Week 5, Day 2: Trust

“Glory to God in heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.” (Luke 2:14)

The world’s first nuclear explosion from the Trinity Test. From Wikimedia Commons

In game theory, there’s a classic illustration called “The Prisoner’s Dilemma.” Two thieves are arrested and each partner winds up with two options: confess and rat out your partner, in which case you’ll go to prison for one year and your partner will go to prison for eight years; or cooperate (stay silent) and you both will get two years in prison. But if you both choose to betray the other, you will both go to prison for five years. While you’re considering your options, you know that your partner has the same choice to make.

How much do you trust your partner? Which choice do you make?

There are different permutations of this problem that change it substantially. What happens if you play several “rounds” in a row? If your partner betrayed you last time, do you betray them this time? Do you choose a cooperative strategy or a competitive one?

Mathematicians, psychologists, and political scientists have been studying game theory since the 1940’s. Research into game theory became much more intense during the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) by the world’s superpowers made such “games” a matter of policy and of life and death. Several game theorists came to the conclusion—and argued to American politicians—that it would be best to preemptively launch nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union.

Mathematician John Nash (the subject of the movie A Beautiful Mind) had a different perspective: goals could be maximized if nations cooperated instead of betraying each other. Thank God policy makers listened and learned about the “Nash Equilibrium” rather than listening to the war hawks!

One of my favorite psychologists, John Gottman, talks about game theory in relation to marriages and family relationships. He explored how spouses engage in strategic choices about such “games” in everything from domestic chores, to financial decisions, to sex. Are the partners cooperating for the best outcome for everyone, or are they competing to minimize their own losses? These games get more complex as we consider games played by larger groups over longer times: families, congregations, or political factions.

Why am I talking about game theory during the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany season? Because I believe that if “Peace on Earth” is to mean anything beyond warm fuzzy feelings and religious platitudes, we have to become conscious of a) our own consciousness and b) the social systems of which we are a part. Being at peace in yourself, or with others, means asking questions like “what am I willing to risk? Who do I trust? Who am I looking out for, and whose interests and values do I prioritize in this situation?”

Let’s be honest: trust is at a minimum these days. I have a hard time trusting institutions or human individuals, and I certainly don’t trust large groups of people to do the right thing. Yet game theory teaches us important things about how to behave when trust is low.

Becoming conscious—of my unreliable perceptions, my automatic responses, and my beliefs—helps me approach questions about relationships and trust more deliberately. If the world is to have peace, it must also work on trust!

Prayer: God, save us from using cynicism to protect ourselves from disappointment. Put trustworthy people in our lives, and help us act for the benefit of all. Amen.

Week 5, Day 1: Preparing for Epiphany

About that time, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. While he was coming up out of the water, Jesus saw heaven splitting open and the Spirit, like a dove, coming down on him. And there was a voice from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.” (Mark 1:9-11)

Adam JonesBaptism of Christ from a church in Axum, Ethiopia. From Wikimedia Commons

Before Christ, “epiphany” meant the manifestation of a god—a showing or an appearance. One arrogant Emperor who lived two centuries before Christ adopted the title “Epiphanes” because he wanted to be worshiped as a god (and he went on to spark a Jewish revolution which is described in the books of Maccabees). The root “phan” is related to light—a light coming into the world.

Christians used the word Epiphany to describe Jesus being revealed to the world, first when the Magi visited him, and then later when he was baptized by John in the Jordan river. (Sometimes we also use the word “theophany”). We celebrate Epiphany on January 6. The twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany are “The Twelve Days of Christmas” (like the song).

Today we say someone “has an epiphany” if they have an insight or a sudden realization. It can mean enlightenment.

I’ve been writing about consciousness during Advent and Christmas because we are on the way to Epiphany. I believe the whole season is an invitation to us, in the darkest part of the year, to have our own epiphany or enlightenment. We have the opportunity to realize something important about ourselves and the world in the story of Christ’s incarnation.

It is impossible to encounter the Living God without a radical reassessment of the self. Ancient people were wise to fear looking at the face of God, who wrapped God’s self in darkness and thick cloud to protect mortal eyes from seeing. One glance at God’s face and you would be unmade. It was too beautiful and terrible to behold. (Just ask Indiana Jones!)

But the God encountered in Jesus was viewable. Here was a face of God that we could put eyes on. But still, encountering Jesus caused people to be radically changed. They could no longer be the same people they had been before. The epiphany we encounter in Christ is like the scripture above: the sky splits open, and a winged creature descends with a message that you are, in fact, a beloved part of a divine family.

