#108 | God on Your Brain, Pt. 2 | Jim Wilder

When it comes to teaching human brains how to act like Jesus, everybody's getting uniformly less encouraging results than they want to roll.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host. And today on our show, we're having another one of our.

Deep conversations.

This week's deep conversation is part two of my conversation with author, professor and chief neurotheologian, Dr. Jim Wilder.

In part one, Jim helped us to see how brain science is confirming something that Christians should know but seem to have lost in our world today. And that's this. Our relationships are incredibly important. They're incredibly important to forming who we are and how we can become like Jesus.

You know, we often talk about how the Bible forms us, and rightly so, but rarely do we ever talk about how our everyday relationships form us.

This week we're going to continue along that path in really what is a far ranging discussion that includes the connection between shame and status in our modern society. We are dredging up some really heavy stuff.

How our brains go into what is called enemy mode and relational modes when we're communicating with people.

And what Jim likes to call the life model works, which is this really cool tool and organization that Jim helped develop to link brain science with the Bible to create what is simple, practical tools for churches to build authentic community. That's what I'm talking about.

It's a listening must for those who want to go deeper in their walk with Christ as we seek to understand how our brain works in shaping us in the day to day relationships of life. Happy listening.

But it seems to me that there is a rise or a rediscovery of this idea of honor and shame in our, in our cancel culture. And what you seem to have drawn out is this is actually very, very biblical. That.

And you mentioned there's a difference between healthy shame and, and toxic shame. Because I've heard some people say, oh, shame is evil, biblically speaking.

Not.

Not necessarily. We're hoping to have Taylee Lau on and he's basically saying defending shame from Paul's perspective because shame has a formative aspect.

We don't perform to our culture's understanding or to the true pursuit of who we are in that collective idea. Is that correct?

Yeah. Several times Paul says to the Corinthians, for instance, I say this to your shame.

He's Intentionally producing shame when they're not acting like the people God created them to be.

And again, to say real quickly for your audience, the difference between healthy shame and toxic shame is a toxic shame simply tells you what's wrong with you. Healthy shame says, here's what's wrong with you, because you're not being your true self, which would be like this.

And it's that encouragement to be who we were meant to be that makes shame helpful. If I just tell you, you know, you're mean and leave it there, it doesn't really tell you who you were meant to be.

If I say, you know, that was kind of mean, and, you know, the person that God wants to grow in you is really a kind person. So let's go back and revisit that and see what Jesus can show you about being kind. That is now very healthy shame.

Do you find that the cultures that you do this with because you've traveled all over doing this, do they resonate with that concept? Or. Or do they. Do they. Do they disagree?

Well, let's just say the European cultures have difficulty with it, but Asian cultures are translating this stuff as fast as they can.

And when I go over to Asian cultures, like speaking Korea or Thailand or places like that, the number one topic they want me to talk about is this honor and shame business. Because in many ways, even in honor cultures, toxicity can build up.

And so we're all looking for ways to reduce the toxicity of our cultural patterns and make room for us to grow something new. And honor is very close to the center of this for Middle Eastern, Asian, African, South American people coming out of Muslim backgrounds.

Yeah, so it's usually the Northern Europeans who are most focused on. I just have to be right, and it's harder for them to grasp. So the. The response there is slower to these honor concepts, but the.

The honor concepts, as there is a revival or a refocus on it in the west under different language, cancel culture, that kind of thing. I still see a lot of the principles at work with honor in a different culture. And I remember reading it was Jason Georges.

He wrote a book called 3D Gospel. And in it he does.

He's a part of the honor Shame network, which is kind of a course, a new focus or drawing attention from a Western perspective back on something that many of the west have not been familiar with, but those who in Asian cultures are already too familiar with. But I remember him talking about shame. And this is a question that I've had for some time. So help me out here.

Is Shame something that we are, or is it something we experience? Because the way that it was communicated to me was in a culture such as, like India, you experience shame.

You don't just experience it, you become it.

And the only way that you can.

Get out of it is if someone's in a higher social position that helps lift you out. Whereas in honor, innocence, guilt society, we declare our guilt and then offer a confession, restitution, and then we're restored in the public eye.

But in a shame culture per se, it's not necessarily like that. But from a brain science perspective, and what you've seen is that the same, is that different? How does that work?

Well, again, you've come up with a nice complex question. I think it's probably crossing two things in the brain that are, that are mixed together in culture. One is status and the other is shame.

The brain is wired for seven major emotions, six of which are unpleasant, and the one pleasant one is joy. So joy means I'm very glad to be with you. The opposite of joy is the shame wiring in the brain.

And it's a response to when what I'm doing doesn't bring you joy. So it is the sort of the alarm circuit for the joy circuit.

You might say, now if, when I'm not bringing you joy, I have a chance to correct that, then shame does not become topic toxic.

If I don't, if once I do something that shames you, and Brazil, for instance, another one place on our hemisphere that has really great difficulty ever recovering from shame because it lowers your status, the brain is even more responsive to status cues than it is to emotional cues.

So to figure out your gender, if I'm looking at you using the standard formulation, a binary worldview, you might say, to use the current language, it takes me 150 milliseconds to figure out if you're male and female, to figure out whether your social status is higher or lower than mine takes me 40 milliseconds, about a fourth of the amount of time. So I'm very, very, very sensitive to whether something is raising or lowering my status.

