The ultimate cause of change in every individual is the choice to think or not think. I believe the brain is the physical organ that thinks. The soul is the eternal part of you that constantly chooses between thinking and not thinking.
Your brain works in feedback loops. Let's look at two.
If we take a Big Picture view of this chapter, we see that electrical information in our cortex and emotional perceptions in our amygdala combine to determine the information that is sent to all of our cells. And since the ability to anticipate and change our emotional perceptions depends on how conscious we are of stimuli in the past, it seems that ultimately, our ability to store and access information is a primary cause to our ability to experience a positive emotion and deal with a negative emotion. How is information stored in the cortex?
God wants us to choose to reason...to think intentionally...to participate in meta-cognition. What does this process look like objectively?
I believe God has purposely taken me through the experiences I've had in order to teach others how to think. This is the process I use when I help people out of a crisis...because the only time most people are willing to participate in meta-cognition is when they have to...when they have a problem. There are four steps:
1. What is the objective? (What is the desired effect?)
-Is there more than one objective?
-Is the objective in your control?
-Is the objective IS or OUGHT?
-How are the terms associated with the objective defined?
2. What are your options?
3. What do you know for sure is not possible?
4. Why is the option not possible?
The goal of "Modeling God" is to help people understand their Bible and hear from God more clearly and more often. The models presented in "Modeling God" increase the connections in the brain with relation to the Bible...the individual understands the Bible more and more quickly...this motivates people to read their Bible more often. However, there is a dark side to this process...
The worst thing we can do is encourage people not to think, embrace contradiction, celebrate mystery, not look for patterns, live in denial, and try to feel good about how we can't know or aren't supposed to know. This is LUKEWARM. This is an intentional effort to resist the "unaware brain" and the result is connections are broken, trees are burned, and the rest of the body is open to illness. There is nothing worse than this...because it ultimately leads to everything else that is bad.
I now know why most of the people under 30 years old like "Modeling God" and the overwhelming majority of people over 30 years old detest "Modeling God"...most of the people over 30 years old have damaged brains. Most of the people under 30 years old haven't completely damaged their brains. How do peoples' brains get damaged? There are two main ways...
First, people emotional, mentally, and spiritually abuse each other. Isn't it interesting that we put people in jail for physical abuse, yet we will look the other way with mental, emotional, and spiritual abuse? Is this what the Bible says we OUGHT to do?
It seems to me the Bible tells us to take physical abuse (turn the other cheek) and flee from mental, emotional, and spiritual abuse (false doctrine)...yet the church, especially when it comes to marriage, actually teaches the opposite response. Who is right: the church or the Bible? Why is there a discrepancy between the church and the Bible?
Second, the church is actively teaching people under 30 years old that they OUGHT to not think, embrace contradiction, celebrate the mystery, and try to feel good about how we can't know or aren't supposed to know: post-modernism and Calvinism. Recently, a study found that 89% of kids who are raised going to church, don't attend church after graduating high school...basically, after they are out from under their parents control and aren't forced to go.
CONCLUSION
We’ve seen in this book that man-made tradition hinders God’s Word and Will.
We’ve seen that church currently is not teaching God’s doctrines in some very important and public areas.
We’ve seen that God’s Will occurs through people who have enough value.
We’ve seen that God provided church, marriage, and handling injustice well as the three ways to generate value to bring about God’s Will.
We’ve seen that man-made tradition hinders all three areas.
We’ve seen that the four principles (non-contradiction, contrastive thinking, causality, and growth) not only repair the brain, they are the tools needed to determine the meaning of God’s Word and Will.
We know God’s Will eventually occurs, however it is up to us how much pain we need to experience before we give up our traditions and embrace God’s doctrine.
How much damage will we have to do and experience before we change?
Do pastors have to get sued for “malpractice”…getting paid for being God’s representative but actually teaching a doctrine that caused people to live in unprofitability and bondage for years of their lives?
Do churches have to get sued for damaging peoples’ brains?
The worst thing a person can do is try to ignore information that they know is true. Attempting to live in denial is LUKEWARM…it is a statement of the will of the individual.
The Pharisees chose to try and ignore the information they received from Jesus.
When are we going to go HOT?
Now that you have read this book, What are you going to do?
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