Hi there,
I pray that you are well.
As I was walking this morning--a little brisk I might add--an unusual thought came into my mind. The thought was "Questions are valuable." A little strange, actually a lot strange for me. I can remember in school when the teacher was asking questions, I literally tried to hide behind my desk. Really!
Gratefully I have grown to love questions. I know, it's about time. Questions are opportunities to grow. They are opportunities to declare valuable information and on and on. Where would we be without questions? I guess I'd still be trying to hide behind my desk. LOL.
Jesus liked to ask questions.....a couple come to mind that are dandies for those of us who desire to move on........"Whom do men say that I am?" How effective would we be if we couldn't verbally paint a picture of our Saviour.and His sinless life and vicarious death?
How about "Do you love me?" Should our love for Him be obvious......? Of course! Well, is it? Simon Peter struggled a bit with his answer, and I certainly have struggled myself....maybe not with my words, but with my attitude or action. I don't doubt your love for Him.....ask Him for opportunities to put your love for Him on display. I'll join you.
Amen and amen. Do not be afraid of questions. If God is God, He can handle them (He told me that once). One of the most valuable pieces of counsel I was ever given was "Don't believe everything you believe."
ReplyDeleteSo, here's a couple of questions for you, from Barbara Bradley Hagerty's "Fingerprints of God: What Science is Learning about the Brain and Spiritual Experience" (pp. 132-133). [Hagerty is a born-again believer on a quest to view faith in science and vise versa; the book is challenging for those of us who grew up with simplistic "the Bible says it, that settles it, don't question it" theology.)
"Thanks to technology, neurologists can now watch the mechanics of the most profound moments of one's life, including mystical experience. So, what has science established so far? It has confirmed that brain activity correlates to one's (spiritual) experience. In all likelihood, when Saint Paul or Sophy Burnham enjoyed their spontaneous mystical visions, certain neurotransmitters were coursing through their brains, exciting this lobe and calming that one.
What this does not establish, in my opinion, is that mystical experience is nothing by brain chemistry. After all, if there were an "Other" who wanted to communicate with us, of course He or She or It could use the brain to do so, as opposed to, say, the left big toe. Of course God would use the chemistry in our brains to create visions.
God would also use something else: he would use electricity. For if there is a God who wired you brain, he is a master electrician. Your brain crackles with tiny electrical reactions between its different lobes, and some of those reactions spark a spiritual experience. Here we encounter one of the oldest of scientific puzzles in understanding mysticism: Is spiritual experience an electrical storm in the brain that afflicted great religious leaders and mystics down the centuries? Is it faulty wiring that leads to a sort of madness, or superior wiring that leads to spiritual insight?"