Now, when I go particularly to, I would say, Buddhist and Hindu cultures, the ones that believe in reincarnation within their worldview, is there's no way to improve your status this incarnation, you can only wait till the next one. And so there's a vast amount of hopelessness built into that incur, that reincarnation view for this particular round.

But status is something that if we look at Jesus during his time, the highest status you could have and still be human was a demigod, and a demigod had a father who was a God and a mother who was a human. So along comes Jesus, who has got a father who's a God and a mother who's a human. He's got the highest of all status.

It's basically bulletproof within the cultures of the time. You can't get higher than the status. And Jesus basically says, you know, because my status is bulletproof, you can't lower my status.

No human being has the capacity to do so. Whether you try to humiliate me or not, you can't lower my status, but I can raise yours.

The option of you also becoming a child of God who would have human parents and a divine parent is something he opens to other people. So the status view that you can have your status raised, but you can't raise it for yourself is very compatible with what Jesus says.

And so we find he's got no worries at all about having anyone try to lower his status.

And he goes to all the low status people and you know, women, prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, you know, and he raises their status and he says, you can have the same status that I have of being this person with a father who's God and a mother who is human, and that's the second birth and all these different kinds of things that we talk about. But that's a little separate, you see.

But it very quickly could mix since usually if I do something that brings shame on my people, they want to lower my status to, you know, you're not one of, you're not a member of my people in good standing.

And so I think it's the, the, these two things coming together in some of those cultures that are making it hard to sort out, you know, what is shame and what is status? Status very hard to move. Shame comes and goes very quickly as an emotion response.

But something that causes shame can also really, you know, take the wind out of your status. That makes sense to you?

Oh, no, it completely makes sense to me. And it actually kind of confirms something that we studied a while back.

We've gone through Matthew chapter six, where Jesus tells the Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. And he talks about the birds of the air and how they, you know, in the flowers of the field.

But it's interesting, most Westerners look at it and they go, well, I have food, I've got clothing, I've got shelter, I'm all good, I'm all Good. And I remember reading a book some years ago talking about poverty.

But they said poverty, we in the west think of it as in terms of goods, what one has, whereas those in rather parts of the world see it more within the relationships that they have. Like I can't provide a gift for that my child to give it a birthday party. And there's a feeling of shame with that.

And I remember then looking at Matthew 6 where Jesus is saying there, he mentions clothing more than he mentions anything else.

And really what he's saying there is that seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and even the status that this clothing buys will be taken care of you as well. So this relational aspect is what I'm starting to see. I mean, you bring the brain science, the cultural part to the fore.

And that's why I wanted to talk with you because as my wife started sharing the concepts at first I was thrown off because it requires a great deal of tweaking of language. I mean, she would say, well that's so left brained of you.

And I'm like, well what, I have a full brain, you know, you call me left brain or right brain.

And then I'd hear other women say this to the point where I'm like, I don't like anything that requires me to change my entire language of what I know, what the scripture says. So I thought I'm going to investigate this myself. Not necessarily as a skeptic, but you know, I can't put aside who I am either.

I like a good skeptic.

Well, but I, I loved it because the more that I read and when I found out that this was done in a cross cultural context at Apollos Water, we want to show people the word of God in context, but also hold on to the mission of God as it's being worked out in the world and we kind of see ourselves and I joked about this, that we're like Toby Maguire's Spider man on the front of a train is it's getting ready to careen off of a track and we're holding on to the word of God on one side and holding onto the mission of Go, trying to keep the church in the west from going off the track. Because the church in the west has become this performance driven entertainment show where they used, they used the truth of Christ for salvation.

But it's so, I don't want to say myopic, but surface level that there's not an understanding of the, of the transcendent transformation that occurs. Because like you, I'm Seeing a. An awareness where people say these things.

But then you look at the operation and how it's occurring within churches, especially within leadership that are all measuring in the. The measurables that there's not a relational understanding.

Because as one man in India told me, it's one thing to pay for the elephant, it's another thing to feed it. And it becomes this institution we have to feed. And here you're calling people back to the relational aspect of true transformation.

That's not just cerebral, but it's holistic in its nature. And as you were coming up with this, I mean, I see the different pieces that you've written, they all build off the kind of. The life model works.

You even talk about the Pandora's problem, the narcissism in church. There's so many different ways to go with this honor and shame idea.

But you said that you're seeing the Asian cultures can't translate this fast enough. What are the cultures that you do find that are most drawn to this?

And I think you've already alluded to it with Korea and then you mentioned the Western Europeans have a harder time. But what are the cultures that really have. It's taken fire in that culture. Is it Korea? Are you seeing this in India?

And how many cultures is the life model works that you are aware of in.

Yeah, I would have to say that the places where they still understand the concept of elder as a person who's responsible for the growth or identity of a community, whatever culture still retains that tends to absorb the life model very, very quickly. Doesn't have any bearing on their education.

So when I talk to people with second grade educations, but they barely speak a language in common with me. But we begin to talk about this knowing God and loving God and seeing others and becoming part of spiritual people.

So they have a sense of identity as a people. You see, they know what that is. Even if they're not at home with the people that.

That they call their own, if that remains, the life model is absorbed very, very quickly. And so far we've get a pretty good representation from almost every continent except Antarctica.

