Do you ever feel bogged down by negativity? Everywhere you look, there is something bad happening. The news is filled with stories of war and natural disasters. We’re constantly having to worry about what laws might be passed by corrupt politicians. We see people fighting online on every platform. Most of us are in survival mode, just trying to get through the day. It feels like life is just dragging us along, and we have no power to change it. It’s easy to feel like something is always required of us, and we rarely have much more to give. The negativity and overwhelm make you feel helpless, hopeless, and exhausted. And on top of all the external stressors, you’re also battling your own internal insecurities or mental health issues. The world is hard enough without going to war with our own minds and emotions too! What if you could change this? What if you could function from a place of peace, joy, delight, happiness, and rest? There is brain science that tells us how you can rewire your neural pathways to make this a reality.
Brain Science and the Bible
I’ve always been fascinated by how God created the mind to function. I’ve been checking psychology books out from the library since I was in junior high. My brothers would come home with books about Thomas the Train or Percy Jackson, and I was lugging home the manual about how trauma affects the brain. The brain is a fascinating organ!
The more I’ve read about brain science, the more I’ve seen it show up all over the Bible. Even before we knew how the mind worked, God was giving us advice that aligned with how he created our minds to work. We see this in the Old Testament when God tells his people not to touch dead bodies or to wash after touching blood. This seems like common sense to us now because we know the science behind germs and pathogens. But the Israelites wouldn’t yet have that knowledge for centuries.
New Discoveries In Neuroscience
Now we live in a scientific era where it’s easy to think that everything’s been discovered. But what we know about brain science is relatively new. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a popular form of counseling, only emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. The Body Keeps the Score author, Bessel van der Kolk, notes that most of what we know about how traumatic events affect the brain was discovered as recently as the 1980s and 1990s. The ability to conduct brain mapping scans and interpret the results accurately has only been developing since 2003.
In fact, author Julia Calderone of The Scientific American states, “The chaotic networks of billions of electrically pulsating neurons in our skulls have perplexed scientists for centuries. Yet in the last 10 years our understanding of this mysterious organ has exploded. Prodigious advances in diagnostic and molecular techniques have laid bare some of the brain’s complexity, and scientists are just beginning to parse how these revelations translate into everyday behavior, let alone disease.”
Rewiring Neural Pathways
One of the most fascinating developments in modern brain science is the research on neuroplasticity. The brain is ever-changing. It reacts and responds to its environment. However, up until recently, the only way scientists could study it was through static images and cadaver crosssections, both of which are fixed and unchanging. In recent years, the equipment and imaging developed so the brain can be studied in real-time through video imaging and injected dyes.
For a long time, scientists thought that the adult brain was resistant to change. They saw the massive developments in children’s brains, but the static images of adult brains seemed to suggest that these changes stopped once the brain reached maturity. However, as imaging technology developed, this theory was debunked. David Gelles, the author of Mindful Work, wrote that one of the earliest and most extensive studies on neuroplasticity showed that the area of the hippocampus that deals with memory, and spatial awareness was significantly thicker in London taxi drivers than in the general public. A similar study showed violinists had significantly more developed parts of their brain that dealt with the motor mechanics of the left hand than the average adult. This actively showed neuroscientists that even mature brains are ever-changing and have the capacity to develop based on their environment and circumstances.
Everyone develops pathways in their brain to help with repetitive actions. For example, a common pathway is an ability to drive home from work on autopilot. At first, you may have needed the GPS, but after doing it repetitively, your brain developed connections that made it easier to do with less mental energy being expended. Your neurons fire, and your cells work collaboratively to create a roadway in your brain that facilitates an easier life.
Creating Self-Destructive Neural Pathways
The problem is we often create neural pathways that work against us. When we’re sad, we reach for the chocolate. After a hard day, we pour a glass of wine. When we wake up, we reach for our phone. When we’re stuck in traffic, we mumble obscenities. When our kids fight, we yell. We create patterns in our brains that make it easier to do unhealthy things. The very same neuroscience that God created to help us form healthy rhythms is what we twist into bad habits, unhealthy vices, and addictions.
This works the same with our emotions too. Driving behind a slow driver is certainly frustrating, but how often does it make you angry? Getting a negative review at work is certainly disheartening, but how often does it make you feel despair? Do you jump to negative emotions easily when you face inconveniences or frustrations? This may be because these neural pathways run deep. The more times you go from A to B, the more ingrained it becomes in the very wiring of your brain. No wonder it feels so difficult to overcome! The good news is science shows us these neuropathways are reversible.
