Somewhere in ancient history, a crack appeared in the collective “brain” of culture. The holistic, intuitive “Eastern” approach began to be separated from logical “Western” rationality and crack became a canyon as the ages rolled. Europe and the States ultimately became known as THE WEST, a title that denoted not only geography, but a guarantee of order, structure and pages and pages of reasoned explanation for any endeavor. THE EAST, meanwhile, remained a land of mystery and wonder, whose inhabitants seemed to care little that they appeared primitive to their western counterparts. They clung to notions of invisible worlds influencing temporal existence, whether expressed through religion, the arts or medicine.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle may be the smoking guns behind the initial crack. By applying logic and reason to the business of life as never before, they tempted man to believe that all mysteries could be investigated and understood. This new human capability-centered optimism became the vein that ran all through Western culture. Greek democracy is almost always recognized as the headwaters of the mighty river of Western civilization that would shape so much of the land.
Prior to the Socratic era, the Archaic Greeks only danced and flirted with logic, leaving room for the imagination to fill in the gaps. (Even their art reflects this, with its minimal, other-worldly style.) After the left-brained analysis spawned by the philosophers had set in, however, the dance became a Hellenic march with rules and prescribed steps. Logic surpassed intuition as a method for interpreting the world. The East-West split had no choice but to diverge like the two lines of an angle from its vertex until, finally, the two approaches to life were so far removed, one could barely remember when they were united.
It has always fascinated me that the major Greek philosophers arose and took over the world (more or less) during what is commonly called the “intertestamental” period, the time between the last Old Testament prophet and the birth of Jesus—the pause in God’s voice being captured in Scripture. When heaven is silent, man still searches. The spirit inside a man—the most direct evidence of God—is unquenchable in its search for meaning and never ceases attempts to order the chaos it perceives. And so, the building of Western civilization began, not with God speaking, but with God waiting and watching while man constructed a new Babel–not a physical tower, but still a monument.
Today, however, the most amazing thing has happened: the East-West divide is shrinking. For several reasons, most of which caught us by surprise, we in Western culture find ourselves confronted with thought-streams from the east! Our business seminars talk about the “field” and the “flow” as much as, or more than, they talk about profit and loss. Alternative medicine is no longer the object of derision and even M.D.s are now combining their practices with “healing arts”. And our science labs are talking about unobservable reality and relatedness of the universe! It seems that the Western mind has finally amassed enough data to discover that something more is needed than data! The left brain of society, after carefully (for about two and a half millennia) collecting and organizing the information necessary to run the universe, declared itself incapable of doing so and reached out to the right brain for help!
Several years ago, the church experienced a wave of emotion and experience that ran through it like adrenaline. This “Toronto Blessing” (substitute any name of your choosing) converted sermons into “soakings” and explanations into groans. Laughter, tears, fire, dreams and even trances—all showed up as formerly placid Christians thrilled at the discovery that God had a vibrant personality that transcended the pages of Scripture to a mind-boggling degree! Since the wave of intense experience has subsided, church leaders have often been left standing in the ebb tide scratching their heads, wondering what God was doing. I think, however, the message is not so obscure. God was simply trying to uncork the right brain of the church once again. He was trying to re-introduce us to a Gospel whose founder was more an Eastern thinker than we ever dreamed! He was trying to break the left-brained, logical vapor-lock that had come from an overdose of Western culture (which the church had, tragically, too often lumped in with the Gospel it preached).
During those Toronto meeting days, people often said, “That blew my mind,” meaning that they discovered the mental limits they had put on God’s involvement with them. It was as if we had a box inside labeled, “What God can and will do,” and many of us thought we were big dreamers because we envisioned large meetings and miracles. And here came God himself—finally, we had been waiting so long—but, instead of filling our box, he came and demolished it. We were taken to the edge of what our minds could contain of him and then told, “Now jump!” We did, and we still remember the party resulted from our freedom!
BUT, I think we were supposed to explore the new territory opened to us, once we were out of the box. Perhaps God could show up in this earth in a multitude of heretofore unimaginable ways! Perhaps the “safe zone” of Christianity is anywhere the omnipresent God can be, and perhaps he is calling us to go exploring! Perhaps he is already waiting “out there” in the great beyond of all of life’s possibilities, small and large. But all of this blurs the lines we have drawn in way that “feels wrong” to our Western minds. It is the Eastern mind that can see the divine in the common and all of life as the province of its Creator. It is the Eastern mind that subordinates knowledge to spiritual wisdom and wants to take to the world an experience, rather than an argument, a creativity rather than a creed. I believe God wants us to jump out of our Western linear, mental constructs, so that we can learn to FLOW with His presence in an unprecedented way!
