Belief is in My Belly

My daughter is taking anatomy and physiology, and the other day I got a long string of texts from her, ecstatic to learn about some of the brain’s functions. 

(Skip the next paragraph if scientific terms freak you out.)

I’m hoping I got all this right, but from what I remember, the (1) parietal-temporal-occipital association cortex processes and integrates our sensory input, (2) the prefrontal association cortex plans voluntary activity, decision making, and personality, and (3) the limbic association cortex controls motivation, emotion, and memory. She connected all this with some really cool theories about how functional parts of the mind connect to the transcendent world and the tripartite (3-part) nature of humans. Seriously, she is such a cool person.

Anyway—when I say “belief is in the belly,”—I’m referring to a type of sensation, not an anatomical location. In fact, perhaps all this happens in the limbic association cortex. Regardless, certain aspects of my consciousness feel like they are rooted in my belly instead of in the logical processes of my mind. This is a significant confession for me because over the past twenty or thirty years, I’ve been taught that belief in God happens via cognition. While living in the “culture wars” mindset, I was given historical arguments, scientific arguments, logical arguments, syllogisms, proofs—as if an ultimate decision of faith could be produced by the same evaluation/elimination process I would use when deciding on a political party or financial investment.

There’s been some value to this information. And you know, maybe different personalities work differently. Maybe different cultures, different stages of life, different aspects of growth involve different types of welcome for approach of God.

But lately, I’ve been spending time in the particular sort of welcome for God that lives in a more in an instinctive, intuitive part of me.

I have studied just enough philosophy to mishandle it, but at present, culture seems to trust in empirical/material verification. During the Space Race, America needed to beat the Russians to the moon to maintain national power, and so our schools shifted hard and fast to elevate the material disciplines. Generations of our top young people grew up inside of a self-confirming bias—that human powers of observation via five senses are the ultimate mode for evaluating reality. Sure, I trust my senses. I also generally trust the scientific process. But epistemologically, of course, problems with verifying this method of thought go back to David Hume. There’s no way to scientifically evaluate the scientific process. It’s all circular. We are stuck inside materialism and cannot get outside of it to test it scientifically.

That may seem like a problem for navel gazers. If you throw a hot cup of coffee in my face, I’m not going to spend time thinking through whether or not I trust what I perceive to be happening. I’m going to duck. We all operate based on what we perceive. 

Still, the deep imperfection of this necessary system at least leaves room for humility that I rarely see acknowledged in the secular world. I wish our school systems had taught the Truth along with the truth—explaining why what we think we know holds necessary limitations. 

Because even empirical science shows us that there’s a deep value to instinct. The presence of an urge often points (like a vestigial organ) to a long-forgotten reason for that urge. Sometimes it takes us a while to understand how urge and origin connect. Sometimes the appendix seems utterly pointless for decades until the grand “ah-ha” hits...

...which leads me to this question: why is it that humans all over the globe, for millennia, have had an inclination to worship? The standard secular answer is easy. We worship because the world is scary and primitive people were freaked out by thunder and lava. Primal man needed the idea of a higher power to manage fear.

Reasonable argument.

The problem is, the vestigial organ of my own worship isn’t just screaming for fear management. In fact, there’s an equivalent ache for connection to transcendent delight, artistry, and wonder. And you know, as I get older and the inevitability of death grows clearer—the more futile fear management feels. Mortality rate for the human race is 100% (Thanks Ron Block.) 

I don’t just want to avoid death or pain. There’s an ache in my belly to connect with a being who is bigger than a tiny universe perceptible by only a few human sensations. As much as I adore the animal kingdom (and believe strongly that animals have emotions), there’s something beyond-animal to my longings.

I long for the divine, a being who is creative, and transcendent, and relational. 

I want there to be a God. 

I want to be part of whatever He is doing. I want to know him. 

I know that he’s holy, and I am simultaneously aware (pretty much every second) that my independent fiery, reactive, impulsive nature is not—so I ache to shed all the begillion parts of me that don’t line up with what I imagine union with him to be like. 

I don’t want to lose the good parts of my personality or gifting—I want to sink into His “otherness” and be remade by it so that I can be the strongest, best version of myself.

That open confession of desire may seem like evidence of confirmation bias. A critic could easily say, “She wants there to be a God so therefore, she believes in one.”

This is possible. But there’s another way to consider this. Perhaps I want there to be a God because a God exists.

Perhaps instinct matters. Perhaps all the little migratory creatures who don’t fully understand the itch to cross an ocean to reach the motherland, who don’t know why they stretch their wings to find a home they’ve never seen, are examples of the created longing for the Creator.

If I am animal, my animal instincts call me to worship a God bigger than the material world. Perhaps I long for a life beyond this one and a God beyond myself because my longing points the way home.

By Aleksey Savrasov 1871 “Sketch of the Painting ‘The Migratory Birds Have Come’”