Last week, I wrote about the physiological dimension of addiction to pornography. New brain research suggests it is as strong as addiction to cocaine and heroin because of its unique combination of stimulant and opiate.
Pornography lays down real physiological paths in the brain. All sexual experience tends to migrate to these paths.
I concluded that none of this brain research takes God by surprise. He designed the interplay between the brain and the soul. Discoveries of the connections between physical and spiritual reality do not nullify either.
Don’t be part of abolishing man.
So don’t let this new brain research make you think of yourself as mere flesh and chemicals. This is the great myth of the modern world—what C.S. Lewis called the abolition of man.
This is the theory that human thought is nothing but movement in the brain. It is a theory developed to destroy itself.
Lewis saw the tentacles of materialism reaching into every sphere:
There will always be evidence, and every month fresh evidence, to show that religion is only psychological, justice only self-protection, politics only economics, love only lust and thought itself only cerebral biochemistry. (“Transposition,” in The Weight of Glory, 114-115)
But Lewis saw that nobody really acts as though they believe this. They are playing a language game.
He illustrates this with the relationship between thought and brains:
We are certain that, in this life at any rate, thought is intimately connected with the brain. The theory that thought therefore is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense; for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction, but of which it would be meaningless to use the words “true” or ”false.” (“Transposition,” 103)
Lewis is not playing counter-games here. He is blood-earnest that the abolishers of man are refusing to see that they claim to make meaningful statements while destroying meaning.
Take the mind-body connection by the horns.
Meaning is rooted in supra-material truth. You are not mere matter and energy. You are an embodied soul who will live forever in heaven or in hell, created in the image of God, unlike mere animals and, as a Christian, bought with the blood of the Son of God, and indwelt by the very Spirit of God himself. These are stupendous realities—greater realities than endorphins and dopamine.
God wove together physical nerves and supra-physical spiritual affections—desire, fear, joy, anger, pity, admiration, trust, cherishing, love. Instead of letting this connection discourage you, take it by the horns and make it serve your holiness. This is what the Bible calls you to do.
Don’t think the Bible is silent on this all-important question of mind and body—thinking and brains, affections and chemicals. God made these connections between physical and supra-physical, and God has wisdom for living in them.
Consider these four hope-filled observations.
