THE MCGURK EFFECT

In a world full of uncertainty, you would think you could at least trust your five senses unequivocally, wouldn't you?

Have you ever heard of the McGurk Effect?

The McGurk Effect describes the way your sense of sight will overrule your hearing if the two are ever in conflict. There's a great little video (just two minutes long) that illustrates this phenomenon:

McGurk Effect Video on YouTube

In the video, a man's face is shown in close-up as he repeats the sound "Bah!" The film then retains the sound but now superimposes the same man clearly moving his lips to form "Fah!" Now your vision is clearly in conflict with your hearing. And your sight wins. 

Your brain actually processes the sound as "Fah" now. And so you "hear" "Fah". Unless you close your eyes or look away, at which point your brain allows you to hear "Bah" again. 

Bizarre.

I suppose one could draw some spiritual lesson from the McGurk Effect, but I don't have one off the top of my head.

What I do have is a practical concern: With our brains relying so heavily on the sense of sight to determine what is "real", what happens when virtual reality and the "Metaverse" proliferates as it becomes more and more sophisticated in the coming years? 

I heard a man recently describe an experience with some high-end virtual reality goggles. He said his brain could not convince his foot to step off a virtual cliff even though he knew logically that he was standing in his own living room. 

I think I am going to go live in a cabin in the woods...

 

LOVERS, NOT THINKERS

About a year and a half ago, I "learned" from a Scott Adams book something I had long suspected: Human beings are not primarily rational and logical. We are mostly emotional. Once we really come to grips with this truth, I believe life makes more sense, even though it also means accepting the fact that the people around us (and we ourselves) are going to act and speak in unpredictable ways. (And that can be a bit scary!) 

James K. A. Smith in You Are What You Love has come to this same conclusion, but I really like the way he frames it:

"What if, instead of starting from the assumption that human beings are thinking things, we started from the conviction that human beings are first and foremost lovers? What if you are defined not by what you know but by what you desire? What if the center and seat of the human person is found not in the heady regions of the intellect but in the gut-level regions of the heart?" (7)

I like the fact that he speaks of this logic/emotion reality in more positive terms. Instead of saying, "People are largely illogical", Smith says, "People are primarily lovers rather than thinkers." 

It would be useful then, when someone's opinions or actions make no logical sense to us, to ask, "What does this person desire?" rather than simply dismissing their opinions and actions as stupid or irrational. 

BLACKBERRY PICKERS

Today's blog post is meant to do double duty – it will give me something to post here AND it will help me sort through aspects of a paper I have to write by Wednesday, comparing two books: You are What You Love by James K. A. Smith and For the Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann.  

Smith’s book contends that humans are shaped by their pursuit of what they most love. And even though we believers say we love God, we are living in a culture which is caught up in the pursuit of material pleasures and entertainment. Our characters and spirits are shaped by our habits – holy habits (such as worship and the liturgies of the church) form us as disciples while worldly habits (like consumerism) and binge-watching Netflix slowly de-form us.  

Schmemann’s book is interesting – and challenging – because he writes from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, a tradition which closely embraces ritual and liturgy and sees them as the gateway to the great mysteries of life and faith. Schmemann wants his readers to get beyond the idea of sacraments as mere symbols of reality and to get beyond the arguments over the mechanics of various sacraments (questions like “When and in what way does the bread become the body of Christ?”) and instead experience sacraments as a window into deeper realities, God’s very present holiness embedded in our physical experiences.  

My paper is meant to explore what the books have in common, and I think it is this: a warning against making a false division between the spiritual and the physical.  

It put me in mind of a famous line by poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 

“Earth’s crammed with heaven, /And every common bush afire with God; /But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, /The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” 

When I looked up the poem containing this line, I was excited to see my instinct was right: Browning, as Smith and Schmemann after her, warned against dividing the spiritual and the physical:  

“Natural things,  

And spiritual,—who separates those two,  

In art, in morals, or the social drift,          

Tears up the bond of nature and brings death,  

Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse, 

Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men, 

Is wrong, in short, at all points.  

