How a Bible Affects Your Brain

“Words have power. They can save, cure, uplift, devastate, deflate and kill.”                                                                           ~ Robert Sapolsky, Behave

One power that words have – in this case, words found in the King James Bible – for those familiar with it – is the ability to regulate our neurophysiology, for better or worse. Ideally though, for better. Read this passage out loud. Pay attention, as best you can, to what goes on inside your body (interoception) as you do so:

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. (Psalms 23:1-6)

Bible As Arousal Regulator

If these words have been with you since childhood, there’s a high probability that they have a calming effect. According to Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky (of opening quotation familiarity), they activate your mesolimbic dopaminergic system, a common brain reward pathway. They also work to slow your breathing and relax the muscular tension being held in your body.

If you haven’t been so exposed, it’s likely they will have very little effect on your brain and body. Or, as in my case, an averse effect. What are we to make of such things?

As a young child, I was physically abused by the nuns at Sacred Heart Catholic School. They refused to let me go to the bathroom when I needed to and they smacked the knuckles on the back of my little hands with a wooden ruler. As you might suspect, I don’t have warm fuzzy feelings for Catholicism or Christianity in general.

Converting to Judaism as an adult came with an embarrassing ceremonial circumcision and lots of words I didn’t know the meaning of. Those experiences are partly why I’m currently not a practicing Jew.

Sitting in Buddhist meditation ended up quieting my mind sufficiently so that buried, early somatic traumatic memories, with no words accompanying them, would activate and flood my body with great waves of stress hormones – adrenaline and cortisol – seemingly out of the blue. For that reason and others, I currently do not practice sitting meditation. How’s a guy supposed to spiritually self-regulate?

Undoing Early Damage

It’s unfortunate that so many of these experiences – intended to draw me into closer connection with spirit and spiritual communities – have been associated with unpleasant or painful reactions in my body and brain. But I am not alone in my early religious trauma. The world is full of people like me. I have met and taught hundreds of them.

To combat the unskillful actions many people have experienced early on with organized religion, some people have taken to organizing prayer, bible-reading and spiritual fellowship similar to how home music concerts are organized. Twelve to fifteen people will gather in a private home and come together in a kind of grassroots worship service, forming a kind of intimate, boutique church as a way to have spiritual connection and social support. The House Church Movement is a growing one in America. There is safety in numbers.

Di-verse-ity Makes It Happen

One interesting finding about words and spirituality from neuroscientist Andrew Newberg in his book, Why God Won’t Go Away, is that the individual brain scans of the members of any religious cohort – Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews – are all different. Both within any group and between any group. Essentially this means there’s no such thing as a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Jew. Each is unique in their own understanding, observance and practice of their professed faith. The words contained in the Bible, the Koran, the Sutras or the Talmud impact each adherent’s brain in ways that are specific and unique to them.

Finally, it turns out that taking the Bible literally and trying to fit many of its ancient prescriptions into contemporary culture, e.g. 1 Timothy 2:12: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man” can be quite damaging to our neural networks. Much like the connectivity that makes up the networks in the brain itself, connections between people are not meant to be unskillfully ruptured by word or deed. When that is the result, we, as the rupturer, pay a heavy price with disaffection and disconnection.

If you want to learn to truly be yourself on your personal spiritual path, here’s an Enchanted Loom review of a book that might excite you, Beau Lotto’s, Deviate.