Introduction
The Medicis were a banking family in Florence, Italy in the fifteenth century. In addition to their banking endeavors, they funded creators across a variety of disciplines. Thanks to this family, and others like it, sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters, and architects converged upon the city of Florence. There they met, learned from each other, and broke down the barriers between cultures and disciplines. The integration of their disciplines forged a new world based on new ideas. This period of time became known as the renaissance. Florence because the eipicenter of a creative explosion and launched one of the most innovative eras in all of history.
By stepping into an intersection where people are able to associate concepts from one field with those of another, creative new insights are born. In addition, even whole new fields are developed. Two examples are found in the field of biology. First, the integration of biology and technology created a bio-tech industry that develops technology based on biology, agriculture, food science, and medicine. Modern use of the term usually refers to genetic engineering as well as cell- and tissue culture technologies. Yet, the concept encompasses a wider range and history of procedures for modifying living organisms according to human purposes, going back to domestication of animals, cultivation of plants and “improvements” to these through breeding programs that employ artificial selection and hybridization.
Coined a term by British scientist and broadcaster Heinz Wolff in 1954, bioengineering is the application of engineering principles to address challenges in the fields of biology and medicine. Biological engineering applies principles to the full spectrum of living systems, including molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, pharmacology, protein chemistry, cytology, immunology, neurobiology and neuroscience. It deals with disciplines of product design, sustainability and analysis to improve and focus utilization of biological systems.
Developing what has been coined the Medici Effect requires breaking down barriers between fields. This involves a process of creating an environment where low associative barriers exist.
What are associative barriers?
Take a moment to consider the following situation: Susan is twenty-eight years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in biology and minored in public policy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of sustainable development, global warming, and overfishing, and is politically active. Which statement is most likely to be true?
A. Susan is an office manager.
B. Susan is an office manager and is active in the environmental movement.
If you answered B, you are in good company; most people would give that answer. But the correct answer is A. If you are confused about this, consider another analogous question. Which statement is more probable?
A. An apple is green.
B. An apple is green and expensive.
This time the answer is apparent; clearly it is more likely that an apple is just green than that it is both green and expensive. The two questions are similar, but expressed in different ways. Yet we tend to make a mistake in the first case but not in the second. Why? The key difference between the two presentations is that in the first case our mind quickly makes a number of associations. Key words, such as sustainable development, global warming, and overfishing, are all associated with the environment. In most instances it would make sense to infer that Susan is active in the environmental movement. Therefore we are more likely to make assumptions about who Susan is as a person, rather than maintain a mind open to possibilities. These connections happen automatically and subconsciously. The effect is subtle, but very powerful.
Psychologists have an explanation for what happens during this process: They say that the mind unravels a chain of associations. By simply hearing a word or seeing an image, the mind unlocks a whole string of associated ideas, each one connecting to another. These chains of associations tend to be clustered around domains related to our own experience. When a chef sees a cod in a fish market she may think of a particular recipe, which in turn makes her think of the menu items for the upcoming evening. But a writer for a sport-fishing magazine may see something very different. He may think instead of his latest fishing trip, instantly recalling the tackle he used and a story he should write about it. The mind works this way because it follows the simplest path—a previous association. Although the chef may know of sport-fishing, and even have done it on occasion, it is much more likely for her mind to quickly lead the thought pattern, with little or no effort, to the field she uses most—cooking. Chains of associations are efficient; they allow us to move quickly from analysis to action. Although chains of associations have huge benefits, they also carry costs. They inhibit our ability to think broadly. We do not question assumptions as readily; we jump to conclusions faster and create barriers to alternate ways of thinking about a particular situation.
Researchers have long suspected that these associative barriers are responsible for inhibiting creativity. Experiments have been conducted to examine the difference between high and low associative barriers. One of the first conclusions made by one of the earliest creativity researchers, J. P. Guilford, is that creative minds tend to make unusual associations because they engage in so-called divergent thinking.