The Hope of Neuroplasticity
The science of neuroplasticity is the area of science that makes me think of the resurrection most often. Unlike the science of the late 1900s that assumed adult brains are resistant to change, the latest science tells us that brains are surprisingly resilient and changing your neuropathways is incredibly possible.
Michael Rugnetta, a writer for Britannica, shares that “Rapid change or reorganization of the brain’s cellular or neural networks can take place in many different forms and under many different circumstances.” God designed the brain to have the remarkable ability to recategorize information and rewire existing pathways so that changes in thought patterns, life routines, daily habits, and even addictive appetites are never impossible to recalibrate.
Our God is so good! There are times I have been tempted to view God as a strict lawmaker who just wanted me to follow a list of commands. However, the more I learn about brain science, and the more I know God, the more I realize how benevolent He is. His exhortations to us are not external marching orders…they are the user manual for our own inner world. He created our minds with built-in mechanisms of hope and wholeness, and then He gave us instructions so we could understand a way to live that would utilize these life-giving capabilities.
Neural Pathways Provide Hope at a Cellular Level
It’s easy these days to look out into the world and see the darkness, the sickness, the perversion, the corruption, the evil, and the suffering. Sometimes it’s just as easy to look inside ourselves and see the same darkness and suffering. Our enemy uses our ability to notice these things against us. He whispers a declaration of hopelessness and powerlessness over our lives, and much of the time, we agree. We look into ourselves and say, “I can never change,” and then we look out into the world and say, “evil is winning.” But these declarations directly negate the truth and the power of the resurrection.
There was a day when it looked like evil won. The earth trembled, and the sky went dark. A body was laid to rest, a tomb was sealed, and the Messiah was dead. But three days later, the earth shook again, and the tomb was empty. Jesus rose from the dead, claiming victory over sin and death once and for all. From that moment forward, evil was defeated. The end of the story was determined. Evil will not win. Darkness cannot overcome light. We serve a God who brings dead things to life, heals the sick, and restores the broken.
But the hope of the resurrection didn’t just happen on that momentous day 2000 years ago. The reality is God has been the God of resurrection since the beginning of time. He knit the capacity for hope and restoration into the very fiber of our being. He wired our brains so that change was possible. Hope is not just an abstract yearning, it’s a cellular function.
Living As If We Beleive It
We are our own worst enemies. We agree with the enemy’s declaration of despair, and we spend our days noticing everything we hate about ourselves. We beat ourselves up for every mistake and then tell ourselves it’s impossible to change. We create neural pathways that keep us stuck in the very habits we want to break. More often than not, I think this is because we struggle to believe that the power of the resurrection dwells within us. The same Holy Spirit lives within us that raised Jesus from the dead. Do you think your bad habits are too much for Him to handle?
As you read this, are you making a mental list of every habit you want to break and every negative trait that feels impossible to change? The discouragement and overwhelm you feel are not of Jesus. Jesus is gentle and benevolent. He does not demand transformation in an instant, and He doesn’t condemn us when we fail. Jesus is a gentle shepherd who leads us through the valley one step at a time and carries us when the journey gets too difficult. He was human. He knows how hard it is. He’s not pulling out a mile-long checklist of things you need to change to get your act together. Instead, He’s quietly extending invitations into joy and delight.
The Invitation of Delight
Why do we get ourselves into bad habits and negative life rhythms anyways? Because there’s an empty promise of happiness. We reach for a drink when we’re sad because we want to feel happy again. We scroll social media because we’re chasing the next hit of dopamine. Many of the things we become addicted to are alluring because there are short-term rewards. They provide very real chemicals in the brain which make us feel good.
When we get stuck in the holes we’ve dug, then we feel powerless to get out. So we chose to sit in helplessness because it feels easier than change does. In a strange way, it feels comforting to talk about everything wrong in the world. Victimhood consoles us by reminding us that there was something outside of our control. It’s easier to notice what’s wrong than to work on making it right. It’s faster to rant than it is to transform.
