Main Scripture: God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of affection and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7
Linked Science Concept: Science shows we’re wired for love with a natural optimism bias. This means exactly what the Scripture says above.
The debate in science is between the mind being what the brain does versus the brain doing the bidding of the mind. The position you adopt will impact the way you view free will and alternative.
The Mind Is What the Brain Does
The first argument proposes that thoughts come out of your brain as if your brain is generating all points of your mental experience. People who hold this view are called the materialists. They consider that it’s the chemicals and neurons that create the mind and that the relationships between your thoughts and what you do can just be ignored.
So essentially, their perspective is that the brain creates what you’re doing and what you’re pondering. The mind is what the brain does, they consider, and the ramifications are significant. Take, for instance, the treatment of depression. In this reductionist view depression is a chemical imbalance problem of a machinelike brain; subsequently, the treatment is so as to add within the missing chemicals.
This view is biblically and scientifically incorrect.
The Brain Does the Bidding of the Mind
Let’s have a look at this from the opposite angle of the argument: The brain is what the mind does.
You are a pondering being. You think all day long, and at night as you sleep, you sort out your pondering. As you think that, you select, and as you select, you cause genetic expression to occur in your brain. This means you make proteins, and these proteins form your thoughts. Thoughts are real, physical things that occupy mental real estate.
Eric R. Kandel, a Nobel Prize–winning neuropsychiatrist for his work on memory, shows how our thoughts, even our imaginations, get “under the skin” of our DNA and may turn certain genes on and certain genes off, changing the structure of the neurons within the brain.1 So as we predict and picture, we alter the structure and performance of our brains. Even Freud speculated back within the 1800s that thought results in changes within the brain.2 In recent years, leading neuroscientists like Marion Diamond, Norman Doidge, Joe Dispenza, Jeffrey Schwartz, Henry Markram, Bruce Lipton, and Allan Jones, to call just a number of, have shown how our thoughts have remarkable power to alter the brain.3 Our brain is changing moment by moment as we’re pondering. By our pondering and selecting, we’re redesigning the landscape of our brain.
Our mind is designed to manage the body, of which the brain is a component, not the opposite way around. Matter doesn’t control us; we control matter through our pondering and selecting. We cannot control the events and circumstances of life but we will control our reactions. In fact, we will control our reactions to anything, and in doing so, we alter our brains. It’s difficult; it is tough work, but it may be done through our thoughts and selections. This is what I deal with within the second half of the book with my 21-Day Brain Detox Plan.
For now, rest in the peace of mind that what God has empowered you to do along with your mind is more powerful and effective than any medication, any threat, any sickness, or any neurological challenge. The Scripture is evident on this: You wouldn’t have a spirit of fear but of affection, power, and a sound mind (2 Tim. 1:7). We will not be sure by the physical; we control the physical. You just have to take a look at the various inspirational survival stories of those that have overcome unattainable odds throughout history and in the present day to know that is truth.
Choices Are Real
You are free to make selections about the way you focus your attention, and this affects how the chemicals and proteins and wiring of your brain change and performance. Scientists are proving that the connection between what you think that and the way you understand yourself—your beliefs, dreams, hopes, and thoughts—has a huge effect on how your brain works.
Research shows that 75 to 98 percent of mental, physical, and behavioral illness comes from one’s thought life.4 This staggering and eye-opening statistic means only 2 to 25 percent of mental and physical illnesses come from the environment and genes.
Excerpt from Chapter 1 of “Switch on Your Brain,” by Dr. Caroline Leaf, published by “Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group,” ©2013, Used with permission.
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