We're not making progress with the penguins, but me, the South Sea Islanders respond very well. Asian cultures, with the exception of perhaps North Korea, North Korea has been so traumatized that the whole idea of relationship is now been.

It's kind of dangerous to have relationship with anybody.

And some of the previous countries that were behind the iron curtain where relationships again became quite dangerous, they approached this all very cautiously, like, do I really want to trust anybody again. Middle east refugees are responding well. Yeah.

Even the Europeans have a small contingent of people who are just saying the church, the way I've experienced it hasn't worked for us well. And we're very good at arguing with each other but we're still not acting like Jesus is supposed to are absorbing these things.

But I'd have to say how many cultures we've got in were translated our works into only about 14 languages. But it's very quickly absorbed into those more traditional cultures like Africa, Asia, South America and the South Sea Islanders and Asia.

And we're having harder. The farther you go north and the more you have to be right, the harder it is for people to accept.

So that's keeping us from the regions of the world that are coldest.

We're going to take a quick break.

And hear a word from our sponsors and we'll be right back. The most important Bible translation is the one you read at Apollos Watered.

We use several different translations translations when we're studying, preaching or teaching. But again and again we keep coming back to the new living translation, the nlt. That's why we are excited to partner together.

We are united in the belief that understanding the Bible changes everything. Because if you can't understand it, then you won't read it.

We want you to know the God of the Bible to water your faith so that you you will water your world. That's why we recommend getting an nlt. It's the Bible in the language we speak. It's not foreign or complicated, but up close and personal.

To save some Money, go to Tyndale.com use the promo code NLTBIBLES. It will give you 15% off. There's an NLT for everyone from kids to adults. Devotional Bibles, study Bibles and so much more.

Get one today because understanding the Bible changes everything. And the NLT is the Bible you can understand.

How are people then in North America receiving it? As you said before, there's a high value for truth, but not necessarily on relationship.

And with the church being so divided now, we had George Yancey, a sociologist out of Baylor on and wrote the book One Faith no More, where they were looking at Christianity in red and blue America and basically concluded that between conservative Christianity and progressive Christianity they felt that there were two different religions at its core in the research that they came up with because the foundation was so different.

And he said rather than just seeing the conservatives as political, which is what we thought when we started the research, that progressives were actually much more political in their mindset.

However, when I see churches today and I talk to different pastors, they say that they've never seen their own church so divided, even as people are moving across states and moving into places where their belief systems are much more supported, whichever case that may be. How does the life model transcend that and unite people? Have you seen that at all? Or is that asking?

Is that something that you haven't even bridged yet, or have you heard anything about it? I know there's a lot of questions there, but take a stab.

Well, the current book that we have in the works is pretty well focused on the issues you just brought up. The brain actually has a state which we are calling enemy mode. Enemy mode? Yes.

When your brain drops into that, anything you say or do will be assumed to be the point of view, an enemy. You're not on my side. And so the goal in enemy mode is always to win. And when you're winning, you will not.

You know, any damage I do to you is actually beneficial to my side. If I make you look stupid, it's better for me if I, you know, make you look ignorant or whatever it is. And so whatever.

Those conversations that take place during enemy mode do not actually resolve the alienation between people.

So we're actually attempting some experiments between African American churches and white churches and some of the other groups that have been alienated most classically, to see if we can make some of the basic Christian processes and practices work to get people out of enemy mode by basically approaching the logic that the Bible says I should love my enemies. So as soon as you start feeling like my enemy, that is the spot where we start to work on our Christianity.

You might remember earlier I said that the places in the world where people have in mind that they have to love their enemies are the places where Christianity the most vibrant. So the very fact that we are now becoming enemies between these different red and blue places might actually work to our advantage.

We're currently testing that sort of experimentally to see if it'll work, but that's kind of where our learning curve is at the moment.

But going back for a second, addressing this book that you're writing, There was an article that came out in the Atlantic the other day, and it was about a man who had gone to two different churches outside of Detroit. And he.

And I hope that I don't get the details incorrect, but in it he said one of the pastors had a church of about 300 and another one had a church of about 100 before the pandemic started, he said.

But one of them was challenging his congregation because he saw the nationalism that was taking root, the love for conspiracy theories, the just the promulgation of it everywhere or the propagation of it, just pushing it, doing all of these different things. And he said at one of his gatherings with his church, he put up one of the liberal senators in Minnesota's photo. I think it's.

I don't want to get her name correct, but Senator Omar, who is more from a Muslim background and more of a progressive, and he was talking about Jesus loving your enemies. And he gave different pictures and people said yes. And he put her up and he said, are we supposed to love her? And it was very, very quiet.

When is enemy mode or is it ever correct? Yes, we're to love our enemies. But even Jes says, you know, you brood of vipers, you know, tell that Fox Herod. I mean, he.

How do we differentiate between loving our enemies on that one hand and then separating ourselves and calling something evil at the same time?

So the thing about enemy mode, once your brain is in enemy mode, is that it no longer is calculating the least harmful alternative. So a chokehold versus just subduing you and taking you to the jail are kind of the same, but the chokehold is faster.

So the least harmful alternative doesn't get calculated. When we're dealing with enemies from a biblical point of view, we still have to be thinking, what's the least harmful alternative?

And it doesn't mean that we don't understand how they think, but we don't also fall into that my win is making you lose perspective. Actually, our win is making them raise their status to being children of God like we are.

