P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

BRAIN-DEAD WORSHIP

It’s sometimes suggested that masking reality, blocking out your surroundings, is the best way for the Holy Spirit to give you a mystical, spiritual experience. And maybe that can happen. More often, though, it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to point you TOWARD the reality of your adoption in God.

We’ve been studying the idea of adoption for about three weeks now, and considered yesterday the frustrating reality that many Christians never seem to find a roller coaster thrill in their spiritual journey. Others feel deep emotions; people all around them are crying in church, lifting their hands in prayer, swaying to the music, feeling the tingle . . . but not them. No roller coaster loop-the-loop for them.

I also mentioned, earlier in this series, that we have a number of employees here who have adopted children. One of them married a young lady back in the early 1980s, and she had a little five-year-old girl from a previous failed marriage.

The child bonded immediately with her new stepdad; in fact, he quickly became “Daddy,” while her biological father was now dubbed “Daddy Bill.” Bill lived many hours’ drive away from his daughter, and would manage to make the trip every six to nine months or so — generally just for a day or a short weekend.

In the meantime, the new daddy had to pay all the bills for his stepdaughter. He bought groceries; he paid rent; he forked over for her tuition. He read her stories at bedtime; he helped her clean up messes. He applied discipline and gave out hugs and kisses. It wasn’t glamorous; it wasn’t always witty or fun, but he got the job done. The little girl was growing up in the assurance of being loved and cared for.

When Daddy Bill came by for an afternoon, that’s when the little girl usually got to ride on the roller coasters. Lots of fun, cotton candy, five-dollar bills to put in her purse, cookies for later, stuffed animals at the carnival. Of course, when the clock struck midnight, he drove off into the night, leaving the responsibility of parenthood to others. But Daddy Bill ran the roller coaster.

Friend, maybe that story sounds flip and I don’t mean it to be. There are many, many dads AND stepdads who do their very best to nurture a child under hard circumstances. But I want to return to our Disneyland tour from yesterday, where many of God’s children believe that it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to give them a jolt, an emotional ride. The “Keswick experience,” as one mystic famously had during a sermon he heard in 1908. Maybe you remember a certain John Wesley whose heart was “strangely warmed.” And we wonder: isn’t it the Holy Spirit’s job to give all of us that kind of glow?

Just at quitting time yesterday, we quoted from Dr. James Packer’s book, Knowing God, where he rather emphatically said this about roller coaster rides on Viper in a Vineyard Church:
“This quest for an inward explosion rather than an inward communion shows deep misunderstanding of the Spirit’s ministry.”

And so today, in all fairness, we ask: “All right, then, what IS the Spirit’s role?” And again, Packer takes us to this faithful, ever-richer motif of adoption. Notice:

“The vital truth to be grasped here is that the Spirit is given to Christians as ‘the Spirit of adoption,’ and in all His ministry to Christians He acts as the Spirit of adoption. As such, His task and purpose throughout is to make Christians realize with increasing clarity the meaning of their filial relationship with God in Christ, and to lead them into an ever deeper relationship to God in this relationship.”

Could we think, perhaps, of the Holy Spirit as a wonderful, kind social worker whose function is to help nurture the fulfilling of this adoption process. “Honey, this is your new Daddy.” “But . . . but . . . I don’t know Him. I’m afraid. I miss where I lived before.” “I know you do. But Dad is a wonderful Friend. He’s going to take care of you. He’s going to provide for you, lead you into happiness, help you become a successful person.” “But . . . but . . .” And this generous social worker has a quiet, satisfying answer to every need; He continually points us toward Dad and the deepening, growing love.

Packer takes us to a couple of verses which corroborate this principle.

“Paul is pointing to this truth,” he reminds us, “when he writes, ‘Ye have received the SPIRIT of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.’” That’s Romans 8:15. “‘God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying [that is, prompting you to cry], “Abba, Father.”’” Galatians 4:6.

Some of you know that this Aramaic word, Abba, is a close, personal word — essentially, “Daddy.” A loving, trusting child just cries out naturally: “Daddy! I love You. Daddy, come hug me before I go to bed! Daddy, I’m scared! Hold my hand.” And we read here in these verses that it’s the Holy Spirit’s exact role to encourage you into an Abba love relationship with your Father-God. Isn’t that a beautiful thought? In fact, just one verse later in the Romans 8 passage, Paul adds:

“The Spirit Himself testifies with OUR spirit that we are God’s children.”

