Are we willing to trust a person with the Bible and the Spirit alone for his or her theology? That was a question I posed to a friend who also happens to be a theologian.  His response was that thought scares him to death, but it is something that must be done.

It is the Spirit that leads us to all truth, right?

MIROR Churches understand that theology is organic.  There is an air of contextualization around it.  Beliefs in one region of a country, nation or continent will not be the same as in others.

There is absolute Truth, and his name is Jesus.  In addition, there are some core beliefs, statements that Jesus and others explicitly made regarding core theology (think early creeds) that cannot be explained away.  Nevertheless, we live as broken images of God, and our theology is a reflection of that.

All Theology is Organic Theology

1.  Theology is cultural. Interpretation is cultural.  A person in Latin America may understand the woman at the well in John 4 as a victim.  In their culture, men issue the divorce; women can’t divorce their husbands.  Therefore, those in parts of Latin America read John 4 in a completely different context and understand that passage differently.  If we truly trust the Spirit to lead all people into truth, not just those who have been to seminary or understand the grammatical-historical hermeneutical process, then we have to allow for differences in our understanding in texts.  As a result, there will be differences in theology.

2.  Theology is experiential. Not only do we understand culturally, we interpret experientially.  The experiences we have had in life affect how we interpret what we see, hear, and read.  For instance, in watching a sit-com, research shows we misunderstand as much as 30% of the meaning within the show.  Our experiences determine, according to the research, how we interpret the meaning of the show.

Despite what we think, Certainty is based on emotion, not reason.

Dr. Robert A. Burton, associate chief of the Department of Neurosciences at UCSF, has written a book entitled, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not.  In this book, he shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we know something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge.  In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact.  Because this feeling of knowing seems like a confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason.  But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning.  The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen.

So how do we live in this tension of absolute truth versus organic theology?

1.  Trust the Spirit. If I may be so bold, this is the one thing we struggle with the most.  We find it hard to trust the Spirit to lead us into truth.

2.  Hold our theology loosely. There are specific commands that Jesus gave that we can hold on to very tightly.  We have, however, spent so much time and energy to systematize our beliefs that we have boxed God in.  We need to hold tightly to a few essentials and realize that we just may be wrong.

3.  Avoid the condemning tone and “slippery slope” images. I know very strong Bible-believing theologians who interpret scripture differently than I, and thus their theology is different.  I do not condemn them, as they have looked hard at the text and have come to different conclusions than I.  I do not call them liberal.  They do not embrace homosexuality or universalism. They just believe differently based on their interpretive lens.

From the NY Times this morning, an article on people hiring personal music stylists to pick out the proper music for their home decor:

IMAGINE walking into an airy Upper East Side apartment with 18th-century antiques, gilt mirrors and chintz upholstery. Now imagine Metallica playing on the sound system.

Music can alter a space as much as lighting, fabrics and artwork, but until recently, most people relied on their own judgment when it came to sound. Now, though, an increasing number are hiring personal music stylists to pick out tunes for their homes just as they might hire an interior decorator to select furnishings.

While Muzak has for decades created what it calls “audio architecture” for commercial environments, it is just in the last five years that a handful of music consultants, mostly in New York and London, have begun to specialize in creating custom domestic soundtracks. From Aspen lodges to bungalows in Belize, they are compiling playlists to match their clients’ décor.

“Hearing the wrong music in the wrong space can be very disorienting,” said Coleman Feltes, a music stylist in New York City. A D.J. known for creating mixes for Versace, Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana fashion shows, Mr. Feltes began his bespoke music service for individuals in 2006.

Mr. Feltes and other music stylists typically visit clients’ homes or look at photographs of them to assess their decorating styles and to understand layouts. They may also peruse clients’ music collections to learn the genres and artists they’ve liked in the past.

These stylists are paying up to $250 per hour for these experts.

Why is this important?  Because music affects mood, which helps define emotions.  And emotions affect behavior.

Daniel J. Levitin, a professor of neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal and the author of “This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession” (Dutton, 2006) said background music, or “auditory wallpaper,” can not only change the way people see their environment, it can profoundly affect their mood. Pleasurable music leads to the release of “feel-good hormones” like dopamine, he said.

Dr. Levitin believes that the ways people use different rooms in the home may call for different music. For example, he likes to play Alison Krauss in his kitchen because her warm voice and melodic songs match the sense of “comfort and groundedness” he feels while preparing a meal. For relaxing in the living room, he prefers the “smooth and uplifting” music of Luther Vandross.

There is a cheaper and easier way to do this:  It’s called Pandora.  I use Pandora to create a mood for writing.  I customize a New Age Channel and it plays while I am writing.  I also use that when I am meditating or praying.  It sets the mood, and allows me to focus and write.

Music is a personal choice for me, and I’m not paying $250/hour to have someone tell me what music is best for what room in the house.  I’m smart enough to know that!

People are programmed to avoid inequality, according to recent research.

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, the grandfather of modern economic theory, referred to individual self-interest as “the first principle of pure economics.” Until recently, economists routinely equated being rational with being selfish. The assumption was that, because humans are biological creatures, we’d been programmed by Darwinian evolution to put our own interests first—survival, after all, is a tough competition. As a result, even seemingly altruistic traits, such as giving money to charity or helping strangers in need, were seen as traits ultimately rooted in self-interest.

Richard Dawkins, for instance, has claimed that “we are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behavior.” Although Dawkins allows for morality in social life, it must be socially imposed on a fundamentally selfish agent. “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism,” he advises, “because we are born selfish.” Such learned behaviors—for instance, children are taught to share at a young age—must struggle against our supposedly self-serving nature. As the evolutionary biologist Michael Ghiselin asserts, “What passes for cooperation [in nature] turns out to be a mixture of opportunism and exploitation. . . Scratch an altruist, and watch a hypocrite bleed.”

Programmed to Care?

In recent years the tide has swung dramatically against such a bleak view of human nature, however. Researchers are increasingly coming to understand that people are also “programmed” to care about others. A recent contribution to this theme comes from neuroscientist Ernst Fehr at the University of Zurich and colleagues. In a study, the researchers explored a particular type of unselfishness known as inequality aversion. Suppose individual A has $10, and individual B has a lesser amount, say $5. We say individual A is inequality averse if he shares some of his cash with individual B, thus reducing the inequality between them. We say individual B is inequality averse if he is willing to sacrifice some part of his money, provided individual A’s endowment is reduced to an even greater degree, so that, once again, the inequality between the two is reduced.

Fehr and colleagues show that, in a sample of 229 children between the ages of three and eight years, younger subjects overwhelmingly conform to selfish (self-regarding) preferences. They don’t like to share and aren’t interest in reducing inequality. In contrast, the vast majority of the older subjects are inequality averse when put in either the advantageous (individual A) or inadvantageous (individual B) position.

So wait. Let me get this straight.  We are programmed for survival, but we are programmed to care, at least until we get older and it is more important to survive than care about others?

Read more from Scientific America.

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