And in fact, the more annoying they are, the probably the farther they are from who God meant them to be.

And if we're trying to help them become who God meant them to be, the more egregiously different they are, the more the love of God is supposed to support us and go like, yeah, there's somebody who really needs me, so let's go after that as opposed to, well, there's somebody who's going, you know, we'll win. If you can make them lose. And that's what enemy mode does to your brain. It's for yours.

We'll win if you lose, as opposed to my win, is helping you become who you were meant to be. So I don't think we ever want to get into enemy mode deliberately, but the actual answer is not to keep ourselves out of it.

Because your brain goes into enemy mode very easily and, well, just slides right into it. Sort of like the difference between going down a hill on a toboggan and having to walk it back up the hill again.

Getting out of enemy mode is much harder. And to do that, we have to connect with the mind of Christ. Okay, so this is somebody who doesn't wish me well.

You know, how does your kingdom see this? What is our kingdom strategy?

And one of the things that we don't want any of our enemies to do, which gets back to the other part, is to mistake what they're doing is what God wants.

Right, Right.

So if we allow them to be deluded and think, oh, that's God's going to love what you're doing now, you know, we would have to still denounce something, but then we have to add to that, you know, and that's not who God means you to be. And let me help you become the person God wants you to be. If we don't add that to it now, we've just stayed enemies.

It's much easier to describe than it is to do, I might add.

You also talk about this in this. This rare leadership. And I want to transition a little bit because RARE is an acronym. Remain relational, Acting like yourself.

Return to joy and then endure hardship. Well, right. In this rare leadership. Describe that for a moment. Those four points in the rare leadership and what that is.

Well, first of all, that acronym is something that Dr. Marcus Warner came up with, and I do so poorly with acronyms that before this call, I went and looked it up so I could remember.

I love it.

That's great. You're being your authentic self.

Yeah. So that's how I happened to know.

So good.

Yeah. So here's the remaining. First of all, one way to summarize the whole thing is how to stay yourself under pressure and to say yourself.

We're talking about the person God means you to be. In some cases, we haven't really even developed that very well. But remaining relational is the first characteristic.

We want to stay connected with God. So what he says to us is important. And when we're staying connected to God, so what he says to us is important.

By the Way, if you switch off the relational part of your brain, you hear what God is saying, but it doesn't strike you as important. It strikes you maybe as annoying.

I've had a number of people say something like, you know, you can take that Bible verse and do something with it, you know.

Oh, we've all had that, I'm sure. Yeah.

So, you know, the, the message that would have touched their heart didn't because their brain was in a non relational state. They took that as an enemy attack to make them feel bad or something. So remain relational is that connection with God.

And people always say, well, do I want to stay relational with somebody that you know I don't like? And my answer to that is, at what point would you rather be handling your problems by yourself without having God to help you?

And really the answer to that, if you think about it a little bit, is like, I don't think I ever want to be in that state. So really, remaining relational does not mean that the person we're dealing with is relational. That means that our mind is still running correctly.

And really your brain sort of sees the blue screen of death. If you've had one of those computers that just kind of goes blip, you know, we're not computing right now.

When we drop out of relational mode, your brain starts processing things in all kinds of screwy way or stops entirely. So that's the first part then acting like yourself. Remember, we can't see who we really are.

Right.

So we're sort of part of a group who's discovering whose God is creating us to be and we're encouraging that process. And whenever I forget who I am myself, the scriptures, God or the people around me remind me who I was meant to be. There's one really.

I think it's sort of a lame movie. I don't see very many, but it's called Mr. Holland's Opus. Oh, yeah, yeah.

That was lame. Now I feel shame.

Oh dear, I created a problem here. I don't think it was one of the best movies ever made, let's just say.

But the theme was every time he would reach some kind of limitation in himself, the people around him would say, you could do better than that. We want more from you. You have. There's more to use the teachers more to use the fathers, more to use a husband, more to use all these other things.

So don't, don't let your first reaction, you know you're not such a good expression of yourself stand.

We're going to look for something better and that's really what acting like yourself is, encouraging other people to, you know, when they louse it up, you go, let's go back and try that again. We need to practice being your, your good self. Which means the third point, returning to joy.

Joy, in this case, not being just being euphoric, but being glad to be with other people.

So one of the things that most of us experience is when we finally get around to saying, I'm sorry I said that the people who we've offended are more glad to be with us than they were before. It's like, oh, maybe we'll start this relationship again, maybe we'll.

So returning joy is that path of saying, you know, if our relationship has been broken, which is basically what isn't happening between the extreme groups in Christianity just mentioned, we're not trying to find our way back to being glad to be together. We're trying to find our way to win and be right, which is a different pathway.

So returning to joy says, you know, I want to find you and help you find who God meant you to be, and we're going to help that grow. And then if you do that under duress, then you're enduring hardships.

Well, when people are upset with you, when they're afraid of you, when they look at you and go, oh, you're one of them, do you remember who you are and say, well, yes, but we're part of the people of God.

And as Peter says, once you are not a people, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy so you can become part of the people of God.

So are we welcoming people who are not once our people by extending that kind of mercy and saying, yeah, even though we have hurt each other, I want to welcome you back in as we return or become finally the people of God. And that's sort of the summary of the book it's written for leaders.

But that's simply because leaders are the ones that are finding it hardest to figure out, how do I stay myself? Because most leaders are getting killed by leadership. It becomes performance standards.

