PURE & SIMPLE FAITH

Thirty years ago a toddler at the top of a staircase spotted his daddy standing at the bottom of the stairs.  He grinned from ear to ear, because down there was his daddy - the strongest, smartest, bestest best daddy in the whole wide world.  He was absolutely certain that nothing could harm him when he was in his daddy’s arms, so he proceeded to leap with open arms from up high.  The little boy was also equally certain that his daddy would always catch him and he was blissfully unconcerned with minor details, such as his off-guard-unaware daddy downstairs facing the opposite direction while in conversation with friends.  An alarming crisis was thwarted when, during the chortling toddler’s mid-air flight, his mommy swung his daddy around and shouted CATCH OUR SON!  The daddy caught his son in what appeared to be a beautifully choreographed slow motion action within a nanoseconds-to-disaster timeframe.  Despite the gawking and gulping of all the shocked onlookers, the little boy never doubted his daddy.

In the sixth century before Christ, three God-fearing young men were bound and tossed into a blazing furnace by a belligerent Babylonian king, the uncontested most powerful man on the planet at the time.  The furnace was so hot that it instantly incinerated the men’s captors, but not only did the Babylonian witness how the unscathed young men walked around freely inside the furnace, but also that they were joined by a fourth divine being.  The king was dumbstruck and ordered them to exit the furnace at once and then he discovered that they were completely unharmed and did not even smell of smoke.  Before the furnace event, the king held these young men in high esteem, he was quite fond of them.  Hence, when they refused to betray their God to worship the king’s pagan god, the king offered them one more chance to surrender while he also arrogantly mocked their God.  Then, when they again respectfully declined to comply with the king’s orders, his fury turned to belligerence.  However, while dumbstruck in the presence of the unharmed young men after their time in the furnace, the king relented and ordered his entire kingdom to worship their God.  At this time, this king was only one more life-altering event away from surrendering his own life to the God of the young man and serve Him only.

I am the mommy in the above-mentioned story who had to swing my beloved Assie around to catch Daniel, our 15-month-old firstborn son.  We were at our local community church, meeting new people at the bottom of the staircase.  Daniel simply loved flying through the air into his daddy’s arms and his faith in his daddy was pure and unwavering.  It could be argued that, due to an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, Daniel relied on his limbic system (his animalistic hindbrain) to make instinct-based decisions, and therefore, it would be a reasonable scientific postulation to claim that his faith was just instinct.

The prefrontal cortices of the three young men in the furnace story, although not quite fully matured, were significantly more advanced than Daniel’s.  Despite the age-appropriate high levels of activity in their limbic systems, they possessed sufficiently developed reasoning and problem-solving abilities to make complex and logical decisions, and therefore, it would be a reasonable scientific postulation to claim that their faith was the result of sound decision-making and not instinct.

The king in the furnace story had a fully developed prefrontal cortex and his vast application thereof can be substantiated in the text of an impressive array of history books attributing the grandeur of ancient Babylon to him.  As both calculated military conqueror and visionary nation builder, he had to possess exceptional skills in reasoning and problem-solving.  Although his belligerence with the young men was a limbic system driven instinct, his decision to relent afterwards, showed the impressive power of his prefrontal cortex to override his instinct.  After the furnace event, the king relented to the conviction that God is more powerful than he is, but he was not quite ready to transition the faith he had in himself, to God.  Shortly after this, the king lost his sanity, was driven out into the wild to live like an animal for seven years, relying only on his limbic system (animalistic hindbrain) to survive.  After seven years, his sanity was restored through the recommissioning of his prefrontal cortex, and he praised God and surrendered his life to Him.  His faith in himself transitioned to God.

I suspect that my own prefrontal cortex went from UNDERDEVELOPED to OVERDEVELOPED with Daniel’s birth.  I don’t remember ever being in the FULLY DEVELOPED stage.  I HAVE to always figure things out.  There HAS to always be a plausible explanation for every single thing.  Early on in my life, I became remarkably proficient in applying my critical thinking skills.  And now, the older I get, the more I learn to relent to the conviction that I will never know and/or be able to explain EVERYTHING.  I was never meant to do so and it is absolutely okay.  But this was not necessarily true for my spiritual/faith journey.  

Truth be told, looking back now, for an almost unbearably long time, I had voluntarily given up a significant chunk of my spiritual sanity when I exiled myself to a place where my critical thinking was frowned upon as negative and even sinful.  A movement where faith is reduced to a limbic instinct and carefully controlled through emotion-triggering catalysts from directed ministry actions.  A movement where true reality (with all its pain and suffering) is vehemently denied and replaced by an alternative reality of self-affirming positive declarations and unauthorised assignment of God’s power. 

My spiritual sanity was finally restored when, despite my instinctive faith that God will heal my beloved daughter-in-love from cancer because it is always His will to heal and speaking life into her body and commanding the tumour to shrivel up and die, her condition continued to deteriorate and she needed me to step back into true reality to guide and support her while dying.  My recommissioned prefrontal cortex is now, once again, a vital part of my faith journey as well.  My faith in Jesus was relieved from its limbic lull and it was fully reinstated as GPS to all of my higher brain functions in order for me to not only love the Lord my God with all of my heart and soul, but also to love Him with all of my mind as well.