I believe we have a built-in need for this kind of epiphany encounter, a radical reset in our lives. The self gets too wrapped up in its own story, believing that its perceptions are accurate, trusting too much in its unconscious reactions and learned habits, buying into the story it tells itself about the world.

When we learn how much of our lives are unconscious, it becomes clear that consciousness takes effort. The more I understand how little I understand, the more space I have to choose to see differently, to react more thoughtfully, to tell a different story than the one my internal critic or my culture are telling me.

In this week preceding epiphany, I’m going to widen the lens to talk about what the extra space consciousness gives us.

Prayer: God, I am your beloved child. Wake me up to all that means. Amen.

Week 4, Day 5: Peace

“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I give to you not as the world gives. Don’t be troubled or afraid.” (John 14:27)

Mystic Nativity, Botticelli, 1500. From Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday I talked about how acceptance leads to equanimity, a place where we can experience deep feelings from ourselves and others without overwhelm or minimizing. Acceptance and equanimity are close cousins of peace.

“Peace” is usually thought of as freedom from conflict or trouble, but the Bible often talks about a peace that passes understanding that can be present in the midst of conflict. Jesus says he gives his peace “not as the world gives.” This peace somehow transcends the circumstances of the moment and connects us to something deeper and more eternal. We live with one foot standing in the turbulent present and another foot standing in the peaceable kingdom.

I think of the nativity scenes we create in miniature all over the world in many different styles: a baby in a manger surrounded by loving parents, working-class shepherds, high-falutin’ foreign astrologers, divine beings (angels), and livestock. It’s a snapshot, a diorama, of a peaceable kingdom. We know from the story in Matthew that just out of the dioarama lurks the paranoid King Herod and soldiers who will commit genocide in this tiny Palestinian village. But for the moment: peace.

Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded the American church that “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” The nativity scenes we create at Christmas do not stick too closely to the gospel in either Matthew or Luke because they reflect an idealized version of the presence of justice, where rich people give away their wealth and workers are welcomed as prophets, where animals and divine beings share space in giving glory to God. Like the peace that Jesus gives, this is not a peace without tension. 

Christians tend to talk about a “peace that passes understanding” that we can have in our hearts as a different kind of thing from the socially just peace described by the prophets, but I think that’s where we go wrong. We cannot separate the interior state from the outer, as though Christ’s peace is something I just hold and nurture in my heart for my illusory self. The peace we have within demands expression in action and words. It bubbles up, like a spring of water, and overflows out of us.

I think one of the reasons the socially just peace is so elusive is that too many people try to hold peace inside of themselves, as if it were an individualistic gift. But Jesus does not give peace as the world gives. This is a gift that must be shared.

Prayer: Holy Spirit of Peace, give us a contagious peace that passes understanding. Amen.

Week 4, Day 4 (Day After Christmas Day): Acceptance

I have learned how to be content in any circumstance. I know the experience of being in need and of having more than enough; I have learned the secret to being content in any and every circumstance, whether full or hungry or whether having plenty or being poor. I can endure all these things through the power of the one who gives me strength (Philippians 4:11-13).

I’ve already mentioned one of the four immeasurables of Buddhism: lovingkindness. The other three are

• universal compassion: feeling the suffering of other beings (and wishing to alleviate it).
• universal joy: celebrating the happiness and delight of other beings.
• equanimity: feeling these things equally and not being perturbed. Remaining steady regardless of circumstance and treating other beings equally.

Equanimity is not a state of indifference. It’s a state of caring deeply for yourself and others, balanced with an awareness that everything is temporary. Someone who possesses equanimity may feel the depths and heights of emotion, but they are not overwhelmed by it. They’ve broadened their capacity to feel. They can “hold space” for their own emotions and others’. They accept what they feel and do not try to minimize it, inflate it, or push it away.

In the bible passage above, Paul is describing an acceptance that leads to equanimity. He says he can accept whatever comes by adopting the attitude of Christ. As someone who experienced shipwreck, imprisonment, ecstatic visions, and loving community, he was able to take it all in and receive it with gratitude. One verse above is often taken out of context and misread as an individualistic battle cry: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!” But I think the CEB translation is better here. Paul can accept whatever comes his way with a peace that passes understanding (which I’ll write about tomorrow).

Hexaflex model of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, from Hulbert-Williams et al. (2016).