Marvin R. Wilson has written of the Hebrew mindset, proposing that they used “block logic” rather than (like the Greeks later) “step logic”. In step logic, “a” must lead to “b”; and “c” must follow, and with this we are all too familiar. This is the linear thinking by which the West was literally won! In block logic, however, “a,” “b,” and “c,” are all separate “blocks” of truth. They are received and appreciated simply for what they are and no compulsion is felt to organize them. They can (and this really worries us) even CONTRADICT each other without invalidating each other! Block logic makes room for paradox, since it never claims to own the whole explanation. Rather it simply enjoys the interaction with the truth currently being experienced! (Wilson’s book: Our Father Abrahahm (Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith, Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, 1989)
When I first read Wilson’s description of Hebrew thought, I had two strong reactions. I was first overwhelmed by its extreme “Eastern-ness.” Secondly, I marveled that God chose a group of people with this kind of mental landscape to perpetuate his seed in the earth, ultimately producing a Messiah. He did not choose those who had it all figured out and codified (in fact, Jesus was not terribly affirming of the Pharisees who tried to put a little more structure on Judaism). God produced a savior from a line of people whose national consciousness was more about experience than explanation—more about heart concepts than rational perfection. The people who were prepared to bring forth the Savior of the earth lived more by intuition than analysis. They were Eastern, just as was, dare we say it, the Messiah to come!
Due to my love for science, I have always carried a special place in my heart for the Magi in the nativity story, who gained the title “wise men,” and gave us that wonderful trite Christmas phrase about “still seeking him”… These were the scientist-seekers of their day, but they were also Easterners who still believed the stars were not only physical entities but also spiritual signs. The thing they said upon reaching the Christ child has riveted me lately: “We have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.” Could it be on purpose that the star shone “in the east”? Could it be that there are many Eastern thinkers with hearts longing to worship the king in whatever place they find him, and will even travel at their own expense to get there?? Pharisees would later accuse and criticize Jesus, and his own people would call for his death, but even before he had spoken a word in ministry, there was a group of Gentile thinkers willing not only to pay homage, but also pay riches to Him. They saw his star in the East and longed to worship. Could there be wise men on the trail today? Maybe I am just being an Eastern thinker, but I believe so.
I believe that Jesus has stars shining in the East—points of spiritual reality that glimmer in the distance calling the hearts of seekers to himself. But how can we guide anyone in that direction if we are still imprisoned in logical/rational grids of thought that allow no mystery or imagination. WE MUST, as the church, realize that the Gospel is just as, if not more, accessible to the Eastern mind (the right brain) as it is to the West. We must cease to equate our structures with righteousness, realizing that heaven owns the only patent on pure, unadulterated righteousness. When that righteousness is imparted to man, it can make BOTH sides of the brain come alive to an uncontainable degree.
I have in my personal library an anthology of the writings of the unusual seventeenth-century mathematician and Christian thinker, Blaise Pascal, entitled, The Mind on Fire. (Multnomah Press, Portland, 1989) I do not know if the editor, James Houston, was responsible for the title, but I would certainly like to thank someone for that phrase. It has become a three-word sermon, preaching to me whenever it crosses my mind. Indeed, God wants not only hearts, but also minds filled with heaven’s fire. From the crown of thorns upon Jesus’ brow to the imagery in the name of place he was crucified, the Hill of the Skull (Golgotha), reminders abound that Jesus died to redeem the mind as well as the rest of human existence. A redeemed mind is one in which both hemispheres of thought are being infused with divine life. It is not just western or eastern, but can be turned in any direction to make the greatest usage of the revelation given to the heart.
The West “won us” by convincing us that linear is better. What really is better is wisdom—wisdom that knows when to think linearly and when to think circularly. Wisdom sees the good in every mindset and the transcendent greatness of God’s thoughts compared to all of them. Wisdom is the principal thing…get wisdom… We need to open our Mondrian-like grids, not just to Eastern thought, but to Wisdom! More than ever, for the church to become all that Jesus intends, we need to open WIDE!