Consider the following exercise: What words do you think of when you read the word foot? The most common response by far is shoe, followed by hand, toe, and leg. Eighty-six percent of the subjects in a test with more than 800 people answered with one of these words. On the other hand, only one person each responded with rat, snow, physics, dog, or hat. Consider another example—what words do you think of when you read the term command? The most common responses to that word were order, followed by army, obey, and officer. These answers accounted for 71 percent of all responses. Only one person each answered with words such as polite, obedience, war, and hat. Guilford’s conclusion was that a person with low associative barriers is more likely to think broadly when responding to a word such as foot and is therefore able to come up with more unusual ideas. This means that a person with low associative barriers would find his chains of association taking irregular paths outside of a specialized field, rather than predictable ones inside a field. For such a person, foot and command may even connect; notice that the word hat appears in both cases. Individuals with high associative barriers would more than likely produce the common responses, but remain unable to see how the two words are linked unless specifically prompted to find a connection.
In the search for intersections, low barriers provide an advantage. The problem is that there are strong benefits to keeping our natural cognitive barriers in place. Our brain evolved the way it did for a reason. It generally enjoys finding order in things, grouping concepts together, and finding structure in the environment surrounding it. A person with high associative barriers will quickly arrive at conclusions when confronted with a problem since their thinking is more focused. He or she will recall how the problem has been handled in the past, or how others in similar situations solved it. A person with low associative barriers, on the other hand, may think to connect ideas or concepts that have very little basis in past experience, or that cannot easily be traced logically. Therefore, such ideas are often met with resistance and sentiments such as, “If this is such a good idea, someone else would have thought of it.” But that is precisely what someone else would not have done, because the connection between the two concepts is not obvious. Two people or two teams—one with high barriers, the other with low barriers—will approach a similar opportunity in completely different ways [1]
The key to creativity is to break down associative barriers. The to breaking associative barriers is through diverse cultural backgrounds, experience, and interactions with multiple disciplines.
What then, can Christianity learn by engaging in a Medici Model or a model of Integrative Theology?
Truth is truth regardless of the source because all truth is from God. In addition, the revelation of God through the created order gives us a glimpse of God. Just as a diamond has multiple facets which reflect light that beautifies the diamond, so all of creation and all of the domains of society reflect something about the character, nature and function of Godhead. Not only are we created in the image of the Godhead, created to reflect the character, nature and function of the Trinity, but all creation was created in order to reflect the Godhead’s glory.
The glory of our God is revealed through the domains of society. Each, by themselves, reveal only a small part of that glory. Therefore, by integrating multiple disciplines, humanity can see how the Godhead reveals itself in ways that allow the finite creation to more fully understand the creative Trinity.
Prior to the past two centuries, pastors were the most intelligent and respected people in the community because they were so widely read. Most pastors and ministers read books on law, medicine, math, and science. In doing so, ministers were often the town counselors, whether it was law or the sciences or personal relationships. Today, however, this is not the case. John C. Knapp, a professor at Samford University and Columbia Theological Seminary, wrote an article three years ago about the perceptions of the church by businesspeople. He mentions one study that featured interviews with 200 Christians from all walks of life, ranging from a Fortune 500 CEO to retail clerks. Each was invited to identify a time when they had encountered a particular ethical problem in the course of their work. When asked if they had sought counsel from a pastor or spiritual leader all but two or three said no. The most frequently given reason for not doing so is that their pastor would not understand or would not care. Another survey of 2,000 people who regularly attend church were asked, “Have you ever in your life heard a sermon, read a book, listened to a tape, or been to a seminar that applied biblical principles to everyday work issues?” Ninety percent said, “No.” [2]
I realize the amount of information is enormous and doubling every year. However, ministers are loosing the ability to influence the world because of a perceived inability to understand or comment on issues that their congregants encounter. Many pastors would struggle to discuss something other than their hobbies and the Bible with people whom they interact.
In addition, ministers face a very real discrimination in many areas of our culture. When I moved from Alabama, where pastors were appreciated, to Delaware to pastor a church, I experienced this very real discrimination. The person we bought our house from told all of our neighbors that a pastor had bought his house. Five years later, there is a very different relationship between those neighbors who were here when we moved in and who moved in after we did. Those where were here prior to our coming have little to say to us. Those who have moved in since our arrival, talk with us often. The difference was in how we were able to present ourselves. I had worked as an IT programmer, and still did some consulting on the side. I present myself as a consultant. This opens the door to communicate from a business perspective, an IT perspective, and about work in general. I always tell them I am a pastor, but only after I have presented myself as someone who is not just a pastor.