Now, friend, let me be clear that emotional worship, or a deep flood of feelings can be a perfectly acceptable, and even heaven-sent experience. If God gives you that, praise Him! Thank Him for it. But don’t live your life just for that, and don’t assume that the Holy Spirit has failed in His mission if you don’t feel earthquakes when you pray.

We mentioned yesterday this cover article in Newsweek, May 7, 2001, by Sharon Begley, entitled “God & the Brain: How We’re Wired for Spirituality.” It’s fascinating that many people, in order to have mystical experiences where they are “one with the universe,” actually have part of their brain SHUT DOWN. Begley writes:

“In order to feel that time, fear and self-consciousness have dissolved, [scientist and mystic Dr. James Austin reasoned], certain brain circuits must be interrupted. Which ones? Activity in the amygdala, which monitors the environment for threats and registers fear, must be damped. Parietal-lobe circuits, which orient you in space and mark the sharp distinction between self and world, must go quiet. Frontal- and temporal-lobe circuits, which mark time and generate self-awareness, must disengage. When that happens, [this neurologist concludes], ‘what we think of as our “higher” functions of selfhood appear briefly to “drop out,” “dissolve,” or be “deleted from consciousness.”’”

This is from his 1998 book, by the way, Zen and the Brain. Begley points out that some mystics and deeply spiritual people who even claimed to “hear voices” or have religious visions — Dostoevsky, Saint Teresa of Avila, Proust — are now thought to have had temporal-lobe epilepsy . . . “abnormal bursts of electrical activity” in the temporal lobes. It’s suggested that someday you can even take a kind of “God shot,” which will affect the mind and give you a mystical experience.

A Dr. Michael J. Baime, who practices Tibetan Buddhist meditation, subjected himself to a SPECT — a single photon emission computed tomography machine, which could actually measure or photograph, with radioactive tracer dye, what happens in the brain when he has a “transcendent experience.” And once again, whole sections of neurons in the superior parietal lobe, “had gone dark.”

Now, friend, this is a deep topic, and we’re simply borrowing a paragraph or two. The main point is this: the Holy Spirit is present in this world and in our lives, not to block out reality, but to powerfully point us TOWARD the reality of our adoption. Here’s a bit more from Knowing God:

“[The Holy Spirit’s] work has three aspects,” he writes. “In the first place, He makes and keeps us conscious — sometimes vividly conscious, always conscious to some extent, even when the perverse part of us prompts us to deny this consciousness — that we are God’s children by free grace through Jesus Christ. This is His work of giving faith, assurance and joy. In the second place, He moves us to look to God as to a father, showing toward Him the respectful boldness and unlimited trust that is natural to children secure in an adored father’s love. This is His work of making us cry ‘Abba, Father’ — the attitude described is what the cry expresses. In the third place, He impels us to act up to our position as royal children by manifesting the family likeness (conforming to Christ), furthering the family welfare (loving the brethren) and maintaining the family honor (seeking God’s glory). This is His work of sanctification.”

It was quite interesting that the very informative Newsweek article by Sharon Begley was followed with a sidebar by Ken Woodward, the religion editor.

“[Neurotheology] tells us new things about the circuits of the brain, perhaps,” he writes, “but nothing new about God. . . . Losing one’s self in prayer may feel good or uplifting, but these emotions have nothing to do with how well we communicate with God. . . . To see Christ in the person of an AIDS victim or to really love one’s enemy does not necessitate a special alteration in the circuits of the brain.”

It was a touching serendipity that this cover article by Begley had in the same issue, just four pages earlier, that story where Jim Bowers’ missionary plane was shot down by a Peruvian A-37B fighter jet in that country’s drug wars. His wife Roni was killed, along with 7-month-old adopted daughter, Charity. The Cessna crash-landed in the Amazon and he had to pull their corpses free, and also rescue his 6-year-old son, Cory. There was nothing mystical or giddy about Christianity that day as they swam through the burning jet fuel. No roller coaster rides later at the double funeral in Michigan. Just quiet, abiding faith. Forgiving the pilots. Raising his son to keep loving God. Learning to abide in the reality that even when you lose a wife, you still have an Abba, a heavenly Dad.