When God designed the human brain, He gave it two hemispheres: a right and a left. The left side of the brain deals with logic and reason, as well as a number of other intellectual functions. The right side of the brain deals with feelings, spatial reasoning, and creativity. When my mother used to teach art, she would have her students draw a picture with their non-dominant hand. While the motor skills weren’t as good, the picture always turned out surprisingly well because it allowed the students to tap into the right side of the brain.
When reading the Bible, there are two extremes that are easy to fall into: passionlessly researching its contents solely out of academic curiosity or reading only for an emotional experience. Neither extreme is good; God deliberately gave us both halves of the brain because we need both. Most of us have a dominant side of the brain in which we feel more comfortable, but we all have a part of the brain dedicated to switching between the two. In women it tends to be larger than in men, but everyone can do it. When reading the Bible, everyone should. In general, the Adventist approach to the Bible tends to engage more of the left brain, even when people with a right-brain dominance are listening to or even leading the study. The beautiful part of this is that Adventist doctrine is very detailed, carefully researched, and internally consistent. However, the Bible was not written just to tickle the intellect. A brain can accomplish nothing without a heart and hands. Of course, a heart without a head is even more dangerous. With these matters in mind, once you start looking for emotions in the Bible, you’ll be amazed by how much is really in there. The Bible is a surprisingly raw book. The low-hanging fruit is to look at the emotions that the text actually mentions. The Psalms are full of vivid descriptions of very strong emotions, and many of the stories discuss them as well. Because the Bible is written very compactly, wherever it explicitly describes emotions, they’re likely to be the extreme forms of those emotions. Because emotions are learned experientially, it’s also worthwhile to put yourself into the shoes of either the characters in the story or the writer (in the case of poetry and letters). When have you gone through something similar to this person? How did that experience make you feel? If you’re not very in touch with your own emotions, sometimes it’s helpful to think of this with physical descriptions. The Bible uses them all over the place. “Were not our hearts burning within us?” the disciples on the road to Emmaus ask at the end of Luke. When have you felt that way? Have you felt that way? The tricky part of the experiential approach, of course, is that it’s limited by your experience. There are parts of the Bible I wasn’t able to grasp more than intellectually until I had lived a little more life. There are still parts of it that I’m sure I’ll connect with more later on in life. One of the tricky things about teaching the Bible to children and youth is this experience disparity. The exercise of doing that can be useful, though, because when you try to explain the Bible’s emotions to children, you are forced to dig deeper into the more simple, primal emotional experiences that are less idiosyncratic to your own life. For example, a child doesn’t really understand the complex emotions surrounding struggles with infertility, which play into a surprisingly large number of Bible stories. However, they do understand waiting for something they want but not knowing if and when they’ll get it. They spend much of their time at the mercy of adults whose world and decisions they do not yet understand. If you can remember how that felt, you can connect emotionally with most of the struggles the Bible characters have in understanding and trusting God’s ways. Another way of teasing out the emotions in the text is to ask, “If I were put into this situation, how would I feel?” This question is a little different from the experiential approach because it acknowledges that many of the stories in the Bible are there because they’re so incredibly unusual and outside ordinary experience. Otherwise, they wouldn’t warrant the attention they get in such a (relatively) slim volume. It’s helpful to acknowledge that weirdness and to let yourself imagine how it would feel to be there as part of that story. There are two great benefits to engaging with the text emotionally. First, you remember the text better. Memory is tied closely to emotions, and taking the time to feel the text actually helps you remember it better. Second, you look at the text more closely. The process of looking for the emotions in the text causes you to ask new questions and examine the text in even more detail. The process of doing this will slowly change you. Your way of thinking will transform. Naturally, you will start to change the way you make decisions and live your life; if you don’t, even this level of engagement is nothing but spiritual entertainment. Next week, we will talk about how to read the Bible for the transformation and practical wisdom that is necessary for spiritual growth.
1 Comment
Bonnie Wear
5/15/2020 06:06:14 pm
Just what I need to get most from reading the Bible Bonnie Wear
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
Categories |