Specialization in ministry, therefore has created a clergy that only see God and life through a single lens: theology. Ministers get bachelor’s, masters, and doctoral degrees in religion or theology. As a result, most people do not go to their pastor with questions about work-related issues because they do not believe their pastor would not understand or care.
If pastors could demonstrate through their ministry how the other disciplines of life could reveal God in a greater light, then the people they minister to and share with could see their work as a real expression of revealing God himself and proclaiming truth. Their work becomes an expression of ministry, not something different from ministry.
As a result, ministers need to be able to see God (and the Godhead en total) in and through the integration of multiple disciplines, as well as model and explain God in the same manner. Consider this example:
If evolution is all about survival of the fittest, then why have humans evolved a sense of altruism and cooperation? The seeming contradiction has engaged theologians, scientists, and even comic book writers (think the Incredible Hulk) who’ve probed human duality and how its good half sometimes empowers selflessness to override self-interest.
The British biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins believes that altruism in modern humans is essentially an evolutionary oops, albeit a beneficial one. It paid off in prehistory, when people lived in clans and protecting others meant the survival of their own gene pools; now that we’ve expanded into large cities, our instinct to help others still kicks in, even though those we aid may have no relation to us. [3]
Enter Martin Nowak, professor of biology and mathematics at Harvard University. He’s been working on the possibility of a new principle in evolution, that of co-operation, without which, he’s shown using game theory, “competitiveness dethrones itself” – which is to say that natural selection couldn’t work. By co-operation he means something quite specific: foregoing of fitness advantage so that others may have it. His work resonates with that of other evolutionarists, notably Lynn Margulis, who’s argued that multicellular life could never have evolved without symbiosis, or the close and often long-term interactions between different biological species.
For the past three years, with Sarah Coakley, formerly of Harvard Divinity School and now at Cambridge University in England, Nowak pursued a study project, the title of which – “The Evolution and Theology of Cooperation” – gives a clue to its partnership between science and religion. Nowak said his work demonstrated the mathematical probability that being cooperative, generous, and forgiving produces better results for people than looking out for Number One. [4]
Assume for the moment that the evolution of species has occurred. At the cellular level of all organisms, Nowak and others have found, is this idea of cooperation. So God has laced within all life the idea of sacrifice, altruism and compassion. The character and nature of the Godhead is infused within the most minute expressions of life.
Now consider the idea that micro-evolution (evolution of a species) occurs while macro-evolution (evolution of different species) does not occur. This is my position. In this, we see again the implication of this research. God has infused all of creation to sacrifice, have compassion, and be altruistic. We know it is part of his character and nature because of Philippians 2, where Jesus emptied himself, took on humanities closed, and sacrificed himself that we may have the benefit of a relationship with Him and the other members of the Trinity.
Sin has corrupted the truth, then, that we are created in the image of God. In doing that, it distorted this great truth of sacrifice and compassion, creating a selfish aspect to our lives.
What is needed
Ministers need to see life from different perspectives. They need to be able to think and engage others in multiple ways and to connect the wonderful Gospel message in ways different than a purely spiritual and theological method. There are endless possibilities of gospel-centered interaction with college students and professors, with scientists and even the general populace through integrative theology for both ministers and those we serve.
To do that, we need to develop bring together experts in various fields and disciplines to discuss what they are learning in and through their work in those fields and consider how we can see and express God in that interaction of experts.
NOTES:
[1] Excerpted from The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts & Cultures. Copyright 2004 by Frans Johansson.
[2] Economics at the Jesus Creed: Michael Kruse 10. http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2009/11/economics-at-the-jesus-creed-m-8.html, accessed November 12, 2009. (Emphasis mine)
[3] Mathematics and faith explain altruism. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/09/27/mathematics_and_faith_explain_altruism/?page=1, accessed November 12, 2009.
[4] Sacrifice: bringing evolution and religion together? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/oct/15/evolution-sacrifice-cooperation-religion, accessed November 12, 2009.
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Tags: Theology
