com

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

Saved A Good One for My Last Read of 2016

     

Soar Above:

How to Use the Most Profound Part of Your Brain Under Any Kind of Stress

Author: Steven Stosny, PhD

Publisher: Health Communications Inc., Deerfield Beach, Florida, 2016                                                                     

                                                  

I agreed to read this book thinking it would help me in stressful emergency situations. You know, times when you’re camping and you hear a bear sniffing around outside your tent, or when a gang of three attacks you on a dark street, or when . . .you get the idea. But instead this presents us with a whole way of living a less stressful life all the time and soaring way above the mundane circumstances we all face in our daily interactions. Steven Stosny has a wealth of experience in this field and knows his stuff.

He starts off telling us the three questions he intends to answer:

1. Why do smart and creative people make the same mistakes over and over again, in life, work, and love?
2. At what point does the unavoidable emotional pain of life become entirely avoidable suffering?
3. How do we escape suffering while remaining vibrant and passionate about life?

Then he proceeds to hit the answers “out of the park”.  He very carefully walks us through the process he recommends.  What comes to mind is “baby steps” as some of us remember the expression from that much-enjoyed 1991 movie called “What About Bob?” and starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss. And they’re crucial to our understanding and using the process he recommends.

Stosny reminds us of the unique need of humans to balance two drives – that of autonomy and connectivity. Using the development of our Toddler and Adult brains, he explains how some of us learn to do just that while others never quite master it.

The author also has a lot of time for the role of ‘values’ in our development and maturity, and that includes the value we place on ourselves.

The book contains numerous insights that we can all use in our lives as he shares with us some real examples from his counselling clients. Stosny writes, “I had to show him how to appreciate whatever rainbow he found, and, in a real sense, to become the rainbow. As T.S. Eliot would have it, you become the music while the music lasts. In marriage, for instance, if you do not become the love, the love will not last.”

He introduces us to “Toddler brain reactaholism” as the number-one addiction of our times, and then adds, “The other addictions tend to start as attempts to ease the chronic powerlessness and frequent ill feelings of reactaholism.”

We learn more about emotion, pain, healing, improving, repairing, and suffering which he defines as the result of pain intensifying and generalizing over time. One of my favorite sections in the book is the material on “Feeling Powerful vs. Being Powerful”.  That is excellently explained and it is in this section that he spends considerable time helping us understand the behavior of real toddlers – making this book great for young parents as well. Immediately after that, we are introduced to a bad dude – namely ‘blame’. Stosny says in life, we must choose between blaming and solving problems, because we cannot do both at the same time.  Understand that, believe it, and act on it, and the book has paid for itself.  Here’s another gem: “Blame-driven resentment makes you wrong, even if you’re right.” Enough said on that, but if you want more read what he has to say about anger (the sole purpose of which is to prepare us to ‘fight’) and anxiety for they are related.  Another gem: “If you wouldn’t drive a car designed by a toddler, don’t use coping mechanisms designed by a toddler.” Finally, you’ll want to find out why we sometimes react to a jerk like a jerk (his words).

The rest of the book focuses on how to turn Toddler brain feelings into Adult brain values; identifying Adult brain habits; and how radical self-value breeds radical value of others – at which point he gives us another one of my favorite gems from the book: “If you believe in the essential equality of all people, based on your most humane of values, you’ll never meet anyone superior to you.” Or put in my own words, there really won’t be people out there you’ll label as “deplorables”.

Another chapter tells us how to be happy (although I’m not so sure he’s got the whole answer although he has some good ideas on the subject). There’s a chapter introducing us to the “Web of Emotion” where we learn that everything we do makes the world better or worse. He talks about the advantage of association based on being “for” something vs. those that are based on being “against” something (well worth the read).

He ends the book charging us to build a “web of compassion and kindness” explaining each term very carefully, including what they are not.  The book ends with a series of exercises on how to begin and maintain what Stosny hopes he has communicated. For me, just the big “ideas” were sufficient to make it all worthwhile – and I found them easy to integrate into my own very complex life.  I’m sure you will too.

·      Ken B. Godevenos, President, Accord Resolutions Services Inc., Toronto, Ontario, December 31, 2016. www.accordconsulting.com

n  Get the book here: http://astore.amazon.com/accorconsu-20

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.