I am currently in a doctoral program, studying semiotics—cultural symbols—which requires a great deal of reading. Probably the greatest benefit of an education is the wise guide (teacher) who can give a curated tour of the best there is in any given subject, and such is the case with this program. Dr. Leonard Sweet has opened the door to an entire world of scholars and theologians who look beneath the surface of things and reveal mysteries. Now I would like to open that world to you.
“You are Smarter Than You Know”
The prologue did not actually grab me, but the beauty of a guided tour (which is what a doctoral program really is, by the professor docent) is that you can trust it is going to be good. Naturally, I read on to the introduction, “nothing new here,” I thought. It just confirmed what even my kids have been telling me for years. Teaching to the test actively discourages creativity and curiosity.
But then, the last page got me.
The human brain thinks in story, and that kind of thinking can be observed in intuition, imagination, emotion, and common sense (p 8–9). Mentally, I was rubbing my hands with anticipation, and was not disappointed.
Thinking and Feeling
In the Myers-Briggs scale, I am an INTJ (Introvert, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging), representing about 1–3% of women. That has caused problems for me all my female life. Thankfully, with effort, I was able to beef up my “feeling” side, or I would have had to cosplay being a woman. In any case, reading about intuition, its mystical properties, and its proclivity for recognizing “exceptional information,” was fascinating and felt affirming. I kind of like that, when the beginning of a book resonates. I also enjoyed that, however this author thinks of Artificial Intelligence, he dunked on computers at regular intervals for their inability to think humanly (there is an example on p 23).
Fletcher gave especially canny advice about the questions to ask in any given situation (p 34). “Why” puts what we are enquiring of on the defensive. It may feel helpful from a thinking position, but it is not helpful from a feeling position. Exploring without judgment for a while allows the complexity to unfold, and hidden wonders to be revealed.
I had to learn that over the course of many years.
In fact, carried good practical advice as well as keen insights that I found myself ready to receive. Page 46 is golden, for instance. Rank your objectives, then keep The One Objective first, and be resilient on tactical plans in the moment. And guess what/ Unlike what you and I have been told,
- Fear is smart
- Anger is energizing
- Anxiety is helpful
(See pp 53, 60, 77).
I found the discourse on grief and shame, and on tuning anxiety, so helpful I have incorporated these insights into how I counsel (pp 62–63).
Too Long; Didn’t Read
Fletcher also clearly knows how today’s readers read. His tl;dr on pages 92–95 is almost refrigerator magnet worthy.
Sayings I am now meditating on:
“Courage is fear with a plan” (or, as Anne Lamott puts it, “Courage is fear that’s said its prayers.”). This is my own summary of the fear section.
“All we have is now+1” (p 83). I’ve been preaching this sermon a lot, actually.
“If something is weird, embrace it” (p 103).
Gotta love this one, “eat your enemy,” pithy and powerful (p 115).
Take From the Old, Make It New
I am thinking hard on what it means to make a new rule that “maintains the old rule’s underlying rationale while including the possibility opened up by the exception” (p 108). That is figuring out the established “why” behind that rule then adding in the “what if” that new discoveries uncover. In order to get the feel for these concepts, Fletcher has created thought exercises for each chapter.
In my own work, I realized that I need to work on what Fletcher calls “antifragility” and the need for an integrated past in order to recognize and lean into the ways the future is branching.
The True Nature of God’s Omniscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence
In fact, If you do get this book, go look at Fletcher’s graph on page 128. Once you see it, you will know Fletcher has accurately depicted reality. This line drawing expresses in the simplest way possible a truism that makes some ideas about predestination and election difficult to support. Is it not more wonderful, more real, more fractal, to understand that
- God is present in every possible possibility, every arrow?
- That God is also resilient, creative, and even curious (in a certain sense)?
- Is it not more miraculous that God should somehow work in and through human choices, wherever that takes them, and still pull off a Genesis 50:20 (which, in my opinion, is the punchline of the whole Bible)? Or a Romans 8:28–30?
Deconstruction
Of course, dissociation is a huge topic, and, like all the other psychological topics Fletcher has addressed so far, it was summarized into just a few pages. Nevertheless, what he had to say was spot on. Dissociation is triggered by the jarring realization that “the rules of life must be different than I thought” (p 129). In the era of Evangelical Deconstruction, this is what happened to countless exvangelicals, and is still happening. Jarring negative experiences prompt the thought that “Who God is, what God does, and how God acts must be different than I thought.”
So, the antidote of wonder, the jarring surprise of goodness and beauty, makes absolutely perfect sense (pp 131–134). Let us pray for the people in our lives who are deconstructing and wondering how to reconstruct, that something jarringly wonderful about God and about themselves will happen, that they can’t possibly miss.
Discourse
If you get this book (and I hope you do, because it is one of the really lasting experiences I have had so far in this doctoral program, to read and process Primal Intelligence) then please come back and share with me:
- What situation have you recently experienced that prompted an opportunity to emotionally reset (pp 60–63)? What did you do? How did it work out?
- Which of the emotional sink holes spoke the most to you? What did you get out of that section? (The “grief and shame” one was especially helpful for me, so I’ve been reassessing the stories I tell myself).
Metanarrative
One thing a metanarrative can help with is to resist the pull of stories with it. Everything ultimately points to the metanarrative one way or the other. Honestly, I think that is what happens with deconstructing Christians. Something happens that appears to entirely negate the metanarrative (that God is loving, powerful, and good, and desires our good). All doctrines are a part of the One Big Story, but how often do we help people see the connection? And perhaps some doctrines point to an entirely different metanarrative than the one we have been teaching.
I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this, recently, and I almost want to start over, read through all 101 doctrines R. C. Sproul thinks every Christian should believe, and compare that with some other schemata (Lutheran? Wesleyan?) and see what appears to support, or undermine, the metanarrative the Bible seems to be telling (at least the way I read it).
When God Seems to Change
The Hebrew Bible highlights a number of Hebrew Bible, Torah, theologies that appear in the Christian Testament, yet seem to be negated not by Jesus’s teachings, but by the ongoing story in Acts and the Epistles. I am still thinking about how jarring it had to have been for all the priests and Pharisees who became believers (these were the hardcore Bible bros of their day) then had the rug swiped out from under them.
- What? No circumcision?
- What? No dietary laws (people died horribly in torture and execution defending those dietary laws, for the sake of God)?
- What? No Sabbath or festival days?
- What? No tithes or sacrifices?
They must have gone out of their minds, wondering if the Bible mattered at all anymore.
Interpretation versus Insight
A big part of therapy and counseling is helping the client to recognize the way they have been interpreting the events of their lives, the stories they have been telling themselves, believing, and basing their self-view and worldview upon. Owning all that, then being willing to re-examine their lives, relationships, events and circumstances, re-interpret them, try on other perspectives, develop new ways of thinking (and therefore feeling), establishing new beliefs and letting old ones go, processing and integrating memories that have been stuffed to the bottom of the drawer and so on, all that can completely change the insides of a person. And from the new story is resurrected a new person.
Essentially, this is the new birth Jesus alluded to in John 2, and that Paul wrote on. It is a completely new story which sets each believer on a wildly new trajectory.
