8/26/09

How God changes your brain

Check out this article discussing the changes that occured in the brains of Christian and Buddist monks and nuns who engaged in periods of intense prayer and meditation. The studies show that such spiritual practices literally reshape the way the brain works in ways that make the practicioner more calm, relaxed, compassionate, and deeply mindful. Such practices can have the same effects even for non-religious people.

I suspect that God has "hard-wired" us in such a way that these practices literally shape us to be more like him. Interestingly, saying short prayers (as is commonly practiced by many moderately religious individuals) did not show the same positive effects upon the brain.

I recently saw a guy talking about the same subject on Public Television. All of this has made me want to revisit Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.

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8/21/09

Do men use abortion to manipulate women?

On occasion I run across an article by Albert Mohler, who was at one time the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, and is a widely read social critic. One time he randomly came into the Cokesbury where I worked on Southern Methodist University's campus. Now I have a few theological disagreements with Mr. Mohler, and often find him to be a bit to the right of me on some social and political issues, but if I do see a column of his that looks interesting I'll often give it a chance.

I recently read this one about how abortion has been used by men and ammunition to persuade women to have sex. In a cultural context when abortion was not legal "on demand" as a means of birth control, women could use the risk of pregnancy as a reason for saying "no" to sex, or the fact of pregnancy to persuade the man who fathered the child to propose marriage and help rear the child.

With legal abortion "on demand," men are more likely to expect their girlfriends to have sex with them (perhaps on threat of ending the relationship if they do not), because a potential impediment has been removed (or so the argument will go). And should such illicit sex lead to a pregnancy, the man can abandon his responsibilities in the matter by pointing out that it is (supposedly) "the woman's choice" - and therefore her responsibility alone - if the child is born or not. Whether she has the child or not, he will not feel pressured to marry her.

This, of course, reinforces a number of personal and social problems: the problem of female poverty and single-parenthood and the personal frustration that go with them; the problem of fatherless children who are more likely to get into legal trouble and less likely to succeed in virtually every measurable way than are children with fathers (minority communities are especially hard hit here); the various problems and social ills that result from these first problems (cycles of poverty, overcrowded prisons, etc.); and on it goes.

A practice that was hailed by feminists as liberating for women, giving them more control over their lives, may have - in many cases - had the exact opposite effect. An interesting fact presented in this essay is that the great majority (64%) of women who had abortions felt pressured by others to do so. I was reminded of a comment by bishop Willimon (which I have mentioned before) that a Duke study found that most women who have abortions do so because they feel they have no other choice. It is a sad irony that some call this "freedom of choice."

There is a lot to think about in this article that Mohler has written, and so I do recommend it. As I have argued before, I believe that abortion on demand as a means of birth control (so I am not now speaking of abortion in medical emergencies to save the mother or cases or rape or other rare cases that are sometimes mentioned) is deeply corrosive for our humanity: bad for our families, bad for our children, and therefore bad for our whole community.

Of course, reducing, or eliminating this practice would require a huge cultural shift - a sexual counter-revolution, so to speak. And given the attitudes of many young Americans (and indeed, given the content of the media which is continually fed to us) this does not look especially likely. But who knows what tomorrow may hold, for with God all things are possible.

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8/19/09

Newman on Wesley

"...if you wish to find [among the Anglicans] the shadow and the suggestion of the supernatural qualities which make up the notion of a Catholic Saint, to Wesley you must go, and such as him”

-John Henry Newman

from: Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, vol. 1, pp. 88-91
(though, truth be told, Newman then expresses his distaste for Wesley's doctrines and his claims of inner assurance, but there it is).

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8/18/09

Michael F. Bird on influential authors

Some of you may know of Michael Bird, who blogs mostly on stuff to do with New Testament scholarship over at www.euangelizomai.blogspot.com - here is his very funny (and nerdy) answer to the question of what writings have influenced him.

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8/13/09

BW3 on Wright on TEC

In case you didn't get that title, I've run across some remarks by well-known United Methodist theologian Ben Witherington III, in which he comments on the statement made by NT Wright (see a few posts below) about the recent decisions of The Episcopal Church's General Convention, that basically threw off the rules of the wider Anglican Communion regarding sexual morality, in favor of a pro-homosexuality agenda.

Witherington's comments address the whole issue with insight, and brevity. To read them go here.

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8/10/09

Praying the Psalms

"When through continuous prayer the words of the Psalms are brought down into the heart, then the heart like good soil begins to produce by itself various flowers..."
-Ilias the presbyter, from The Philokalia

One of the things that I have always loved about the Anglican tradition as contained in The Book of Common Prayer (BCP), is the praying of Psalms each day. In the Common Prayer Book one prays through the entire Psalter each and every month. This practice was passed along to the American Methodists in John Wesley's revision of the Common Prayer Book, the Sunday Service Book, in which about 3/4 of the Psalter is arranged for daily reading throughout the month. A selected Psalter is still to be found in our Hymnal, but without being divided into daily sections as in the BCP and Wesley's BCP revision.

As I pray the Psalms, and have done so regularly for several years now, it is amazing how much of Jesus I see in them. It is wonderful just how many little hints and whispers and opaque outlines of the life and death and Resurrection of Jesus are continuously found in them. I believe that they teach us how to interpret Scripture "mystically," if I may use the term in that way.

The Psalms also, of course, give us a voice to pray many of the deep, dark, thoughts that we are taboo to talk about in Church, for some reason: our times of doubt, of anger, of not "doing just fine."

Do you folks ever pray the Psalms?

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