“Acceptance” doesn’t mean you agree with injustice or are indifferent to pain (which would go against “universal compassion”). Acceptance is simply making a distinction between what we can and cannot control, welcoming feelings and thoughts as responses to our situation without buying into them completely. We have more capacity for acceptance when we are intentionally present to the moment, recognizing that everything—including our own consciousness—is changing.

Christmas contains such highs and lows. Families gather to celebrate, but they can also open old wounds. People talk about the arrival of Christ but also mourn deaths and the absence of loved ones. Communities gather, but many people feel profoundly, existentially alone even when surrounded by people. Even if you have had an emotional or spiritual high during Christmas, the days or weeks after can leave you feeling depleted.

It is a good time to practice acceptance.

I’m including acceptance as a gift and gateway of consciousness because it can help bring us to the present moment, to awareness of all our thoughts and feelings. As we become more aware of our own awareness, we notice our tendency to flee pain and pursue pleasure. We gain a little space to make better self-directed choices instead of just reacting to the crisis or unpleasantness of the moment.

Prayer: Sustainer of All Life, help me accept the things I cannot change, knowing that this equanimity will help me to be more effective in changing what I can. Amen.

Week 4, Day 3 (Christmas Day): Lovingkindness

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life. (John 3:16)

There is a meditation practice that I try to do occasionally called “lovingkindness meditation,” or metta. It involves consciously bringing up a feeling of universal love, and then extending that love to all the beings in the universe.

Usually, you begin in a meditative state, taking slow, deep breaths. You call to mind someone or something who is relatively easy to love: a partner, family member, or even a pet. There is a mantra that goes along with this visualization: “May you be healthy; may you be happy; may you be safe; may you be at peace.”

The idea here is that love is about wishing for others the same things we wish for ourselves. The early church referred to this as agape love, wishing the good for another. It also causes us to reflect that if we have our needs met, we are more likely to be the best version of ourselves.

You next bring to mind someone who you may not love particularly well, but who you can extend this same wish toward, like an acquaintance. Again, you’re invited to consider that if this person has their needs met, if they have the same things you wish for yourself (health, happiness, safety, peace), you are connected in a way that transcends how you feel about them at any given moment.

You continue bringing others to mind, including yourself and, if you are able, your enemies. After all, if your enemies had what you wish for yourself — health, happiness, safety, peace of mind — it is unlikely that you would still be enemies, right? If they had more love, if they had fewer irrational fears, if they were at peace, would they not be different toward you?

Extending lovingkindness to yourself is, for some people, even more difficult than extending it to your enemies. We see our own flaws magnified, as if through a funhouse mirror. Yet if we had the same things we wish for those we love most, would we not be better versions of ourselves? If we had safety, support, physical health, and fewer worries, wouldn’t we be more patient, disciplined, and forgiving?

Loving others as yourself is one of two bedrock commandments in Christianity (Matthew 22:39). In Hinduism and Buddhism, it is one of four “immeasurables” that you strive for. The practice of metta reminds us that this love is not just a sentimental feeling, but an orientation to the whole cosmos. Roberta Bondi summarizes the goal of Christian monasticism this way: to love as God loves — impartially, completely, “like sunshine or rain,” falling on the evil and the good, as Jesus said (Matthew 5:45).

Christmas reveals that God’s very nature is love (1 John 4:8). I believe that as we become more conscious, we begin to notice love at the heart of all things. Like awe and gratitude, lovingkindness is both a gift and a gateway of consciousness. It helps us become more fully ourselves.

Prayer: Love Divine, be born in the world again, at every moment, and in me. Amen.

Week 4, Day 2 (Christmas Eve): Gratitude

Brother David Steindl-Rast has been called “The Grandfather of Gratitude.” Two of my favorites quotes of his are below:

“Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.”

And

“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.”

I believe gratefulness is another gift and gateway of consciousness, or as Brother David says here, “aliveness.” If you allow yourself to be in awe of your own life, of the color that comes to your eyes or the sound that comes to your ears, it would be difficult to be ungrateful. Steindl-Rast says that gratitude is the beginning of spirituality.

Brother David says gratitude is not just about being thankful for good things that happen to us. We are happy because we are grateful, not grateful because we are happy.

“Neural correlates of gratitude. Medial Prefrontal activity correlating with participants’ gratitude ratings.” from Wikimedia Commons. Source article here.

Gratitude activates the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). These brain regions are also involved in attention, emotional awareness, and social activity. They are also, not surprisingly, activated by prayer and mindfulness meditation.

