The brain as a home for the communion of saints?
RadioLabs got me thinking again. It tends to do that as it is rather amazing radio show.
You are faced with allowing 5 people to be run over by a train. You can save these 5 people if you pull a lever and redirect the train, however in pulling the lever the train will kill one person standing on the new track.
Most people, according to the RadioLabs sources, say they would pull the lever.
However, if you modify this thought experiment to say that instead of pulling the lever to save 5 people your only option to save these five people would be to push one person in front of the train. When faced with this option, very few people would push the one person.
We are generally okay with pulling a lever and killing one person in order to save five people, but we are generally not okay with pushing a person and killing a person in order to save five people.
Why is this? It is still murder of one person just the means are slightly different. What is going on?
The suggestion that was put forward was that our brains, through evolution, have come to have different voices vying for our attention and action. So part of our brain wins and part of our brain looses each choice we make. So the deep parts of the brain win out over the more advanced logical parts of the brain when we choose to not push the one to save the five.
This deep part of our brain, this emotional and raw part of our brain, is sometimes dubbed the lizard or reptilian or the monkey brain. What if, however, this part of our brain is the collective wisdom of the past. This part of our brain is the collective wisdom of the people who have come before us and with each choice. You have the part of your brain that is informed by the past and does not understand the current society very well, but it has a deep wisdom that we ought to heed. At the same time we have other parts of our brain that are "newer" and do not have the wisdom of the past but can rapidly understand the present culture.
If we dispose of the idea that one part of the brain is "higher order" than others, then we have this idea that our brain may be the house for which the communion of saints (the past humans) dwell. We have a part of the brain that is connected, through the process of evolution, to the past. We have a way to access the deep and rich history of the ages if we only were willing to listen to it more often.
You are faced with allowing 5 people to be run over by a train. You can save these 5 people if you pull a lever and redirect the train, however in pulling the lever the train will kill one person standing on the new track.
Most people, according to the RadioLabs sources, say they would pull the lever.
However, if you modify this thought experiment to say that instead of pulling the lever to save 5 people your only option to save these five people would be to push one person in front of the train. When faced with this option, very few people would push the one person.
We are generally okay with pulling a lever and killing one person in order to save five people, but we are generally not okay with pushing a person and killing a person in order to save five people.
Why is this? It is still murder of one person just the means are slightly different. What is going on?
This deep part of our brain, this emotional and raw part of our brain, is sometimes dubbed the lizard or reptilian or the monkey brain. What if, however, this part of our brain is the collective wisdom of the past. This part of our brain is the collective wisdom of the people who have come before us and with each choice. You have the part of your brain that is informed by the past and does not understand the current society very well, but it has a deep wisdom that we ought to heed. At the same time we have other parts of our brain that are "newer" and do not have the wisdom of the past but can rapidly understand the present culture.
If we dispose of the idea that one part of the brain is "higher order" than others, then we have this idea that our brain may be the house for which the communion of saints (the past humans) dwell. We have a part of the brain that is connected, through the process of evolution, to the past. We have a way to access the deep and rich history of the ages if we only were willing to listen to it more often.
Matthew 17 thoughts
Matthew 17 has a little story here that came up in Bible study on Sunday.
I have noted about the symbolism in the Bible of fishing before. And I think the case can be made for this text as well. But here is some more to chew on.
Rome forces people to pay the temple tax. That is Rome makes people they want to pay to pay the temple tax. If you were the son of the emperor or a really good friend or a political ally, you did not pay this tax (sound like today's situation in many ways?!) So Jesus pays the tax. But the thing about it is that Jesus does not use his own money to pay the tax. He uses a fish.
Here is the thing.
If Jesus pays the tax, then he is siding with the Roman opposition in that he is giving them money. This is something that the Zealots do not agree with. If he refuses to pay the tax, which would be what the Zealots would love, he sides with the Zealots. Instead Jesus gets Peter to pluck a fish from the pond.
The Hebrew Bible uses the idea of plucking fish from the sea or pond as a way of describing to others that God will pluck the rich and powerful from their place of comfort if they are not responsive to the needs of the poor. For Jesus to send Peter to pluck a fish means Jesus told Peter to go and confront a rich unjust person and get them to repent of their unjust ways.
When the tax is paid by a rich person for a poor person then you have the beginnings of a new social order.
This new social order is not only just in the Biblical sense (that is a fair distribution of goods and services), but it also becomes the cornerstone of a new Kingdom.
