After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters
by N. T. Wright
While recently speaking with a friend who is deeply grieved over a family member’s descent into sinful behavior, I was reminded of a section from N. T. Wright’s After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters in which he notes that the transformation of our character takes place over time and the human brain is in fact involved. Wright notes “significant events in your life, including significant choices you make about how you behave, create new information pathways and patterns within your brain.” Neuroscience shows that “parts of the brain actually become enlarged when an individual’s behavior regularly exercises them” (p 37).
Over time and with repeated behavior patterns, our brain actually records these connections between our behavior, our feelings, and our thoughts such that pathways are physically “carved out”, as it were, into the brain. Anyone who gardens knows that digging into a row to plant new seeds is easier the second time because the ground has been previously disturbed. The person who has learned to play guitar understands the value of repetition in running the fingers up and down the fret board a certain way. As this London taxi-driver study shows, our mental muscles develop memories.
London is not only one of the largest cities on the planet; it is also one of the more complex, with more one-way streets, twisting back alleys, curving rivers, and other traffic hazards than it’s easy to imagine. Before a cabbie is allowed to start work, he or she has to pass a rigorous examination testing mastery of what’s called “The Knowledge,” a process that involves memorizing thousands of street names and ways to get to those streets at different times of day or night as the traffic conditions change. The result is not just that they are the most effective taxi-drivers in the world, hardly ever having to consult a map, but also that their brains have actually changed. The part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is where we do spatial reasoning (among a wide variety of other things), is typically much larger in cabbies than in the average person (p 38).
The import of this to our spiritual lives is large. If left unchecked, we could become enslaved to our bodies or our emotions and obey its sensual desires or romantic feelings. Since the “information pathways” are carved out, and sometimes very deeply, we can get “stuck in a rut” and find it near impossible to break bad habits. A decision to cheat on a test could eventually lead to a decision to cheat on my taxes or on my wife. A repeated response of irritation or frustration toward caring for my grandson could gradually cultivate in me a heart of bitterness and resentment toward all of life, if left unattended. The slope is slippery!
If our “inner self” is not guarded, guided, and governed by God’s Spirit through God’s Word, then we will not mature as a believer in Christ. Conversely, a choice to be honest or patient or trustworthy does lead to habits of virtue and Christ-honoring behavior. Just as going to the gym develops our physical muscles, so too exercising our moral muscles eventually gives us a “second nature” and we gradually become virtuous people who glorify God. Over time, the awkward and cumbersome experience of acting right can become natural to us.
This is life in the Spirit!
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Wright says Romans 12 is “the start of the ‘so what’ section of Romans.” Profering a connection between Romans chapter 1 and chapter 12, Wright insists the “renewal of the mind is at the center of the renewal of the whole human being, since the “darkening” of the mind was identified as central to the problem of idolatry, dehumanization, and sin in an earlier chapter of Romans.” Before making the connection to which Wright speaks more explicit, listen first to the texts (Romans 1:21-23, 28; Romans 12:1-2; translations are Wright’s own):
Though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but became foolish in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Giving themselves out to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of the image of mortal humans, and birds, animals and reptiles. . . And, just as they did not “see fit” to hold God in their mind, God gave them up to an “unfit” mind, to do things that are inappropriate.
So, my dear family, this is my appeal to you by the mercies of God: offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and appropriate worship. What’s more, don’t let yourselves be squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age. Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can work out and approve what God’s will is, what is good, acceptable and complete. [12.1-2]
Now, the connection:
The words for “see fit” and “unfit” [from Romans 1] are from the same root as “work out and approve” (dokimos, dokimazein) in 12.2. Once again this is hard to bring out in translation, but essential to grasp if we are to understand Paul’s overall flow of thought. The mind that is in rebellion against God, that refuses to worship him, becomes “unfit”—that is, incapable of thinking straight about what constitutes appropriate human behavior—whereas the mind that is renewed will learn the habit of clear, wise thinking and approval. The “unfit” mind is, in Romans 1, the root from which a whole host of evil things grow, all of which in Paul’s understanding reflect the fracturing of the “image,” alluded to here in a passage which clearly has the first few chapters of Genesis in mind. It isn’t the case that the body leads the mind or heart astray. Rather, the failure to worship the one true God leads to a failure to think, and thence to a failure to act as a fully human being ought.
(see pp. 148-154)
Did you get that sequence? Failure to worship God leads to a failure to think rightly. And, failing to think rightly leads to inappropriate behavior, since our behavior is the product of our thinking. Ultimately this progression contributes to a “fractured” human existence that is less than fully human, less than optimal living as we’re intended. It’s not as though we must simply think straight to act straight, though this is important. The starting point is and must be worship of the one true God. This, I suspect, is the reason we’re made in God’s image; the reason humans above all other creatures are unique. We are hardwired for worship! If we don’t get this function right, then everything else will be upside down, fractured, disconnected, sub-optimal. (Incidentally, much has been made of the “cognitive consequences of sin.” See Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief. No doubt King Saul would be an interesting case study to this end, cf. 1 Samuel.)
Conversely, worshipping the one true God with our whole being (Romans 12:1) actually reverses the effects of sin in our lives and gradually restores the imago Deiwithin. Thus, the result of devoting our lives to God is an ordered thought life, behavior that is in line with God’s will, and the consequent enjoyment of a full human existence that God intended all along. In other words, there is a direct link between worshipping God and being fully human. Needless to say the implications are staggering (especially for atheists!). If Wright has it right here, it’s time to connect the dots!