And if you're not getting great results, then, you know, my, my status drops. And so how do I actually avoid this terrible, stressful, burning out kind of experience?

And it says, no, we have to become the people we're meant to be. And funny thing as leaders is we have to teach that to others even while we're learning it ourselves.

Otherwise our, the people, our congregants, will not allow us to be ourselves. They want performance. That's what their Culture has told them to be, but pastors have to teach people to be something they never were before. Right.

And so this is. We're guiding the process to where we need to be as well.

I was talking with Dr. Robert White, who'd been on the show before. He's with a counselor with Care for Pastors in Leesburg, Florida.

And they, they work with basically kind of a pastoral triage. He said, you know, we used to get so many calls a month. Now we're getting, you know, four or five a day. Just so many pastors are burning out.

And I think what you're.

What, what I see and I think what your book is articulating is that there's been such a performance addiction and people are trying to keep the institution and they are to perform, but their soul has been lost because there's not been proper soul care. There's not been a proper understanding of relationships.

There's been a lot of mistrust and a lot of schools have not really developed that, although I'm seeing seminaries and Bible colleges beginning to help train going. Going forward.

But seeing that and you seeing where the church is at right now, and it's at a very, very difficult place, what, what do you see as the biggest trouble?

That out of all of the things that are affecting the church or afflicting the church in the west, let's say in the west, what is the biggest thing that you see and you hope to be able to address or that how God would use your work to address it, to help act as a corrective in some way? And I'm very aware that there are several factors that play in that, and there's not, probably not one that we can just simply isolate.

Maybe there is and it has many different solutions as there are many different problems.

But knowing still the complexity of it, if you were to simplify it in your own mind, how do you, what do you think that is and what do you hope you're how God would use your work to help make that a correction?

Well, the first thing to just clarify is that the life model works should be considered something like a dietary supplement. It is not a replacement for the whole gospel. It's not a replacement for theology. It's not replacement for church polity.

And one of the reasons it's been so widely accepted by different groups that would otherwise not get along is that we are not actually coming in from the view of trying to modify anyone's theology about the basics things of Christianity. And we're actually not particularly trying to teach that either. Not because it's unimportant, but because the church has worked for centuries.

Getting down what they believe and tweaking that a little bit here or there is not really the issue.

The problem we're getting is that when it comes to teaching human brains how to act like Jesus, everybody's getting uniformly less encouraging results than they want. So the Coptic church, they're interested in what we're doing because they want to take better care of orphans.

The Eastern Orthodox is interested in something, Salvation army wants something. Pentecostal groups want something else. But all of them come back to the same thing.

We're not actually experiencing the kind of character that we want to see to the extent we want it. And so we have three elements we add to whatever you're doing.

So you know, one of the things people said, well, shouldn't you have life model churches? I said, no, absolutely not.

I never want to see a life model church that isn't, that isn't enough to be a church, but I would like to see a life model things added to your churches. And the three elements that we've identified. One is a multi generational community.

And to really sustain, sustain joy, you have to have at least three, but optimally four generations working together. And the church since the industrial revolution has really taken out each peer group and separated them.

And a lot of churches have only one generation within them or maybe one and a half, you know, but they're like, everybody is the same age. No one knows more than any anyone else. Now peer groups are very, very helpful for practice. So we don't eliminate those.

But multi generational communities make a big difference to whether or not you are actually transferring the kind of relationships and character and identity that are transformative. Second thing is an Emmanuel lifestyle, which means we, we live looking for the active presence of Jesus.

So if you had a church, the multi generational, you'll raise nice human beings like all other nice human beings, unless God shows up and says you're more than those human beings could ever imagine in ways that are unique to you and to your group. You don't turn out people that look like Jesus.

And so this awareness of what God is saying to us and how he's guiding us on a moment by moment basis is the second element of this, you know, church environment that we're looking for. It's actually a community environment because we want it to go outside the church.

And then the third one is there's relational brain skills, just like you would have a literacy program to teach People how to read the Bible. There's some specific things your brain has to be able to do.

And so we want to help people identify what those are and which ones are missing and help you then to teach other people those specific brain skills that trauma and other kinds of evil in the world keep eliminated from the fabric of the multi generational community.

And one of those skills that's particularly Christian is being able to identify God's thoughts as separate from all the other thoughts that run through our head. How do we recognize his voice? And you know, this is something we have to learn. Every generation has to learn it and it's just one of the things.

But those three things are the unique features that we bring and they seem to apply to every, every place, every Christian group and culture around the world from all different perspectives. They said, yeah, we could use more multi generational community. We could use more awareness of God's active presence.

And yeah, I not sure about that last one, the brain skills, but you know, give them a few examples. Here's a simple one. Now anger is one of the alarm circuits in the brain. It's meant to use to bring our relationships, to improve them.

He said, so how many people do you know who feel angry and go, wow, I'm about to have a better relationship with this person, I'm going to improve it. Or they see someone else who's angry.

And almost everywhere around the world when people see anger, they go like, oh, you know, nothing good can come of this. Whereas if you understand what anger is there for, it's a very good, useful thing to improve your relationship.

So the people who learn how to do that are not causing danger or damage to others when they get angry. And it's very easy, you know, to find out who doesn't do that because they'll say to others, well, don't get me mad because you won't like it.

That's a good indication you haven't learned how to use anger helpfully.

