Sermon Archive
Let us walk by the Spirit
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Matins on 15 May 2005
Joel 2.21-32 ; Galatians 5.16-25
Some medical students told me last week about a project they were doing on Neurotheology. Neurotheology is an attempt to understand what happens in the brain when someone has a religious or spiritual experience. With modern imaging techniques, scientists can now see changes taking place in someone's brain when the person's emotions change, or as they respond to drug treatment for example. These techniques may eventually help doctors discover better ways of treating some painful symptoms for which at present they can find no physical cause. But why do they want to learn about changes in the brain related to religious or spiritual experiences? Well, for many people, prayer, meditation, and other religious or spiritual practices often seem to have calming and healing effects. Perhaps medicine could learn from this. Many effective modern medical drug treatments are simply scientifically refined versions of ancient herbal remedies. So, by scientifically investigating the effects on the brain of ancient spiritual disciplines, some of these too, might be developed into modern medical treatments.
This new field of scientific interest is still in its very early stages. But eventually it might help many people. Now that doctors can detect and measure changes in someone's brain when they say they are having a spiritual experience, might it not be possible, no doubt after a great deal more research, for them to stimulate these same brain changes medically in someone, so that that person felt their healing or calming effects? That could be very beneficial for people suffering from pain or anxiety that can't be treated in any other way.
Whether this will ever become possible no one yet knows. But some people clearly are very excited about it - so excited indeed that a number of them have argued that religious or spiritual experiences are not just accompanied by changes in the brain, but are caused by changes in the brain. Religious or spiritual experiences, in other words, are 'all in the mind' and not the experiences of a higher or deeper reality that religion claims they are.
Now two points might be made about that. The first is that to say that religious or spiritual experiences are caused by changes in the brain, is not a scientific argument. Some changes in the brain, some kinds of brain damage for example, can cause people's behaviour and experience to change. But it is now being suggested by researchers that some experiences, of being loved and cared for by other people for example, may cause healing changes in the brain. There is in fact no scientific way of deciding whether, in general, religious or spiritual experiences are caused by changes in the brain, or changes in the brain are caused by religious or spiritual experiences. Which of these explains the other is in the end a philosophical question, on which philosophers are deeply divided, and probably will never agree.
The second point is this. The religious or spiritual experiences which scientists have related to changes in the brain are mostly of exceptional states of altered consciousness - moments of high emotion or deep peace. Most people who are not contemplatives or mystics experience these states only quite rarely. Religious experience moreover is not confined to religious experiences of this kind. It involves a person's whole way of life and understanding of reality. So if we go back to the idea I mentioned earlier - that doctors might eventually be able to stimulate someone's brain medically, so that the person then experienced the kind of high emotion or deep peace that a religious or spiritual experience sometimes brings. If that did become possible, the person involved might well say that, while the experience was very positive, the fact that it was created medically, meant that for him or her it was not a religious or spiritual experience.
Now questions of this kind are particularly pertinent today, as we remember the strange events of the first Pentecost, when the early Christian Church testified that the prophecy of Joel, in our first lesson had been fulfilled: 'I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.' From the beginning there were those who believed that the Apostles' experience was 'all in the mind'. But the Apostles themselves, while not claiming fully to understand what had happened to them, disagreed. For them, their experience at Pentecost, far from being all in their own minds, was an experience of the cosmic Mind, the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars, the light of the Spirit of God, promised to them by Jesus.
Who is or was right? Are religious or spiritual experiences caused by changes in the brain, or changes in the brain caused by experience of religious or spiritual reality? Was the Apostles' experience all in the mind, or were they in touch with the mind of God? These ultimate questions cannot ultimately be answered by rational argument alone. As I said a moment ago, religious experience is not confined to exceptional religious experiences. It involves a whole way of life and understanding of reality. In our second lesson today, St Paul writes about what a whole way of life means. He contrasts a way of life characterised by the works of the flesh with one that bears the fruit of the Spirit. The contrast Paul draws here between the flesh and the Spirit is not essentially between approving or disapproving of our bodies and their needs. It is rather the contrast between a life lived as if there were no ultimate meaning and reality, and a life lived in the faith that ultimate reality is meaningful and good. But how do we know whether that faith is right? That cannot be deduced by intellectual argument. It can only be discovered, Paul writes, by the 'fruit of the Spirit… love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.'
Many of us, I imagine, are only all-too-aware of our repeated failure to bear that fruit. If the only proof of faith is whether or not we bear the fruit of the spirit, Paul's words may sound discouraging. But perhaps we should not be discouraged. Do we believe, in the depths of our hearts, that the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control - that these are what characterise humans at their best? Do we trust that the purpose of the eternal forgiveness of God is precisely to lead us ever closer to bearing that fruit? Are these the ideals against which we measure ourselves and our need to be forgiven? If they are, then perhaps that is all we need to know. If we know what is good, and we know we are forgiven, we know what to do. As Paul says: 'If we live by the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit.'