Tuesday 14 December 2010

Biblical Thinking and the Mind of God

Do you think of the Bible, the product of the mind of God, as something that looks like this:

...or like this:




"Best estimates" indicate that there are around 200 billion neurons in the brain alone! And as each of these neurons is connected to between 5,000 and 200,000 other neurons, the number of ways that information flows among neurons in the brain is so large, it is greater than the number stars in the entire universe!
...a multi-layered tapestry all richly interwoven and intricately interconnected?

With our scientific world view, most of us live in the first diagram, trying to reduce the Bible to a set of logical propositions: A leads to B leads to C leads to D etc. etc. Z. There's a place for this. There is a definite start and end point and there is a time and a place to distil things down, to look at the individual building blocks, but maybe, just maybe there's more to it than that.

Maybe the Bible is less like a basic circuit board experiment you and I did at school, and more like a brain, with its events and interventions of God all connected together in a myriad of different ways calling back and forth down the ages to each other and together declaring the praise of the God who brought these circumstances into existence.

Maybe it's not about coming to the Bible with a "put it in a test tube" mentality, but rather a dive in to a whole new world mentality. Of course the world will label you a fool for such abandon, but your Heavenly Father will be pleased and he will enjoy teaching you how to swim.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know, this image is copyrighted... You might want to check if it's fine with the author, Dr. Paul de Koninck, before you throw it on your blog.

Richard Walker said...

Thanks for pointing that out, thought it would be easier to find another image instead, hence the new one.

Richard Walker said...

PS Sorry. I should have paid more attention and been less lazy.