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The New-Testament way of interacting with God highlights what we think and who we follow. These are brain activities. The previous way to interact with God, set out in the Old Testament, had been a mind thing, too, involving faith. But animal sacrifice and the Temple had physical and travel aspects that have been supplanted by the new covenant.
This is a depiction of the portable altar of sacrifice that was used when Moses received the Jewish law, up until the time that the temple was built in Jerusalem by King Solomon. Note the carrying poles. This depiction shows the altar much larger than it must have been because this looks like it would take twenty men to carry it. The altar was covered as specified in the Torah during travel; the tribes never saw the altar when it moved. Similarly, the ark was covered, contrary to movies that depict it visible to all. The only person who ever saw the ark was the high priest. When the cloud lifted from the tent of meeting, the high priest entered the holy of holies and covered the ark, the table, and the lampstand, then Levites entered to do the carrying.
This model of Solomon's temple, at Herod's time, was built at the Holyland Hotel in Jerusalem but was moved to a museum in 2006. The model lacks the washing basins and altar but shows colonnades that Jewish teachers and Jesus taught in. The market from which Jesus drove the moneychangers and sellers of cattle, sheep, and doves was the next court outside this area.
As millennia pass, our relation to God still requires obedience, but things of the mind become more important than place and ritual. This essay develops several thoughts about how God uses our brains.
A popular thought: I'll listen to God if he proves himself to me.
The first proposition is that our bodies are there just to give our brains a place to be. Furthermore, all of God's creation exists so that we can focus our minds on God and accept or reject His way. The modern, Western preoccupation with finding yourself, fulfilling yourself, and winning-by-dying-with-the-most-toys is all distraction from what is most important, using what God has given us in the Bible and by his Spirit to focus on him.
The human brain is as small as it can possibly be. If the cerebral cortex were half-size, we would be mentally incompetent to interact with God. He designed the brain first to seek Him and have faith, and also to act with the body to provide the wherewithal to live, to reproduce, and to be social. All body structures serve as efficient means to accomplish what God has set us to. There is no fat, no over-design in our makeup. Our bones and muscles are just strong enough to let us work and move, and then only for long enough that we can interact with grandchildren. Every body function can be seen as an add-on that is there just so we can think.
Though we are created in God's image, we experience a tiny subset of what God experiences. (Angels have access to a different subset.) Our bodies and minds are set on a stage that is limited by gravity, the one-way flow of time, the degeneration of energy toward uniform lukewarmness, inaccessible celestial distances, and social conflict with people. God operates independently of energy, time, and place, but people are restricted to the environment that God has placed us in. But this limited access is enough for us to interact with God. Still, some people encounter God through dreams, visions, near-death experiences, and miracles. Generally, though, we interact with God through the opposite of proof, which is faith. (St. Paul said, "There remain three things, faith, hope, and love.") Faith is a very brain-centered thing.
We are fearfully and wonderfully made.
A second proposition is that the brain is God's design. (Reference: Wikipedia, neocortex. Search: six layers cognition or cortical laminae, http://www.humanneurophysiology.com/cerebralcortex.htm) There are six layers of the neocortex that are thought to be the site of thinking. Altogether, these layers measure about three millimeters thick. Thinking, logic, emotions, and sensing take place as nerve cells somehow form thoughts.3 Some people say that thoughts start at the bottom layer and take shape as nerve cells communicate toward the top layer.4 We are built to think, and God expects us to use our thinking to learn about him and do what he wants.
Small animals have tiny brains but still carry on complex jobs. Bees communicate the direction to nectar, ants are social, and all animals seek food, avoid threat, and mate, often with elaborate ceremony, within their own species. The smallest brains are about a billion times smaller, in volume, than ours. What are our big brains for? The highest function is not to graduate through Maslow's hierarchy. Maslow missed "acknowledging one's sin and depending on Jesus' forgiveness" in the self-actualization stage of his hierarchy. Bloom's taxonomy (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) can be extended: it can be capped with faith. Our highest function is to learn about God and respond to him.
Biologists know that nerve cells work by electro-chemistry, through the electrical difference between sodium and potassium ions. One nerve cell communicates with up to 1000 other nerve cells. The neocortex is composed of columns of nerve cells, each half a millimeter in diameter and containing 70,000 neurons, and there are half a million of these columns. There are so many that "higher" mammals have neocortexes that are folded and deeply grooved, just to provide more area for the neocortex. This is a grand design. Many believe it evolved with no God, while others say that it was designed by an intelligence. What you believe about this has a lot to do with whether you think people are free to choose their behavior (autonomous) or are responsible to God. See Wikipedia, Cortical minicolumn and Cortical column.
The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing straight through to the place where spirit is joined to soul.