 

The result of not seeing the spiritual reality embedded in the physical is that humans sit around picking blackberries, unaware of the glory of God around us. Furthermore, according to Browning, humans then “daub their natural faces unaware, /More and more from the first similitude.” 

Her image is this: the blackberry pickers also apply more and more makeup to their own faces, all the while getting further and further from the image of who they were created to be in the first place!  

I don't want to be a blackberry picker, do you?

 

A GOOD QUESTION

Simplicity was at the heart of my most memorable and useful accountability group experience during my lifetime. I met weekly with two close friends, Tim and Jamie, during my days at Asbury Theological Seminary during the late 1990s. 

More precisely, I should say that we met weekly as an accountability group, because outside that particular hour, we met daily and even hourly as friends. (Tim was my roommate and Jamie lived in the same dorm and the three of us regularly worked together in a youth ministry context.)

When we gathered together for accountability, though, we spent the hour asking each other about our progress in various aspects of our lives: relationships, spirituality, academics, and physical fitness.

Our final question each meeting was the one that fascinated me and proved so profoundly practical:

"Where have you heard the still, small voice of God during this past week?"

Here is the simple beauty of that question: Broadly speaking, there were only two possible answers. Either I had heard God say something over the previous week or I had not.

If I felt God had spoken to me, it was a great reminder of his faithfulness and a testimony to my friends.

If I could not think of any word from God over the past week, it was a red flag which spurred me on toward greater intentionality in my relationship with him. 

ACCOUNTABILITY GROUP

Today was the first meeting of a new small group for men that I have agreed to lead. It's kind of a requirement for one of my classes, but my motivation is more about finding a couple of other guys locally who can work together to challenge each other to keep advancing in our faith. 

So far there are just three of us and we are a very international group: our backgrounds are American, Haitian, and Nigerian. We plan to meet every Friday afternoon at 4:30.

The church gave me the names of six men who have recently expressed an interest in joining a men's small group, but when I contacted those six by email, one one responded. I think this shows two realities: 1) there is a hunger among men for real connection, especially centered on faith issues but also 2) when the opportunity presents itself, it is tough to commit to an accountability group and so easy just to stay stuck in the familiar status quo.

Still, three is a good number for a start and I am looking forward to seeing what God has in mind for this gathering.

GOLDEN GATE THANKSGIVING

One lonely Thanksgiving Day, while seemingly every other American was surrounded by family and eating turkey, I spent the afternoon walking across the Golden Gate Bridge. I was working in California for a few months following college graduation, before I would be seeking "a real job" come January. 

Not my own photo!

I had the week off and definitely by that Thursday, I had discovered that my plan of driving up the coast to do some solo exploring was not really as fun as it had sounded in my mind. 

As I stepped onto the bridge that day, I decided to challenge myself to see how far I could get while listing off to God all the things I was grateful for.

The bridge is 1.7 miles across. I made it half way before my list was depleted.

I do honestly believe that today, three decades later, with all the ups and downs of life (and God's incredible ability to turn the downs into some of the best ups), I have a gratitude list that would get me across the Golden Gate Bridge and back. 

(And material blessings, although abundant, are way down my list.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

You know how Paul writes that incredible definition of "love" in 1 Corinthians 13? Love is patient. Love is kind. 

And all that.

Well, I wish he had done the same with the word "faith". I am just not sure I completely understand the word as it is used throughout the Bible.

Some people have no faith ... and that makes sense. But some have "great faith" and some have "little faith". Why is that not worded as "more faith" and "less faith"? 

And as I am reading slowly through the book of Matthew, it seems like "understanding" is a closer synonym to "faith" than either "belief" or "trust" would be. 

Like in the passage in Matthew 16 I quoted here two days ago. The disciples forget the bread and think Jesus is getting on their case when he warns them to "Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees." 

Jesus says to them, "You of LITTLE FAITH, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? Do you still not UNDERSTAND?"

The closest we get to a 1 Corinthians 13 for "faith" is the definition given in Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen."

That doesn't completely clear it up for me!

I just want to make sure that I am tracking 100% with what Scripture means exactly when it speaks of faith.

Seems like that's important ...