Day 16—Brainwaves and Canyons

Apparently your brainwaves wash over and cut through your cerebral cortex much like melting snow washes over and cuts through the side of a mountain on its way down to the bottom, forming small ruts, then small streams, then gushing rivers, which eventually form deep canyons. That what the magazine article said anyway. The kind of repetitive thoughts we think, and our patterns of thinking—both positive and negative—carve deeper and broader pathways through our brain as we age. The danger, say neurologists, is that when you get locked into patterns of thinking that are negative, self-defeating or destructive, you allow your brainwaves to create pathways that are not positive, healthy, or life-giving. You get “stuck” in patterns of negativity.

Several years ago our physician was telling us the same thing when we were experiencing some tough months as a family. She gave us some ways to change the way we think, which in turn, over time, would carve new pathways in our brains that were healthier.

This is not a new idea. It’s just the scientific explanation for what the Bible has taught us for centuries.

• For example, the Apostle Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

• He writes similarly in his Letter to the Ephesians, “throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.”

• And again in his Letter to the Colossians he writes, “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”
  

Now obviously Paul is not talking about brain waves and pathways in our brains. That’s a very recent scientific frame of reference that was not available to him. Paul’s frame of reference was theological. Spiritual. But I think Paul was onto the same idea.

Here's why. In each of these instances (and there are many others) Paul is focused on the outward behavior of a person who becomes a new person (“creation”) in Jesus Christ, not on their brainwave patterns. But underlying each of these admonitions for behavior change is a presumed change in attitude… a change in the way one thinks. We know from psychology that what we think and believe determines how we feel and behave. Easier said than done.

Changing our behavior begins with a change in what we believe and how we think, which Paul says is accomplished by nothing less than the power of God (the Holy Spirit) acting upon one’s life. Becoming this new person (which is a gift of grace from God) is a process, not a one-time event. In other words, it takes time to grow into this new identity. Which helps explain how the deeply rutted, carved-up mountainsides of our cerebral cortexes can possibly be remade into a different-looking landscape over time. What other power could completely transform the landscape of a canyon-carved mountainside?