I’ve been musing about a new book. It builds off this conviction: In order to become fully alive, we need to reconcile the inputs of our heart and mind. Then we become whole. Or as Jesus phrased it,
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Matthew 22: 37
This is happiness.
This is the essence of Christian spirituality. This is life fully alive.
You may know this already, but the idea of being “fully alive” comes from Irenaeus’s words that
“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
To my mind, it’s a fully integrated life that pulls together all of who we are. We live into the purpose for which God created us.
It’s also in the Apostle Paul’s words,
"So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush." Philippians 1:9, The Message
In this book (at least the one that's in my head at the moment), I’d like to integrate the insights from science that I’ve studied over the past few decades to help Christians take in what it means to be fully alive in a scientific and technological world. To give one example, this would naturally engage positive psychology's insights on gratitude and happiness. It would interact with the realities of the human being that emerges from reading both the books of nature and Scripture.
What do you think? What are some elements you’d add?
1 comment:
I do think a great deal of both social and emotional psychology supports the teachings of Scripture and this is an excellent topic for a book. I would also include Jonathan Haidt's work on happiness described in his book The Happiness Hypothesis. Also for some science on the powers of prayer see How God Changes Your Brain by Andrew Newberg M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman.
What fascinates me is that science is only now beginning to know and understand what scripture taught us thousands of years ago and yet so many still believe in the supremacy of science.
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