A few things I've been pondering lately:
“The tree of life was also in
the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,”
(Genesis 1:9). Both the brain of the
newborn and the brain of the fully grown adult human are chocked full of
wrinkles which contain massive amounts of dendrites. The funny thing about dendrites is that they
literally serve as the root system to the entire nervous system of the human
body, drinking in all of the electrochemical signals from axons and other parts
of the nervous system. Just as a tree
planted in a well-watered valley or near a river (Psalms 1) has the capacity
and the resources to grow and form deep roots that effect the layout of the
surrounding landscape and the composition of the soil, the pathways carved into
our thinking patterns also deeply effect the way in which electrochemical
signals are transmitted throughout the rest of the human body. Your brain is a tree that that changes the
atmosphere surrounding you. From which
tree are you eating?
When
mommy shot you out of her belly, what was going through your head? We know that the newborn is not some blank
slate with the inability to process or think.
Just the mere physical evidence of wrinkled brain matter proves the contrary. But without any frame of reference or prior
knowledge of the world we have just emerged into, what foundational experiences
do we have to compare the place in which we find ourselves, probably in a
hospital with our mommy hooked up to a bunch of machines and these weird
looking humans in masks and green suits with scalpels and others tools designed
to cut and sew flesh, and some man or woman named doctor picking you up by the
feet and slapping you on the rump until you let forth a nice cry? Sounds more like an alien abduction than the
joyous advent of new life being transmitted and delivered onto this terrestrial
plane. What experience do we have? We floated around in a liquid world, warm,
safe and we grew. Before that we were
some gametes from mom and some gametes from dad. Before that we were thoughts in the minds of
our parents. How did these thoughts get
into our parents minds?
Some
would argue that it’s simply the natural progression of things for life on this
planet. Boy meets girl. The two think about getting married. The two get married. The two think about having a child. The two have a child (or several). What is important about the previous example
is that thoughts produce things. This is
why the renewing of the mind is so important.
Thoughts are the apparatus through which spirit life finds expression
and can be released into the world.
There is likely to be any number of results. I’ll guarantee you, the man who murders
someone does not have his brain full of happy thoughts. He is tormented, begins to relate to his
torment, the torment being anchored to his identity, then the torment
eventually becomes a normal state of existence, the dark world and tormenting
thoughts form the frame of reference that the murderer uses to define the
exterior world he sees around him. The
inner world always influences the outer world.
To put it simply bad thoughts produce bad fruit. Good thoughts produce good fruit. The man who pulls his friend out of a burning
building, risking life and limb just for the mere possibility of seeing his
buddy come out alive, this man is not wracked with the tormenting thoughts such
as the murderer. This man has good
thoughts which lead to good outcomes, in this case, the saving of his
friend. It is in this mode of operation
that the exercise of the renewed mind is exemplified. Consider Romans 12:2:
Don’t
copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a
new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s
will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. (NLT)
It is in the changing of thoughts, the literal
awakening of consciousness, that changes the expressions we produce as human
beings. In relating to the above
scenario, it is easy to see that if the murderer had a few different thoughts,
then the mode of his expression in the world around him would have been quite
different. If the construction of his
inner world were different, so too would his experience with the world outside
of him be different. The same goes
for the man who just rescued his friend, tweak a few of his thoughts, let him
encounter a few difficult situations and the possibility of him being in the
same place as the murderer—being tormented and giving expression to that
torment—is not too far away.
The
man in the ivory tower with his billions is only a couple of bad moves away
from becoming the homeless man under the bridge. With this knowledge, it should be hard for us
to ever look down upon anyone. You are
much closer to everyone past, present and future than you think, AND you always
have been.
Taking
it back to the man who rescues his friend from the burning building, what
propels him forward? What produces the
thought-life that would have him not get discouraged when fighting off smoke
inhalation, giant flames and walls falling down around him? The Hebrew writer describes some key
revelation in the propelling force that drives humanity to have its thoughts
steeled against insurmountable odds:
“...Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding
its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne” (Heb.
12:2). As the verse relates, it is the
harvest of joy that the man’s deeds will produce that propels him forward
through what appears to be insurmountable circumstances. He still has an operative choice not to
go. Allowing his thoughts to be tuned in
to the frequencies of fear could cause him moments of hesitation, which may
stall him just enough not to reach his friend in time, but also send the brain
into a massive spiral of attaching to possible negative outcomes.
He can choose love or indifference.
He can choose fear or action.
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