Your Brain on Grace

I was watching Morning Joe on MSNBC this week while huffing and puffing on my Nordic Trac and heard Tina Brown talk about an upcoming feature article in Newseek on America's "spending addiction" and our need, as individuals and as a nation, to make some changes.  Click here for the article itself.

What caught my attention was her comment to the effect - I've not been able to locate the segment on video - that researchers are able to identify differences between "spending brains" and "saving brains" at the level of brain chemistry and synapses.  There's more in the article, and I'll leave the policy implications to others, for now.

Since then, I've been pondering the prospect of potentially similar differences between a "grace brain" and a "works brain."  The flights of fancy on this theme appear endless!

• This is certainly part of what David is praying in Psalm 51:10 - Create in me a pure heart, O God.  That new creation would have physical changes in the organ we call the brain.
• Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. - Romans 12:2 - Indeed!  And perhaps track it with "functional magnetic resonance imaging?"
• II Corinthians 5:17 - "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come." Is that new creation discernible on the level of brain chemistry?
•  Are there possibilities here for discipleship?  How about job interviews for new staff?

OK - So some of this is early morning silliness, but doesn't this speak to the depth of our need for the transformation of the Gospel?  The "sin nature" that we inherit?  Part of the way that Scripture meditation changes us?  Contemplative prayer?  Why real change sometimes seems so slow?

I could go on, but I've got to hit the Nordic Trac before the day gets too far along.  This time, I'm watching ESPN!