The God-Shaped Brain Archives

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.

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I discovered Mr Rogers when my son was young. He would walk down the steps, put on his cardigan, change his shoes and welcome us to his neighborhood. He was quiet and gentle and never threatening. I could feel myself coming to rest as we walked through his neighborhood, as he talked about childhood fears, as he sang to us.

A book I’m reading right now suggests that Mr Rogers knew what he was doing with little children. In The God-Shaped Brain, psychiatrist Timothy Jennings argues from research that the childhood brain is developing and wiring itself and that the violent stimulation of the brain inhibits development of the pre-frontal cortex, the part of our brains responsible for reasoned thought. Instead, the limbic system, which is responsible for emotional responses, particularly our response to danger, fires up, hindering the pre-frontal cortex functions. He further argues that this happens with all “theatrical entertainment” on TV, but not with educational television. And he connects these things to issues of impulse control, ADHD and more.

He also quotes statistics that show that the advent of TV in the US and Canada in roughly 1945 correlates with a 93 percent increase in murder rates. What is interesting is that this was the time of Howdy Doody and Gilligan’s Island. In South Africa, where TV wasn’t introduced until 1974 and the content increasingly violent, the murder rate actually declined during the 1945 to 1974 period prior to TV but went up 130 percent 1974-87. Now many will argue this is correlation and not causation. But I would ask, what other causative variable might account for this?

As I was writing this, news came of another school shooting. No doubt there will be discussions about mental illness. But in light of contemporary neuroscience, I wonder if we should be thinking more about how the brains of our children are being wired by media (and increasingly video) exposure at a young age, particularly before age 8. Certainly many will never act out violently. But what are the other effects? What about the capacity for sustained attention and rational thought? What about impulse control?

Will the visual media industry be like big tobacco, trying to deny the deleterious effects of their product? Time will tell. But more and more, as much as we might think him a bit odd and a product of another age, I can’t help but think that Mr Rogers was onto something.