And again, for most people, when I say that, it's like I hear your words, I see your lips moving and I have no idea what you're talking about because our brain has got a gap right there. Like I've never seen what you're talking about. So it makes no sense to me any more than, let's say, you know, trying to read Arabic.

I see marks, but I don't see any meaning.

I don't see the words you mentioned.

I just find this fascinating because you mentioned anger and I remember doing a sermon on anger and we Said, you know, anger is not always a bad thing. Because I've met people, they say anger is always a bad thing. And I said, really?

It's sometimes it's a response to a perceived injustice, or if it is a real injustice, then if I do see a child being beaten or someone kicked, I want to respond. But you said in a healthy way. And what does that look like? But I want to go back again for what you said here, just to kind of support.

You mentioned the multi generational thing.

But they had researched and found that they did a study on. It was a religious study on American youth, the largest that had ever been done in history. And they came to the conclusion after several years.

Kids that had been raised in the faith, that stayed in the faith, they said, came down to three things. One was that the parents lived out, remodeled. What you're talking about modeled in the home.

What was being taught at other times to another adult outside of the family, supported again, the multi generational idea. I think you guys extrapolate on that. Yeah, that community. But they said third, and I thought this one was very interesting.

They suffered for their faith. There was this idea of suffering and the suffering. Well. So I'm seeing these, these pieces starting to connect.

And that's what we're trying to do, is connect the lines for people, which you guys have really done in an impressive way. Looking at the culture, looking at brain science, crossing these into experiencing God.

Because I hear other people say, I'm tired of going through the motions in church. And I hear people talking about the management, about the show. But you cannot manufacture joy. You can't manufacture it.

It has to be a true relational understanding. And that's hard to do when there's a performance aspect. And you guys have seen to really draw that out, even from the brain.

Perspective, there's two different smile centers in the brain. One has got voluntary sort of smile for the camera and the other is the joy smile. And 97% of people cannot intentionally produce a joy smile.

The 3% that can do it by remembering a joyful thing.

They're in Hollywood. They're in Hollywood. One other question I have here My daughter has this question.

Being a college student, she said, do you have any advice for college students bringing these concepts into their dorms? Have you ever seen any success like this thus far in that environment?

Yeah, that really the area that we're most interested in, you know, evil propagates on its own without any additional help. So you, you hurt somebody, and they'll very easily go and hurt somebody else.

We believe that truth and, and goodness and God's presence should propagate on its own too. It should be something that spreads sort of infectiously when, when you have it. And so you mentioned the rare leadership book.

We wrote a secular version of a rare leadership in the workplace with a specific intention that Christians could take that into their workplace and say, hey, we'll show you how to be joyful people who are building a group identity. And this is what we're going to do in our workplace.

And it's been very interesting for me to watch that book, that particular application take off faster than the Christian book has. Even so major, one of the top three software places in the United States, they wanted their sales team to study it.

The Christian association of Dentists wanted to use that in their workplace. It's the idea of this is the kind of people we all wish we had as a boss, as a fellow employee of someone like that.

So if Christians have something joyful, they will spread that to the people around them. So the sort of contagious nub involves, I'd say, sort of three elements. One is, you're joyful.

Secondly, when you pass something to other people, you do so peacefully. So Passing the Peace has been one of the books that we wrote.

So if what I have to tell you comes out agitated, upset, that you're not going to want to hear it. But if I'm experiencing God's peace, when I tell you something, all of a sudden you wonder, how are you peaceful about that?

What about you gives that calm, that lack of worry, that ladder, whatever else, you're glad to be with me. There's a joy. But the message you bring me is one of peace. And even Jesus said, when we go into a town, you look for the man of peace, right?

We're looking for the people who will accept peace. They're not Christians yet, they're. But they're interested in someone approaching them with peace. And so that's the second element.

The third element is basically, if we go back to the upper room discourse with Jesus, he says to his disciples, from now on, the world will not see me, but the people who are attached to me will see me. And Jude is not as scary as just surprised. How do you mean? They're not going to see you and Jesus?

No, to see me, you have to have an attachment with me, a love for me in your heart.

And then when Jesus says, you'll go into the world and be my witnesses, I believe he's talking about, you'll be the one who goes there and sees that I'm there. Not someone who'll go out and be able to explain, you know, all of the intricate theology of the Bible. It's like, you can see I'm present.

And when you bring that news to other people, like, you know, Jesus is here and he likes you, and here's what he likes about you, and here's what he wants to grow in you. This is very irresistible for anybody who is open to God at all. It'll also bring attacks from some other people. But that's the nature of the kingdom.

Right. It offends the ones who are just determined that they want to promote evil.

But I think if you look at those simple things, I'm here, I'm glad to be with you, I share with you my peace. And I see in the moment what Jesus is seeing here. And it takes some practice to learn to do that.

That I think spreads very nicely to any dorm and the college. It obviously, also, you know, seeing what Jesus sees involves a prayer life that is listening to him. But this is what we're trying to learn to do.

And then finally, because they're going to be people who will put you into enemy mode, we need to have a few people on our side who say, yeah, I'm going to be with you while you're in enemy mode. And we're going to. You know, when I get into enemy mode, it's like my Internet goes off. So I no longer hear God very clearly because I'm mad. Yeah.