But Jesus doesn’t lure us with kale and bran muffins. Yes, healthy choices seem unappetizing at first, but his invitation isn’t into health for health’s sake. The invitation He offers is one of delight. Transformation is slow because the goal isn’t to become superhuman or develop immunity to brokenness. The goal of transformation is rest and peace. Pursuing wholeness is a process of freedom and joy. God didn’t create the rules so that He could delight in you. He already delights in you. He created the rules so that you could experience that same delight at the cellular level, from the very inner workings of your mind. He wants you to live in tune with His righteousness not just because He is Holy but also because He loves you and wants you to experience life as He designed it.
Giving Yourself Grace as you Rewrite Neural Pathways
Retraining your brain to align with rhythms of delight takes intentionality. But every healthy choice makes your new neural pathways deeper until you are doing the healthy things on autopilot. Instead of reaching for your vice, you are actively weaving patterns of delight into your brain.
The best part of this process is that you’re God is the author of grace. He doesn’t require that you get it right the first time or even the seventeenth time. You can practice. He delights in your effort even if you mess it up. So what are some patterns you can practice?
- When you wake up: instead of reaching for your phone, reach for your Bible.
- When you’re stuck in traffic: instead of launching into anger, ask yourself what it would look like to love your enemy.
- When you are craving dopamine: instead of going for the thing that will give the fastest hit of gratification, find something that was meant to bring you delight in a healthier way.
- When you burn your dinner: instead of beating yourself up, praise yourself for being resilient.
- When you look in the mirror: instead of looking for a flaw, look for something you love. If you can’t think of anything, ask if there’s something that Jesus loves.
- When you say something you regret: instead of criticizing yourself, embrace the opportunity to practice honest communication and healthy conflict.
- When you’re laying in bed, running through the day in your head: ask yourself what was good, beautiful, or redemptive.
These are some simple examples of alternative neural pathways to forge so you can create healthier habits. The beauty of grace is that every time a moment like this comes up, it’s an opportunity. If you miss the opportunity, there’s another opportunity around the corner. The goal is to practice. Sometimes it will work, other times, it won’t. Sometimes, you’ll reach for the healthy thing. Other times you’ll reach for the unhealthy thing. Have grace for both instances. If you don’t reach for the healthy thing, that doesn’t make you a failure. You’re just a human, and it’s a process. Just say, “oops, I missed it that time,” and move forward. If the narrative you speak to yourself when you miss an opportunity is one of condemnation, you are shooting yourself in the foot and keeping yourself stuck. Everyone needs to become their own biggest cheerleader. That’s how hope becomes ingrained.
Looking for Fingerprints
Do you know how police and investigators look for fingerprints at a crime scene? They aren’t always apparent at first glance, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. When the average onlooker sees a crime scene, they see the blood and destruction. But when trained investigator looks, they see hope. They know that there are invisible little fingerprints and DNA that will lead to justice and peace.
When you look at your life and the world around you, do you just see the evil and destruction? What if you looked a little deeper? Might you see some invisible signs of God’s grace and provision? Every single event has the fingerprints of God on it. When you look for where the Creator left his mark, you will begin to see the hope and the beauty even among all the chaos of a broken world.
Seeing Past the Illusion
In a way, our world is one big optical illusion. The enemy wants us to just look at the darkness because then we will believe that He has the power and that Evil is winning. But this has never been the case. It’s an optical illusion. A cheap magic trick to fool you.
So how can you practice seeing past the illusion? Look for the good. Look for the beautiful. Look for the light. It’s always there somewhere. I recently saw a TikTok video where a girl called it “looking for glimmers.” She started carrying a little notebook around with her. Every time she saw something good or beautiful, she wrote it down. At the end of the day, she would look back over her list. This carved out neural pathways in her brain to notice the good things in every scenario. She felt happier, less anxious, and less overwhelmed. She complained less and felt less easily irritated. And you can too! You don’t even need a notebook. Just start a note on your phone.
Noticing the good and the beautiful is not overlooking or minimizing bad things. But let’s be honest: you don’t need help noticing the bad things. For most of us, that comes pretty naturally. What we all need to practice is preaching the hope of the resurrection to ourselves every day.
You have the power to carve neural pathways into your brain that make you feel more content. You can train yourself to see God’s fingerprint everywhere you look. It will help you notice his presence and love throughout your day. With this hope and this knowledge in your toolbelt, you can equip your brain to work how He designed it so that every rhythm and habit you develop is building you up to be a healthier, more confident, more joyful human!
