Brains and Woke Nonsense

Luke 12:49-56

“I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how Iwish it were already ablaze! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:

father against son
    and son against father,
mother against daughter
    and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
    and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain,’ and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Our brains evolved to create high speed neural pathways for the things we think and do all the time.  Those deeply ingrained neural routes allow the regular things we do all the time to become automatic.  Driving is a great example.  Think back to when you first learned to drive and how hard that felt.  A few years later, as those neural pathways firmed up a bit, driving became less anxious, right?  Eventually those neural pathways became so ingrained… so solid in your mind that even driving in the city became automatic.  

It is an AMAZING gift… until, let’s say, you rent a car in New Zealand.  There you discover the down side of having deeply ingrained neural pathways and how VERY hard they are to change.  But in New Zealand you really NEED them to change because there, they drive on the left.  Roundabouts go the other way round.  The turn signal and windshield wipers are on opposite sides of the steering column, so when you go to signal a turn, those ingrained neural pathways move your hand automatically AND... turn on the wipers… EVERY SINGLE TIME!  All those well worn neural pathways your brain had created over the years to make driving easier… NOW ARE WORKING AGAINST YOU!  You feel dumb, incompetent, and foolish... like fire has been brought to the earth!  And this is why… CHANGE… IS… HARD!

 

That’s what Jesus was telling the crowd.  CHANGE… IS… HARD!  AND YET… Jesus also told this and every crowd, that he wished the fire of change was already ablaze, ushering in the Kingdom of God.  That's because Jesus was out to do nothing less than CHANGE the WHOLE world, as Bp. Curry always says, “from the nightmare it is for so many into the dream that God intends.”  

Now, you'd think that if a change would make the world better for you personally, then it would be easily and eagerly embraced, but that’s not necessarily true.  There are countless stories of people sticking with the familiar rather going with something better.  I have gay friends who still choose not to get married even now, because for them, their neural pathways firmly laid down the idea long ago that marriage was not for them.  Those neural pathways that our brains create to make our world easier, are often so strongly laid down that the idea of changing them… even for something that might be a whole lot better… just seems too hard to even try.  CHANGE it turns out… really is BIOLOGICALLY hard. 

You'd also think that if a change would make the world better for someone you loved, then THAT change would be easier for you as well.  But that too, is not necessarily true.  When Kelly and I started dating we went to a Halloween party.  For the person I was falling in love with, I REALLY WANTED to instantly change and be completely comfortable at a Steel Magnolia’s themed Halloween party full of gay men complete with Bleeding Armadillo Grooms cake… I really did!  But the automatic neural pathways that had been laid down in my brain about gay men up to that point in my life could not be unmade in a single evening!  WANTING them to change was not enough… it took a lot more time and work to unmake, and then remake, those pathways in my brain.   

That’s why in these most recent times, so many of us are finding new names and pronouns and gender identities so hard!  Even when we WANT to do it perfectly, we inevitably run up against the biology that makes those things are some of the most deeply laid down neural pathways humans have.  The neural pathways for things like names and pronouns are sometimes forty, sixty, even eighty years deep!  Our brains did that so we didn’t have to re-meet people every time we ran into them.  But now, when someone asks you to use a new name and new pronouns you find that you are just as good at doing that as using the turn signal in New Zealand without turning on the wipers!  

Just WANTING to do once doesn't make it happen and that is frustrating in our instant gratification world.  Folks try to remember but inevitably fail.  Not understanding the biology of how hard this change is for everyone, people find themselves feeling dumb, foolish, and incompetent.  Those uncomfortable feelings burn like fire and make people want to dismiss the whole thing as "woke" nonsense!  But as followers of Jesus, when we encounter people who tell us that the way the world works for them is a nightmare, we have a Divine calling to work through our own uncomfortable, burning feelings, put in the time, and do the hard work to help them change the world so that their nightmare ends!  

To do that you don’t have to feel in your body like they feel in theirs.  You won’t.  You don’t have to understand "WHY".  You can’t.  All you can do... all we are called to do, as a followers of Jesus... is to hear our neighbor when they tell us that the way the world works now is a nightmare for them, and then work with them to change the world so it becomes more like the dream God intends for them.  

And YES… THAT will take much, MUCH more time than ANYONE involved wants it to take.  YES we'll all feel foolish, incompetent, and dumb along the way... that change will be hard… in fact it will be FRUSTRATINGLY HARD… for EVERYONE!  And yet THIS is part of the work to which we have been called as followers of Jesus.  This is a part of changing the world from the nightmare it is for so many, into the dream God has for it.    Amen.