So I need to be with some people whose WI fi I can borrow. So. Oh, you're connected with God still. You're not upset about this. You can hear what he's, and you can bring me back into connection with him.

That kind of group fellowship will pull us back from the people that are driving us crazy. So those are the elements I'd suggest for your daughter.

And, you know, if it, if anything in there resonates with her, it's probably God's spirit at work.

You mentioned having that person outside that can speak to us when we're in enemy mode. And immediately flashed in my. My head, Balaam. And his donkey, he was in enemy mode and the only thing he could hear from was the donkey.

God will pick some strange.

You know, there is so much of what you're doing and I'm sure a lot of people have a lot of questions because I know that I have and I feel like I've only started exploring the Life Model Works and all of the different pieces. And that's after hearing it over the past year and a half, almost two years.

How do people get connected and learn more about Life Model Works and a lot of the things that you are doing?

Well, the best place to probably to chase that down is the life modelworks.org that one website where we try to keep whatever we're developing present. We also work with some partner ministries, one of which is called Thrive Today, where the brain skills are taught.

So if you want to keep track of that, that would be another place you could go and check in on it.

I'm told there's also, if you look me up on the YouTube or other kind of Internet stuff, there's a bunch of teachings out there I've never gone to look. But you know, there's. It's kind of fun that social media is sharing some of that. So.

But the main thing I would say if you want to keep track of where we're developing and the thing with Internet and websites is that it's constantly being redone because it didn't work the last time quite the way we wanted it to. So I'll just say, you know, like it's, it's our best shot at it so far. We hope it'll be better next time.

It helps us to return to joy.

Stay humble too.

One of the last things I wanted to ask, and I know that someone had impressed this upon me because they do follow a lot of the ministry and they've been greatly impacted in the resources that you have created. And they said, I do have one question for him. How can we best pray for him and what God is doing through him?

Well, here's the thing.

About 40 years ago, I decided if I was going to start figuring out some of these things about how the brain works and how, you know, why some people are getting transformation from the Christian lives and others aren't, that I was going to have to give up all of the social media and magazines and watching TV and so I've seen very few movies and TV shows or anything else for the last 40 years. Well, that's made possible for me to do is to read some books and study some things and come up with some new perspectives.

But it's also made it equally hard for me to communicate with culture. So you're right. On that interface, you're. You're doing the very sort of thing that I would ask people to pray for.

You know, the book the Other Half of Church, written with Michael Hendricks, whose claim to fame is he can actually make me sort of understandable to other people.

He's coming on the show, by the way.

Oh, well, I'm very glad to hear that they'll finally know what I'm talking about. Yeah, we need the people who say we can make this understandable for culture. And I think primarily the ones that we need are artists and musicians.

The identity center in the brain will listen to songs about our identity, will not listen to words.

So if we could sing more to each other about how to return to joy and how to see what Jesus is seeing and put it in art and express things in those ways that communicate to large numbers of people the joy of God. I mean, what would happen if we just became the people who are going to make the world understand that joy is relational?

It's not just some kind of a happy pill that you take. What would that do to the understanding who Christians are? And so praying that interface, you know, how does this get into the world?

You know, God has got something in mind and. Yeah, pray for it.

One question. I have this because you just mentioned this, and I forgot to ask it, but how do we sing to one another? Like I understand singing to God.

I don't know how much I understand singing to one another. What do you mean by that?

Well, it's odd that the church goes through these phases. At one point, it's like we're praying we will only sing praises. Music to God. Another point, we just pray. We sing theology.

So we've got all these theological statements. Another phase, we pray, sing psalms. You know, if not in scripture, we won't sing it.

But the church is also going through phase where we sing to each other. Like, brother, let me be your servant. Let me be like Christ to you. Pray that I might have the grace to let you be my servant too.

That's one of the songs out of the 70s, for instance. And so we're singing to each other about who we are, you know, why we care about things. There used to be God be with you till we meet again.

That was another song. You know, it's like our relationship will endure even after you leave.

And so there's these things that we could sing to each Other, you know, I know you're mad at your wife today, but, you know, you know, we're here for you. And what would we sing to people? Wouldn't it be interesting?

A lot of people come to church mad at their wives, you know, or husbands or whatever it is. There's I love you with the love of the Lord.

There's these songs that keep showing up, but we haven't really developed them in a way that help us with our six negative emotions. So what happens if I get to church and I'm just disgusted or I'm feeling shame or.

And actually, if you look at the psalms, a lot of them do have that content in there.

That's what I love about the word of God. I love that. I remember my wife saying that and I remember reading that in the book and I went, say what? I didn't think of it that way.

I was thinking of. Of course, the reaction is be vertical. And in singing, I do believe in singing. I'm a trained singer and that's how I met my wife.

So singing is very, very powerful. And even singing, after reading about how singing what it does to our brain.

Tim Tennant, the president of Asbury, did a thing with his wife where they took all of the psalms and they put it to simple hymn melodies, and you can choose which one. They have a website seed Faith, I think is what it's called.

And you go there and you can pick a psalm and then it gives you three or four different melodies in that same meter that you could sing, like the same music from Amazing Grace or the Love of God, and you can put different words to it from that song. And so I thought, that's, that's, that's.

These are wonderful things that I think we have lost that we need to do and rediscover rather than just have performers on the stage. But we're to be participants and to be engaged in that regard. So just a hearty amen to everything you just said. Party Amen.

Yeah.

