The Resurrection of Right-brained Christianity

Whether you're aware of it, there is a dramatic re-wiring of the human brain - at least in the Western world.  For the first time in 500 years, we in the West are experiencing a shift in the way we do reality.   An excellent article to acquaint yourself with is called The Revenge of the Right Side of the Brain, by Daniel H. Pink(click here to read the article).  Also, a powerful video resource is by Jill Bolte, entitled  "My Stroke of Insight."  Jill, a brain scientist, experiences what few brain scientists ever do.  Here account is gripping, and in it, gives a wonderful account of how the two halves of our brains function (or don't in come cases).  It's called  My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey.

This is not to say that reality is changing.  It's just that we are undergoing a kind-of balancing or re-balancing of how we value our sources of knowledge and perception.  What's happening is that we are witnessing a revival in prominence of, and value for the right side of the brain.  Let me explain.

In the illustration above, we see a picture of a man with his whole brain exposed.  On the left side of his brain we see a monochromatic landscape of endless office cubicles, with workers sitting at their desks, conforming to their space busily going about their business.  On the right side of the brain the landscape is strewn with people participating in various and random activities: playing guitars, flying kites, gazing through telescopes, or laying on the grass, reading a book.  

This is a more-or-less true working model of the human brain.  We have brains that are divided into two halves.  The halves do not work against each other but work in concert and harmony with each other.  However, the two halves work for us in different ways:  the left half primarily functions to process reality with regard to logic, linear thought, sequence, numbers, mathematics, literalness, etc.  The right half of the brain helps us process life with regard to language, artistic, abstract, emotions, etc.  By mentioning this, I do not intend to oversimplify what is still the most complex organ in the known universe.  But one can safely generalize the functions of the two sides of the brain.

Pink contents that the human brain has, for five hundred years, been a right-brain dominant brain.  When Thomas Gutenberg invented the printing press, and with the subsequent explosion of a literate society, it caused the brain, for the first time to undergo a revolution than manifested in a left-brain, logical, linear, sequentially oriented way of doing knowledge.   With the rise and renaissanceof the right side of the brain in doing life, and with a rising population of right brained approach to learning and working, Pink contends that the brain is, once again, undergoing a re-wiring, necessitating the use of, and value for, the right side of the brain.

The 'so what' of this for me was the realization that, in the face of this re-wiring, Christianity is going to experience a renaissance in a right-brained approach to doing God and expressing God's life in our world.  Let me give just a couple examples.

Gutenberg touched off the shift to a right-brained dominance.  How?  By giving the masses access, for the first time in human history, to reading.  Specifically, we were, all of us, all of a sudden, given mass access to the Word of God.  In other words, since reading became more common, individuals of all walks of life and all classes now had individual access to the Words of Scripture(given, of course, the acquisition of reading skills necessary to read scripture).  Prior to this people still had ready access to the Word of God.  However, 99% of the people had to access scripture through having it read to them.  Reading was an auditory experience only.  The only people who could read were priests, lawyers and the upper class.  Churches chained their Bibles to the altar because a book was something precious and valuable, not because people were lining up to read it.  Prior to Gutenberg, the primary organ of access to scripture was the ear, and this kind of learning relied on the right side of the brain.  

But, with the availability of Luther's Bible, written in the common language of the reader, and not Latin, the primary organ of access to the Word of God became the eye, which relies on the left side of the brain.  Reading became more democratic, and yet, ironically more privatized.  In other words, 'doing' Christianity began to be processed from the other side of the brain.  And as an unintended consequence, it began to be more private than corporate.  Five hundred years later, and it's not too difficult to observe that Christianity has largely become a 'just me and Jesus' expression, where it's an exercise of intentionality to think of oneself in the larger corporate reality of believing Jesus.  Prior to this, it was very difficult to think of oneself as an individual person, let alone an individual believer.   

That's one consequence of this historic shift to the left side of the brain.  Another consequence is related to it.  One way to phrase it is that this shift affected the way we did theology. Because the left side of the brain only has value for linear, logical, rational, analytical, sequential, systematic thinking and processing, and since reading became the primary method of knowing, theological reflection itself became dominated by rationality.  I realize that's a massive generalization, to compress hundreds of years of intellectual development into a few sentences, but the observation is true.  We 'do' Jesus largely with our left brains.  Consequently we have substituted knowledge about God to substitute knowledge of God.  Knowing a fact about someone is left-brain.  Knowing someone by personal acquaintance is right-brained.  We now define belief as something we know instead of something we do.  In truth we do what we believe; we only believe what we do.  There is no such divorce in a biblical reality.  

I'm looking for the right side to blossom profusely in this season of the Kingdom.  Artists, storytellers, cinematographers, dancers, sculptors are going to express, in a powerful and explosive way, the Word of God.  Spiritual gifts which, which manifest in and from the right side of the brain are going to dominate the exercise of evangelism.  As the apostle Paul says, and what's going to be true again, is that  God's kingdom isn't just a lot of words. It is power. (1 Corinthians 4:20)

Lest we forget, the Word of God is a Person, not a text.  In our right-brained Christian world we have mistaken and substituted the written word for the Living Word.  I am always mindful of the final movements of John's Revelation of Jesus Christ:  

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. (Revelation 19:11-13)

By musing about all this shifting and this right-brain-left-brain dominance, I'm not advocating some kind of overthrow of one side for the other.  Rather I want to telecast a coming balance to the way do Jesus - with both halves acting in symphony-holistically.  I'll finish with two examples. The first is St. Francis' maxim for spreading the gospel, which has made a recent comeback, judging from the number of times I see it quoted nowadays:  Preach the Gospel at all times; and, if you have to, use words.  That's not just being clever; rather Francis pointing to a way of articulating the grace of God that cannot be expressed effectively from the left side.  The second is what Augustine called proclamation of the Gospel through visible words.  Things like a cup of wine and bread, things like meal shared by believers are symbols that proclaim something that words can't.  Visible words are essential and crucial "because human communication is more than the transmission of propositions.  The gospel is not by stating propositions.  Forgiveness is not promised by sentences, but by sentences joined to a bath." (Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical  Frank C. Senn, Page 31)