I began this week with awe because I think awe is a more reliable path to gratitude than good fortune. Good things may happen for us or to us, and we may feel fortunate or happy without feeling particularly grateful. Gratitude comes from regarding more and more of what comes to us as a gift, and for me, the first gift is simply that I’m here. I am conscious. That I can experience anything at all is a gift. From my awareness, I can work my gratitude outward to the rest of the world. I can also be grateful to the giver—whoever or whatever she is.

Another author who has been my teacher in gratitude is Robin Wall-Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist and essayist who wrote Braiding Sweetgrass. She describes a version of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, a liturgy in which people take turns thanking each other, the Creator, Mother Earth, waters, fish, plants, animals, and so on. At the end of each stanza, the people say, “Now our minds are one.” The act of deliberately giving thanks in community bridges human differences and makes one voice out of many.

In the same way that my consciousness expands to include other people, our shared gratitude connects us as a community. We are not just a collection of individual minds: our minds are one.

I’m reminded of the sacrament of the Church: Communion, or the Lord’s Supper. The liturgy for it is called The Great Thanksgiving. It is a summary of the events of the Bible with the climax being Jesus’s last meal with his disciples. In that moment he held up a loaf a bread and said, “This is my body, given for you.”

It is fitting that his first cradle was a feeding trough, which we call a “manger.” Manger is a French verb meaning “to eat.” Our life, our eating together, and God’s incarnation and mission are all part of the same gift.

The Christmas story prefigures the Last Supper. The whole of Christ’s incarnation, God’s self-giving love, is reflected in this moment like a prism with many facets. We see this outpouring of God’s grace from many different angles, and I am overwhelmed on Christmas Eve with awe and gratitude.

Prayer: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Amen.

Week 4, Day 1: Awe

For the joy of ear and eye,
for the heart and mind’s delight,
for the mystic harmony,
linking sense to sound and sight;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise. (“For the Beauty of the Earth,” by Folliot S. Pierpoint, 1864)

Sombrero Galaxy, Hubble Space Telescope. From Wikimedia Commons

Becoming conscious is not an achievement: it is a gift. In the fourth week of this Advent-Epiphany devotional, I would like to turn to examine these gifts and gateways of consciousness.

In most of our daily life, we are barely conscious. We are unaware that our brain is actively working to keep continuity in what we see and hear until we are confronted with an illusion that makes us question our senses. We emote and act without thinking, relying on millions of years of conditioned reactions and a lifetime of programmed habits. We believe the stories we tell about ourselves. These are all ways we function without being conscious.

It isn’t “wrong” to move through a day this way. It’s natural. We can’t be conscious of our unconscious processes all the time: If I were to pay attention to how I’m walking, for example, it would suddenly become difficult to keep my balance or put one foot in front of the other. It’s easier to hand off this task to the unconscious part of my brain that makes walking feel normal. My unconscious brain is fast and efficient. My conscious brain is slower and more deliberate.

But life becomes much richer when I set aside time to become conscious, to marvel during mindfulness meditation at the way this body breathes all by itself, or to wonder at how my visual system creates color from chemical reactions in my retina. If I take time to notice, the act of noticing itself becomes a profound mystery, as the hymn above says. Neuroscientists are still discovering the “mystic harmony linking sense to sound and sight.” When I take time to marvel at consciousness itself, I find myself in awe.

Awe is a doorway into consciousness, helping us become more aware. Keltner and Haidt (2003) suggest that awe includes 1) a sense of vastness and 2) a need for accommodation. “Vastness” can be the experience of something big (like the Grand Canyon) or majestic (the musical sweep of a symphony) or even the presence of a beloved person or celebrity. This second experience, accommodation, relates to what my colleague Melissa Scott calls “right-sizing” (which I mentioned in an earlier post). We have to adjust our cognitive framework to fit new information. Sometimes this right-sizing means I see myself and my problems as much smaller. Sometimes it means feeling the gaze of God on me, as if I were the only one in the universe. We may feel simultaneously humbled and beloved.

Appraisal tendency framework applied to awe (Stellar et al., 2017). From Wikimedia Commons

In religious practice, we try to create such moments in worship with music, words, and ritual. I often feel such awe during a Christmas Eve candlelight service. We can also experience it in nature, although “chasing” awe in any setting can leave us feeling underwhelmed. I believe with practice or insight, we can also experience awe in very mundane moments. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about mindfully washing dishes and thanking them for their service.