One real quick example, you know that, you know, a lot of churches actually traditionally have sung the scriptures through Cantor's, the Jewish tradition, the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and even the Muslim tradition have. They've got a tonal quality to everything they do.

We might not consider it music, but when my brother and I used to fight as little kids, my mother used to start singing inside the house. Be ye kind to one another, Be kind to everyone. And my brother and I look at each other and sort of discuss, like, singing that song yet.

But we would always stop Fighting and look at each other like, I have to be kind to you. And a few years later, at the counseling center where I was, they gave me the job of firing all the people who weren't doing well at work.

And I asked him why. He said, well, you know, it's strange about you, but even when you're firing people, you're kind about it. And so we put you in charge of that job.

And what took me back to that song, that no matter how unpleasant the interaction, there ought to be a kind way to do it. And I think that was sung into me by my mother at a very early age, probably is more of that.

Well, I've not done anything quite like that, but I remember I've tried to do the same thing and be kind. And I was getting. Getting a speeding ticket, and I thanked the officer, and my friends were like, what is wrong with you? He's doing his job.

He's got a job to do. It's keeping us safe. I'm not happy. But at the same time, I can't fault the guy for doing his job. I need to thank him for that. But that's funny.

Be kind. Are there any other songs that your mother sang that were getting you? Because I'm going to use them for my kids.

I hate to say it, but that's the only one that I recall and may have been the only one right there.

I remember just last week, I was flying, I thanked the TSA agent who went through my suitcase, and I remember her look at me like, what kind of a leader are you thinking? I relate to your story a little there.

Well, that's good. That's practicing gratitude and appreciation, and those are those. Those practices that you. That you.

You wrote about, and I think that many of us can do. Do a lot more with. But, Jim, I want to thank you for coming on Apollo's Water. Just thank you for coming on the show.

Thank you for what you're doing, and I pray that God would continue to bless your. Your ministry and impact people the world over.

Well, thank you, Travis.

I really appreciate being part of Christianity that's looking beyond our cultural interpretation of what it meant to be Christian, because I think something about Christianity, it transforms all cultures. And so when we can separate out those elements, we're in for some really good growth.

And so thank you for being a part of that and for having me on your program.

It's an honor and a joy. Thank you. That was an absolutely fascinating conversation. I have to admit, though, it took me a while to really get what Jim was talking about.

You know, I've read a couple of Jim's books that he's written with different co authors like Marcus Warner and Michael Hendrix, and they have a tendency to use a vocabulary that I wasn't familiar with, and many of the concept seemed foreign. And that's because we're talking about brain science, after all. I mean, how do we make brain science really understandable to people?

But they did and do. Frankly, I was a bit skeptical, maybe even suspicious when this whole thing started because it didn't feel like my tribe.

They were speaking a language that I didn't understand. And I have to admit that I still have some questions. But I will say this.

The more that I've learned, and as you've heard in the interview, the more I have realized that what Jim and his co authors have been discovering in the world of brain science is exactly what we've been saying and advocating here at Apollo's Watered and it's God made us to be whole people who are to pursue Christ in every area of life. Too often the church is about the product of the gospel.

We've developed what is largely this attractional form of church where we get people in the door, they plop down, watch the service, pray, pay, and go on their way. But the Christian life is about so much more than that. We want to know and we want to be known.

And that's because of how we are wired for relationship with God and with one another. Two things about this conversation that really stood out to me.

The first is that other cultures, especially Asian cultures and Middle Eastern cultures, are really getting this. That's why we are committed to bringing you global voices that helped correct our blind spots because we in the west need to learn from them.

We need to pay attention because we have this blind spot in this area and they don't.

The second thing was how Jim reminded us that we need people around us who can bring us back when we go into enemy mode, when we aren't following Jesus. Now, it might seem like this throwaway idea, but our world seems to be constantly putting us there, doesn't it?

We go into this enemy mode and we can't hear what other people are saying. And we know that if you just listen for a little bit of what's going on in the culture or in the church. Today, people are giving up on church.

They think they can go it alone. They don't need it. But we do need each other. We really do, because that's the way that God made us. When we act together in love.

We show people who Jesus is. No, not everyone is going to believe us, but that's not our job, living like Jesus is.

I'm going to continue this conversation next week with one of Jim's co authors, Michael Hendricks, with whom he wrote a book called the Other Half of Church. It's a great book and one that is changing how people see the transformative power of relationships in the Word and in the world.

So I would encourage you to check that out next week. And if this episode has helped you, would you consider partnering with us? We need your help.

We are delighted and grateful for all of those who have already taken the plunge. You are our heroes.

You are watering warriors for Jesus.

Keep it up. For those who are ready to take the plunge, Then go to ApolloSWater.org and click the Support Us button in the upper right hand corner.

There you will find many suggested amounts. Pick the one that is right for you, or simply write in the amount and surprise us if you have been impacted while listening to this episode.

Screenshot it, text it to a friend, share it on your stories, or simply share it directly from your podcast platform.

Subscribing and leaving a review also opens up the nozzle of God fire hose to water more people and check out our content on Instagram, Facebook and our website. Together, let's open up that spigot of truth, Let the water flow and watch God make it grow.

Much thanks to the Apollos water team of Kevin, Melissa, Donovan, Eliana, Rebecca and Audrey. Water your faith, Water your world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered Stay watered everybody.