If the rich and the poor all have access to the temple, if rich and poor have access to education, if the rich and poor have access to the powers that be then we are talking about no more distinctions between the rich and poor.
Jesus does not side with the Zealots and refuse the tax. Jesus does not side with Rome and pays the tax.
Jesus gets a rich person who was a "fish" and transforms this person in order to allow a new Kingdom to emerge.
Can you imagine that? Someone paying another person's taxes.
That sounds a bit crazy. That sounds a bit like something only Jesus would think of.
I have noted about the symbolism in the Bible of fishing before. And I think the case can be made for this text as well. But here is some more to chew on.
Rome forces people to pay the temple tax. That is Rome makes people they want to pay to pay the temple tax. If you were the son of the emperor or a really good friend or a political ally, you did not pay this tax (sound like today's situation in many ways?!) So Jesus pays the tax. But the thing about it is that Jesus does not use his own money to pay the tax. He uses a fish.
Here is the thing.
If Jesus pays the tax, then he is siding with the Roman opposition in that he is giving them money. This is something that the Zealots do not agree with. If he refuses to pay the tax, which would be what the Zealots would love, he sides with the Zealots. Instead Jesus gets Peter to pluck a fish from the pond.
The Hebrew Bible uses the idea of plucking fish from the sea or pond as a way of describing to others that God will pluck the rich and powerful from their place of comfort if they are not responsive to the needs of the poor. For Jesus to send Peter to pluck a fish means Jesus told Peter to go and confront a rich unjust person and get them to repent of their unjust ways.
When the tax is paid by a rich person for a poor person then you have the beginnings of a new social order.
This new social order is not only just in the Biblical sense (that is a fair distribution of goods and services), but it also becomes the cornerstone of a new Kingdom.
If the rich and the poor all have access to the temple, if rich and poor have access to education, if the rich and poor have access to the powers that be then we are talking about no more distinctions between the rich and poor.
Jesus does not side with the Zealots and refuse the tax. Jesus does not side with Rome and pays the tax.
Jesus gets a rich person who was a "fish" and transforms this person in order to allow a new Kingdom to emerge.
Can you imagine that? Someone paying another person's taxes.
That sounds a bit crazy. That sounds a bit like something only Jesus would think of.
Is the UMC heading the way of No Child Left Behind?
The Associated Press had this little article the other day which made me think of the UMC's latest push to move toward greater concern about 'metrics'.
Nation wide the UMC is requiring a number of different metrics to be counted and logged into a network online. Basic stuff really. The UMC is saying that it is important to assess where each church is and by counting these different metrics (people in worship, dollars given away, baptisms, etc.) we can begin to set goals for each local church. These goals will be able to help churches who might be "failing".
Ten years ago the USA adopted the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act which sounds rather similar to what the UMC currently saying. NCLB has been exposed for radically falling short of its intended goals (irony if I have ever heard of it). Students are falling behind in math and science and funding is being cut in all areas that are not test related. Teachers are expected to focus on the numbers of the test and students become stats on a spreadsheet.
If the UMC is really embracing the almighty metrics, then might we be wise enough to know that just because people are in worship they are not being spiritually formed. Just because the books might not show service hours does not mean people are not serving their neighbor. Even if people do not know the micro stories of the Bible does not mean the macro narrative is not guiding their lives.
If you are in the UMC I encourage you to read this short article and heed the warnings that we can learn from the failings of the NCLB act.
Nation wide the UMC is requiring a number of different metrics to be counted and logged into a network online. Basic stuff really. The UMC is saying that it is important to assess where each church is and by counting these different metrics (people in worship, dollars given away, baptisms, etc.) we can begin to set goals for each local church. These goals will be able to help churches who might be "failing".
Ten years ago the USA adopted the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act which sounds rather similar to what the UMC currently saying. NCLB has been exposed for radically falling short of its intended goals (irony if I have ever heard of it). Students are falling behind in math and science and funding is being cut in all areas that are not test related. Teachers are expected to focus on the numbers of the test and students become stats on a spreadsheet.
If the UMC is really embracing the almighty metrics, then might we be wise enough to know that just because people are in worship they are not being spiritually formed. Just because the books might not show service hours does not mean people are not serving their neighbor. Even if people do not know the micro stories of the Bible does not mean the macro narrative is not guiding their lives. If you are in the UMC I encourage you to read this short article and heed the warnings that we can learn from the failings of the NCLB act.
Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.