God hardened Pharaoh's heart. So did God condemn Pharaoh unfairly, not giving him the choice to comply?
Why do bad things happen to good people?
What about people who die without ever hearing about Jesus?
I have plans to build you up, not to harm you.
The last proposition is that God has set each person a mental task, namely to either reject him or do what he wants. This works in with what the Bible mentions, God's individual plan for each person. We are not called to understand God, just to understand that Jesus offers forgiveness.
People who laugh off God, put God in a box, or refuse to consider his demands are missing the main thing. Our intelligence is up to the task of discriminating between good shepherds (pastors) and those who would steal our souls (the world1, the organized, Satan-led conspiracy to divert people from God). The good shepherds lead people to understand what the Spirit and the Word say. The Bible has something to say about all the questions that people have.
The rich man, at whose gate Lazarus had lain, was in Hell but was able to look straight through to Heaven and ask Abraham to warn his still-living brothers. Abraham replied, "In your lifetime, you received your good things. Your brothers have Moses and the Prophets." (We see that the rich man ignored Moses and chose his own course for his life.) The rich man pleaded, "No, they won't pay attention. But if someone from the dead goes to them, they will turn around." (Give my brothers some proof.) Abraham said, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."
Relevant scripture--
At the time of Isaiah, 130 years before Babylon conquered Jerusalem, Isaiah, and later Jeremiah during the conquest, were required by God to do a very hard, mental thing. They had to buck their culture, and they called on the people to do the same. Isaiah 1: This sinful nation of evildoers have turned their backs on the Holy One. God said, "The multitude of your sacrifices--what are they to me? Stop doing wrong, seek justice. Defend the fatherless, plead the case of the oppressed widow. But your leaders are companions of thieves; they all love bribes." God was calling on them to accept his morality and live it. Isaiah 2: Their land is full of idols; they bow down to what their fingers have made. Isaiah 3: They parade their sin. They display in their homes what they have plundered from the poor. "What do you mean by grinding the faces of the poor?" Isaiah 5: The people say, "Let God hurry, let him hasten his work so we may see it." (They demanded proof and rejected faith.) God chastened them: Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes. Isaiah 1: "Come now, let us reason together. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow if you are obedient." Isaiah 2: A time will come when many peoples will come to God. He will settle their disputes. They will beat their swords into plowshares.
Isaiah 8: The Lord warned me not to follow the way of the people. "Do not fear what they fear. The Lord is the one you are to regard as holy. [When Babylon comes and shakes you,] the Lord is the one you are to fear and dread," not Babylon. Here am I, and the children the Lord has given me. We are signs from the Lord. Isaiah 9: In the future [730 years], the Lord will honor the backwater of Galilee. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. His kingdom will be justice and righteousness. Isaiah 10: But now, woe to those who deprive the poor of their rights. You will cringe among the captives. "By my wisdom I have done this. I have understanding." Isaiah 11: In the fullness of the kingdom of the Branch of Jesse (father of King David), the Spirit will rest on him. He will give decisions for the poor. The wolf will live with the lamb. A little child will lead the lion. The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.
During Hezekiah's kingship in Jerusalem, there was revival for a time. The temple was reconsecrated and passover was observed. Altars of idols were thrown into the Kidron Valley. Some came from the northern kingdom, and even aliens participated. 2 Chronicles 30: Since the days of King Solomon, there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. The Levites stood to bless the people, and God heard them as their prayers reached His holy dwelling place. The Israelites went out and smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. Hezekiah sought his God and prospered.
2 Kings 21: At the time of evil King Manasseh in 696 B.C., the king followed the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. He sacrificed his own son in the fire,2 practiced sorcery, and consulted mediums. He made an Asherah pole and set it in the Temple, of which the Lord had said, "In this temple, I will put my Name forever if only they will be careful to obey everything in the Law I gave my servant Moses." But the people did not listen. Manasseh shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem with it. The Lord told the prophets, "Jerusalem will suffer such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. These people have provoked me from the day their forefathers came out of Egypt." Hosea 6: As marauders lie in ambush for a man, so do bands of priests; they murder on the road to Shechem.
Isaiah 26: Though grace is shown to the wicked, they do not learn righteousness. Isaiah 32: The fool's mind is busy with evil: he spreads error concerning the Lord. Isaiah 29: These people honor me with their lips but their worship is made up only of rules taught by men. Isaiah 28: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed." Isaiah 29: Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, thinking "Who sees us? Who will know?" Can the pot say of the potter, "He knows nothing"? Isaiah 33 speaks of morals, decisions made by rational people: The man who dwells on the heights rejects gain from extortion, rejects bribes, stops his ears against plots of murder, shuts his eyes against contemplating evil [pornography].
