TALKING TO THE GOD IN YOUR BRAIN [T, 6-24-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Brain Research of An Old Man—TALKING TO THE GOD IN YOUR BRAIN [T, 6-24-25]

 

There’s an old sermon story about the young preacher who got his tongue all twisted around while trying to pray in the worship service. This was back in the day when we used thees and thous in prayer; it was easy to get confused. So an old lady in the congregation called out, “Just call Him Father, ask Him for something, and sit down.” Not bad advice, really, but it leads us into faulty thinking about prayer.

Critics of prayer suggest that prayer is just auto-suggestion; we’re only talking to ourselves. As a believer in prayer, I agree. I agree also because I’m a Christian, also, and so I believe in incarnation, the spiritual in the physical.

Every spiritual dimension, every God dimension of life, has a physical manifestation in this life. That’s simply the way this physical world is. Even prayer. There is nothing in this physical world that isn’t physical. Including the spiritual.

When we pray, it’s not to God out there; it’s to God in there. In our own brain.

There are neural circuits of the brain tied to the periaqueductal gray area of the primal brain stem. [Say periaqueductal three times real fast…] That’s the physical place in the brain where God meets us. That’s the place where prayer communication happens. [Some folks say it’s the amygdala. Same idea.]

Each person has a different brain, so we have different word meanings, even though we think we agree on meanings. Each person has a different view of the world, different memories, different thought patterns. As you read these words, your brain and mine actually have different ideas of exactly what I’m saying.

It’s more efficient for God to use our particular personage, our particular periaqueductal, in the work of prayer, than trying to change us into one size fits all. Praying isn’t like ordering tube sox.

So each of us needs to pray, to talk to God, in our own way, in the language that make sense to us.

Yes, there is a place for common prayer, public prayer, in public worship. And we should use there the language that we have mostly agreed upon for talking to God. When I started doing public prayers, that included those confusing thees and thous and thines. I got pretty good at them, because I was pretty good at using words in general.

These days, not so much. I sometimes have to rehearse sentences, even those to my wife, to get words in the right order, so that they make sense.

When a new nurse showed up at our physician’s office, though, I just had to wing it. In getting acquainted, I told Olivia that I was Doctor Vucescu’s favorite patient. That is not what I meant. Dr. V had once said that I was the perfect patient, because I told her my symptoms in the right order. My brain got favorite and perfect confused. Fairly regular sort of brain work for me these days.

I did not realize what I had said until Olivia returned. She did not know about my problems with words, and so assumed that I knew what I was saying. To my horror, when she returned, she said, “You really are Dr. V’s favorite patient. I asked her.” Now I’m embarrassed. I have to find a new doctor.

Facility with words or getting stuff in the right order is nice in the doctor’s office, or for public prayer, but the God in your brain doesn’t care about that. Just say hello, state your symptoms, and get your prescription.

John Robert McFarland

Why we need to read as much as possible: “All I know is what I have words for.” Philological genius Ludwig Wittgenstein, who helped me pass a graduate statistics course.