The God-Shaped Brain: How Changing Your View of God Transforms Your Life by Timothy R. Jennings
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
How we think about God shapes everything. Timothy Jennings even argues that this shapes our brains, based on neuroscience research as well as the Bible. His basic argument is that lies and fear trigger parts of the brain that inhibit the reasoning and affectional parts of the pre-frontal cortex. This goes so far as creating or inhibiting the creation of new neural pathways.
What is significant is that this is a book that mixes science, counseling practice and theological insight and this is both what I liked and what I struggled with. Jennings argues that among the lies we believe and responses of fear that we make are ones that concern God. So far so good. We often have troubled consciences because we fail to believe that God really loves us and has unconditionally accepted us as his children and forgiven our sin. Jennings describes numerous cases in which people are helped as they re-align their thinking about God.
Where I struggle is what Jennings denies to get to this all-loving God. He soft peddles or outright denies the substitutionary aspects of Christ’s work on the cross, and I think opens the way to denying the necessity of the cross. It seems that what is most important for him is our turning toward God rather than turning away from him. The fire in the wrath of God becomes a fire of love that comforts those who believe but a consuming torment to those who rebel. Wrath is simply the natural outcome of our rebellious acts, not an action on the part of God. His view of hell is a kind of annihilation that occurs to those who cut themselves off from God, and find his pure, fiery love agonizing. These are not views unique to Jennings but he goes so far to argue for a good and loving God, that he explains away or minimizes the wrath and holiness of God. He does not deal with passages that talk about the proper “fear of the Lord.” I don’t find here the balance I might find with someone like C.S. Lewis, whose Aslan is “dangerous, but good.”
To his credit, the book concludes with a critique of eastern meditation techniques that, while having some beneficial effects, cause a suspension of activities in the pre-frontal cortex not characteristic of Christian meditation which is meditation on truth. He also includes some practical steps in an epilogue to a healthier brain. While I agree with Jennings that what we think about God shapes everything, including our brains, and that knowing the truth about the unconditional love of God toward us in Christ is indispensable to our lives, I think he makes unnecessary theological compromises along the way, failing to hold truths in their proper tension which is the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy. Ultimately, that cannot be healthy.