Isaiah 30: The rebellious people said to the prophets, "See no more visions. Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Stop confronting us with the Holy One." Isaiah 42: I am the Lord; that is my name! [Exodus 3:14] I will not give my glory to idols." Isaiah 43: Everyone who is called by my name, my sons and daughters, bring them. I created them for my glory, I formed and made them. You are my witnesses,. Know and believe me, understand that I am he. Apart from me there is no savior. When I act, who can reverse it? Isaiah 44: No one stops to think, "Half of this block of wood I used for fuel to bake bread and roast meat. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?" Isaiah 45: There is no other. I have not spoken in secret. I have not said, "Seek me in vain." "Turn to me and be saved. Before me every knee shall bow; by me every tongue will swear. They will say of me, 'In the Lord alone are righteousness and strength.' "
Again and again, Isaiah told people to think. Isaiah 48: I knew how stubborn you were; I told you these things long ago. You have heard; will you not admit them? For my own sake, I do this. I will not yield my glory to another. I teach you what is best for you. If only you had paid attention. Isaiah 49: I will make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth. Isaiah 52: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!" Isaiah 53: Who has believed our message? He grew up before Him like a tender shoot. He was despised and rejected by men. We considered him stricken by God. But he was pierced for our transgressions. By his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. The Lord makes his life an offering. Isaiah 55: Seek the Lord while he may be found. "My thoughts are not your thoughts."
In 592 B.C., Ezekiel was among 10,000 Jerusalem residents who were deported to Babylon as Babylon overwhelmed the remaining defenses of Judah. God gave Ezekiel the job of prophesying to the Jewish remnant in Babylon. Ezekiel 2: I send you to these Israelites you are living amongst, a rebellious nation which has revolted against me to this very day. They are obstinate, stubborn, and hardened. Ezekiel 5: The Jerusalem of King Solomon, the most prosperous in the earth, is now punished for the detestable idols you brought there. I make it a ruin and a reproach, an object of horror to the nations around you.
While Paul visited Athens (Acts 17), Epicureans and Stoics disputed with him. "All the Athenians spent their time doing nothing but talking about the latest ideas." Paul made an address tuned to their interests, but "when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered...A few men believed." In time, a Greek Christian church came about and endures to modern times. Early on, though, it became the Byzantines, and they were known for disputing nit-picking theological details, so we see there is an enduring Greek propensity to argue. In Paul's first letter to Corinth, 1 Cor 1, Paul says, "Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Jesus crucified. This is considered by Gentiles to be foolishness. Paul repeated Isaiah 29:14, "God will frustrate the intelligence of the intelligent" as long as they are rejecting the simple message of the cross.
Ezekiel 16-18 During Ezekiel's time of prophecy in Babylon, the Lord continued to warn Jews about rebellion and obedience, and a hint of Jesus' forgiveness, 622 years in the future, is seen at Ez 16. You rebels say, "The way of the Lord is not just." "Is it not your ways that are unjust?" "But if a wicked man turns away from his wickedness, and does what is just and right, he will save his life." "I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!" When Messiah comes, "I make atonement for you." This is in accord with Isiah 53, spoken about 130 years earlier, three paragraphs above: by his wounds we are healed.
1 Corinthians 6:12 All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.
2 Corinthians 3:17 The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
John 8:36 If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Galatians 5:13-14 You were called to be free. Serve one another humbly.
