What you believe about God actually changes your brain.
Psychiatrist Tim Jennings unveils how our brains and bodies thrive when we have a healthy understanding of who God is in his book .
Brain research has found that our thoughts and beliefs affect our physical, mental and spiritual health. Dr. Jennings shares an illustration from his book,
“A young lady came to see me, crying and very depressed because she was having trouble in her marriage and getting pregnant. She so much wanted a child. She was feeling guilty and she was feeling that it was her fault.”
“As I took the history from her, she told me that when she was a teenager she’d gotten pregnant and she had an abortion. Now, her pastor told her that the reason she didn’t get pregnant was because God was punishing her for having the abortion.”
“The issue that she was struggling with is not the fact that she had the abortion, the issue she was struggling with was the fact that she believed now that God was punishing her for having the abortion.”
Feelings of guilt and condemnation were clouding her ability to have a healthy perception of God.
“She didn’t see God as God of grace, God of mercy, God of forgiveness, God who says, ‘OK, you’ve made a mistake in your life but I love you, and I want to heal you and I want to restore you.’ Instead, she saw this God as a punitive God who was angry at her and wanted to use this power to hurt her. Thus, she lived under this oppression that was hurtful to her.”
Dr. Jennings reminded her of God’s true character.
“We had to come back, not to excuse early behavior in her life, but to help her realize that God, regardless of behavior early in our life, is our redeeming, saving, forgiving, gracious God who wants to heal and restore us; not just a punitive being that we need to be protected from.”
We need to start reading the scriptures with new lenses. Dr. Jennings points us towards Jesus’ teachings in John 14:7,
“The touchstone always, of course, is Jesus Christ. He said, ‘If you see me, you’ve seen the Father. The Father and I are one.’
As new creations in Christ, we all have the desire to be transformed and renewed.
“We want a new heart and right spirit, we want to have circumcisions of the heart by the Spirit, to be partakers of the divine nature. We want the mind of Christ, we want the heart of stone removed, the heart of flesh put in and to be reborn and recreated in Christ likeness.”
“We don’t simply want some accounting happening in a record book in a far off galaxy where bad deeds have been recorded, we want transformation and renewal and that only comes in a relationship with a God we can trust.”
Having a proper perception of who God is will greatly benefit our mind, body and spirit. In turn, will benefit those around us.
“Studies show that individuals who are altruistic, who give up themselves to help others, they live longer; they have less depression, less dementia, stay out of nursing homes longer and have less disability than people who don’t volunteer to help others. The act of giving, the act of service to other people is actually healthy for our physical being.”
