Faith, Neuroscience, and 2 Corinthians
The other day, I was home alone, checking things off my to-do list, and a random thought popped into my head. How is it that people are able to do what 2 Corinthians 4:18 says we are to do, to “fix [our] eyes on what is unseen”? It’s already hard enough to focus on the things around us that we can see.
Research shows that the human brain, on average, processes roughly 11 million pieces of information per second through our five senses, although our conscious mind can only pick up 40 to 50 bits of that per second. In reality, science suggests that we are consciously processing only 0.0004% of the information we take in. And that’s probably on a good day!
We live most of our day-to-day lives based on our brain’s broadly categorized “best guesses!” And that is how we make life’s most important decisions, interact with our loved ones, show up in the board room, and decide how we feel about ourselves in the mornings when we are getting dressed. No wonder my clients sit across from me expressing feelings of angst, nervousness, confusion, and overwhelmingness.
And as a trained clinician, one of the ways I’ve helped my clients over the years was to have them acknowledge the physical world around them through their senses; to be more attentive to what could be seen, heard, or felt. It is the way that we were wired to connect with the environment we live in, the people we are surrounded by, and to absorb information, so why not use it to our advantage to cope as well? In those moments, my hope is that my clients will absorb the realization that they are safe. Grounded. Even if just for that moment. Plus, it still aligns with scripture, as Psalm 46:10 says, “be still…”
Yet let’s remember where we started here, in 2 Corinthians 4:18, it says to “fix your eyes on what is unseen.” So how is it we are wired through our senses to pick up on what can be seen, but instructed to fix our eyes on what is unseen?
What I have learned is that as we mature, the way we consider this physical world that we live in should also evolve. As babies, we receive our knowledge, information, and nurturing from the physical world. As we grow, our engagement with the physical world increases. But it isn’t until our spiritual maturity deepens that we recognize we can take part in changing the physical world through our hope and trust in the things unseen.
When we connect with the “unseen” through faithful prayer, surrender, acting in faith, and recognizing God’s authority, we can have a deeper impact on our world rather than be limited by what we take in through our senses. I’ve come to understand 2 Corinthians 4:18, Hebrews 11:1, and similar scriptures as instructions for navigating the physical world in the most discerning and complex ways. I now see the lives of Esther, Hannah, and Moses’ mother a little differently. They were evolved women who didn’t just receive or engage with the world around them; they were women who willingly stepped into the unknown with the hope of changing it.
(Wondering how this plays out in your actual nervous system, the stress, worry, uncertainty, and anxiety, I wrote a follow-up piece exploring what it can practically look like for your mind and body to engage in this shift of focusing on the unseen. Check it out here.)