Footnotes
1 The world from a N.T. viewpoint is seen at 1 John 2:15-17. "Everything in the world" is elaborated in three phrases: sinful cravings, lust of the eyes, and boasting of what man has and does. None of these phrases is about God's love or our duty to honor God. This leads interpreters to view the world as the organized, Satan-led world, not God's creation. God's creation, before sin, was evaluated by God himself as being very good, in the words of Genesis 1:31. Very good means that chemistry and physics worked in the long haul (the earth would continue to be conducive to life) and created man was in the image of God and could reason adequately to do what God wanted. But through thousands of years, man kept departing from God. Various civilizations repeatedly rejected God and did evil. This is evident in TV programs and commercials--we rarely can say, "Look at that, son, I want you to be that way. Daughter, carry on that way around men, it will lead you to a good life." What sells on TV is cravings, lust, and boasting. 1 John 2:17 says, "The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." This is not advocacy of asceticism, it is advice that people think about how they think and how they live, be aware of how God wants us to live, and steer ourselves toward God. When John wrote his letter, the heresy of gnosticism was a threat to Christians. Gnostics taught that the physical body and the spirit were decoupled. What happened with the body (and mind) had nothing to do with the spirit and God's desires for us. The spirit was not affected by choices or sinful living. Many of the N.T. writings counter this heresy. 1 John 4:4-6 gives more information. Pastor Steve McMeans on August 23, 1998, at Coggin Ave. Baptist in Brownwood, TX, gave ways to evaluate one's own living. In 1 John, 1:5-7 and 3:7,8 speak of holy living. 2:3-5 speak of obedient living. 3:14 speaks of loving living. The point is not that you are 100%. The point is your reputation, the climate of your life. If a person is an obedient, witnessing Christian, expect Satan to come against you.5
2 2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 19:2–6
3 The ability of humans to think encompasses some amazing abilities: deja vu, seat-of-the-pants behavior (such as pilots in stressful situations), emotions (which men have limited awareness of; women have more emotions, don't they?), technical activities such as computer programming & all kinds of technical design & math where the designer takes an educated guess and it turns out to be right, then you realize, "how in the world did I come up with that?", the vague feeling in your mind that you were trying to remember to do something but you got busy with something else, but you just know there was something you needed to remember to do, the common trait of explaining something to someone and your mind is replaying it after about one second and you sometimes realize you misspoke, and you correct yourself, the ability to estimate time durations, even when you are busy with other things, waking at a consistent time even when you didn't set an alarm, dreams and memories of dreams, left-brain and right-brain thinking and the corpus callosum which is large in both genders during early fetal growth but is reduced in the male by fetal testosterone, thus causing men to have less right-brain/left-brain communication [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19833443 We suggest that this possible organizational effect of fetal testosterone on callosal asymmetry may also play a role in shaping sexual dimorphism [gender-based physical differences] in functional and structural brain development, cognition, and behavior], the part the brain plays in vision, & the ability to recognize things when the eyes have only .05s exposure, the ability to recognize a person based on just a silhouette, the part the brain plays in hearing, & the ability to hear two tones, closely spaced but at 60dB difference in amplitude, pecking order, the ability to read a long document, recognize there are two passages that are similar, and be able to scan through & find them, aided by a feeling that, for example, one of them is on the right side near the top & the other is near an illustration, the Memory matching card game, Where is Waldo?
Find the one exclamation point. You find it quickly, don't you?
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Another type of thinking is seeing. My personal theory, based partly on watching my grandchildren look at my face, is that people decide shapes & ultimately read the emotions of others based on the pixel dimensions in the faces we are looking at, to a resolution of one pixel. Think about your own tendencies to estimate a person's feelings. Your brain is looking at the size of the pupils, the openness of the eyelids, where the eyes are looking, whether the eyebrows are raised or scrunched down, the symmetry of the eyelids and eyebrows, tiny variations in the lips and nose, head position in four degrees of freedom, neck translation, shoulder and limb positions and symmetry, not to mention motions and frequency. If you are around a disabled person, such as a person whose eyes don't track each other, think how finely your brain is judging the disability and how your thinking is telling you to modify your interaction with the person. http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-resolution-of-human-eyes-retina "Pixels" in the retina number 100 million. The number of nerve fibers from the eye to the brain is 1 million. Most of the "pixels" come from the fovea. Different cells, bipolar, horizontal, and amacrine, form connections between photoreceptors and nerves to the brain, funneling from 100 million down to 1 million. The "megapixel equivalent" of the eye is around 10 megapixels at the fovea plus .1 megapixel in the periphery. http://hugofdestruction.deviantart.com/journal/Your-Eye-s-quot-megapixel-quot-Resolution-214149706 The eyes continually flick around to cover a much larger area than your field of view and the composite image is assembled in the brain - not unlike stitching together a panoramic photo. This happens without your brain being distracted by the eye motion. At the same time, your brain is placing different objects at different distances through your stereoscopic eyes, in- or out-of-focus quality, and amazing processing in the brain.
All in all, our brains have a great capacity to interact with people and with God.
4 http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/machinelearning-maestro-michael-jordan-on-the-delusions-of-big-data-and-other-huge-engineering-efforts/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&#qaTopicOne 2014
Why We Should Stop Using Brain Metaphors When We Talk About Computing
IEEE Spectrum: I infer from your writing that you believe there’s a lot of misinformation out there about deep learning, big data, computer vision, and the like.
Prof. Jordan: People continue to infer that something involving neuroscience is behind neural networks, and that deep learning is taking advantage of an understanding of how the brain processes information, learns, makes decisions, or copes with large amounts of data. And that is just patently false.
It’s going to require decades or even hundreds of years to understand the deep principles. There is progress at the very lowest levels of neuroscience. But for issues of higher cognition—how we perceive, how we remember, how we act—we have no idea how neurons are storing information, how they are computing, what the rules are, what the algorithms are, what the representations are, and the like. So we are not yet in an era in which we can be using an understanding of the brain to guide us in the construction of intelligent systems.
5John 15: 18-19 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”
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