The Christmas story evokes this kind of awe with the juxtaposition of highs and lows, divine and mundane: God as a baby in a feeding-trough. Angels appearing to shepherds. Ancient prophecies side-by-side with the frustration of finding a room in a crowded city.

And just as we often hear calls to “make Christmas last all year,” I think it is good to go into Christmas deliberately holding the door open for awe, letting ourselves become porous, so that we can be brought into a deeper consciousness of the mystery of God and of our own consciousness. Psychopharmacologist Roland Griffiths liked to ask, “Are you aware that you are aware?” We have the opportunity in Advent and Christmas to experience not only God’s incarnation, but our own.

Prayer: Awesome God, strike us with awe. Let us feel a deep reverence for all life and all experience.

Week 3, Day 5: Beyond the Self

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:13-14)

Moses and the Burning Bush, by Richard Simon, from Wikimedia Commons

Rene Descartes’ most famous quote is “I think, therefore I am.” His thought experiment involved questioning his perceptions of the world until he came to something he couldn’t deny: in order to have thoughts, there must be a thinker. There is an irreducible “I.” But consciousness is so slippery that researchers question even this “self-evident” truth. The thinking brain is less like an “I” and more like a committee!

In this series, I’ve been following a trail about consciousness: I am not my perceptions (week 1). I am not my thoughts or behaviors (week 2). I am not the story I tell myself about myself (week 3). What am I, exactly? What is this thing that believes it is thinking and experiencing?

Is it possible to have consciousness without a self at all? To experience “pure consciousness?” Some experienced meditators and psychedelic psychonauts describe such a state, where the self disappears and we feel connected to all things. We can use a magnetic field (fMRI machines) to look at brain activity and see that there are places in the brain that get quiet when people have such experiences. These brain systems maintain a separation between “I” and others and the rest of the world. With regular meditation, I can train these brain systems to relax.

Some refer to this experience as “ego death,” and report a variety of benefits from it: an increase in the feeling of awe at simple things; an ability to re-author the story I tell about myself; an enduring or residual feeling of connectedness to the universe and community of all living things. The “death” itself can be terrifying and disorienting, and it can lead to adverse effects for both meditators and psychonauts. (I have to point out that I’ve met more than a few meditators and psychonauts who’ve experienced “ego death” who have grandiose egos.) But usually people talk about ego death as a cathartic, liberating experience.

A lot of CBT psychotherapy involves helping people to understand that you are not your thoughts. Thoughts emerge from the matrix of your firing neurons, and then they subside. In meditation you practice watching your thoughts come and go. We can sometimes be fooled into believing our thoughts: “Nobody loves me,” “It’s pointless to try,” and so on. Sometimes it is difficult to divest from these thoughts because as false and painful as they are, they maintain a consistent sense of self. Losing the self can feel like death.

I think God’s own name may be an affirmation of pure consciousness: “I AM.” God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being, and there is nothing outside this “I AM” which is separate from God. Moses the shepherd has a revelation of God’s name as he stands in front of a burning bush. There’s a similar revelation of God’s character as shepherds kneel beside the manger. The Christmas story describes a bridge between the flame and the breathing infant opening eyes on the world for the first time.  

Prayer: Great I AM, I barely know what I am, but I long to know you better.

Week 3, Day 4: Expanding the Self

…what are humans that you are mindful of them,
    mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God
    and crowned them with glory and honor. (Psalm 8:4-5)

Mask Shop in Lome, Togo, by Philip Nalangan, from Wikimedia Commons

As we go through life, our sense of self continues to expand and change. We may identify with our roles (“I’m a sibling, grandparent, citizen”) or our job (“I’m an architect, plumber, pastor, activist”) or our goals, values, and personal projects (“I’m just trying to be happy”).

We might grieve the loss of a job or a role and feel like part of our self has gone missing. When a family member dies, we may grieve the loss of a loved one, but also grieve the loss of who we were in relation to that person. If we lose a job or a career window closes, we may feel unmoored. As I’ve shifted from being a full-time pastor to bivocational counselor, I’ve had to adjust my own sense of self and mission in the world.

In our normal everyday life, we take our sense of self for granted. We look through it, rather than at it. Like our perceptions and automatic reactions, our self becomes part of our consciousness rather than something we actually notice.

A healthy sense of self has to be both stable and flexible. If we live long enough, everything about us will change: body, family, groups, beliefs, roles, and jobs. Some of those changes will be in our control, but many will not. We know intuitively that we need a self, a core, a set of values or a “north star” that doesn’t change with circumstance.

Donald Winnicott was an English psychoanalyst and developmental theorist who fleshed out this idea of “true self” and “false self” in the 1950’s and 60’s. He used them to describe the way we often protect our true needs and feelings by wearing a mask. He believed that a child needs “good enough” parents and opportunity to play to develop the creativity and core identity that would let them have a stable, flexible sense of self.

Certain areas of the brain play a crucial role in maintaining a sense of self. The ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) seems to help maintain a sense of self through time. A cluster of several regions call the default mode network (DMN) creates a narrative about self. The DMN can also get caught in a negative loop of worry or rumination, and shifting its storytelling patterns is part of treating depression and anxiety.

I believe the story of the incarnation has the power to shift our story about the self. By slipping into a body and becoming a self that included but also transcended his job as a builder, his beliefs as a Jew, or his role as a son, God-in-Christ raises questions about our own sense of self. As various layers of the self are stripped away, we begin to understand that our primary identity is simply this: Beloved.

Prayer: Creator, what are human beings that you are mindful of them? What am I? Only your love makes us real. Amen.

Week 3, Day 3: Self as Believer

“But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31)

Annunciation from 13th century Targmanchats Gospel, from Wikimedia Commons

Our sense of self begins very concrete, but then becomes more abstract over time. As children, we tend to think of “me” as “my body,” but as we enter adolescence we begin to think of the self as a member of a group. And as we move through adolescence into young adulthood, our brains continue to develop the ability to think abstractly. Our sense of self becomes more abstract as well. Some of us identify the self with our beliefs.

This is why churches who want to perpetuate themselves have youth programs. Research into belief formation has shown for decades that most of our core beliefs and identities are well established by the time we are in our early twenties. People who have not become Christians by the time they are young adults will likely never become part of a church. The proportion of new converts drops sharply after humans reach adulthood.

I’ve been in the church business long enough to understand that the most successful conversion efforts focus first on belonging (group identity and safety), and then believing. Folks who try to argue atheists into becoming believers (this kind of argument is called “apologetics”) rarely succeed; they really only reinforce their own beliefs and group identity as they experience rejection and derision from “outsiders.”

I’m using the word “believing” here to mean adopting a philosophy of the world and how it works, or learning to trust in certain belief systems. Most of us cobble together a worldview based on our own experiences, received wisdom from our communities and groups, religious rituals and traditions, and spiritual intuitions. We come to identify the self with these worldviews: “I’m a Christian,” or “I’m spiritual but not religious,” or “I’m an anarchist,” or “I’m a libertarian.” It can be both a way of seeing the world and a theory of how to change it.  

Becoming conscious means becoming aware of these beliefs, both the explicit ones we can put into words and the implicit ones that we may find more difficult to express. In the same way that optical illusions make us aware of the effect of our perceptions on our own consciousness, we often only become aware of our beliefs when something challenges them. Some core belief of ours runs up against reality, or a contradictory story, and we have to make a choice of whether to hang on to the old belief or adjust our way of seeing and interpreting the world.

Belief is an important part of our identity. It connects us with our groups and gives us a framework for understanding our place in the universe.

David Benner in Spirituality and the Awakening Self describes this process as ever-expanding circles of self-understanding. Yes, I am a body, but I’m more than a body. I’m an American, but I’m more than my nationality. I’m a Christian, but I’m more than my religion. Some belief systems find this personal growth threatening, so they develop belief systems to put the brakes on the expansion of the self. Questioning old beliefs is perceived as backsliding or as dangerous to one’s salvation.

Yet at the heart of a belief in God is an understanding that we can never fully grasp the infinite. It is idolatry to confuse my beliefs about God with who God actually is. And when our beliefs become more important than our neighbor’s freedom and well-being, that’s when religious persecution begins. When we are most honest with ourselves, our beliefs are really a best-guess or a wager.

I see the Christmas story not so much as something to believe in, like a set of doctrines about God or Jesus, or the reality of the virgin birth and choirs of angels. I see it instead as something to believe through, or a story that stretches belief, that makes us question the binaries we invent between human and divine, power and powerlessness. It’s meant, I think, to push us toward an encounter with God-in-the-flesh.

Prayer: Lord, where beliefs as doctrines fall short, help me to trust in something that cannot be put into words. I believe; help my unbelief.