Radical Faith - exploring faith in a changed world

A Mind of Its Own
Cordelia Fine, Icon Books, 2006

Ever since the search of a Jesus of history began, its very necessity has been constantly questioned. Writing in the early 20th century, Albert Schweitzer called The Quest of the Historical Jesus a "problem".

He correctly identifies in that book a fundamental clash between the modes of the Enlightenment and traditional Christian teachings. He also notes the disconcerting and

... absolute indifference of early Christianity towards the life of the historical Jesus ... that was the first expression of the impulse of self-preservation by which Christianity continued to be guided for centuries.

His conclusions and the efforts of theologians who followed him effectively put a hold until the 1960s on the great search for a Jesus of history. Since then a more adventurous and rigorous investigation has begun.

Even now, though very few attempt to explain just why it is so important to pursue the search at all. Most Christians think that the traditional version of Jesus, delivered by the gospels and the Church, is good enough for them. Why bother with rooting around for "what Jesus actually said and did"?

Cordelia Fine's fine book provides an important opportunity to get to an answer. This assertion may seem strange, for she writes here about social psychology - not history, theology or doctrine. Indeed, there is no hint that Christianity is even in her frame of reference.

Let me explain what I mean: History is an offshoot of science. At their best, the analytical methods used by history and other scientific disciplines seek to reduce to a minimum the possibility that we arrive at wrong answers to the questions we ask. Indeed, they press us hard to ask the right questions, refusing to divulge God's wisdom if we don't.

So if I want to know why the Second World War began, for example, historians will dredge up a sea of information and formulate a provisional answer. Over time and with good fortune a consensus about those causes should gradually emerge.

But few keep in mind that there lies behind historical analysis and interpretation a disconcerting fact about the human capacity to grasp truth. In Fine's words,

... the truth of the matter ... is that your unscrupulous brain is entirely undeserving of your confidence ... It deludes you. It is emotional, pigheaded and secretive. Oh, and it's also a bigot ... thanks to the masquerading of an untrustworthy brain with a mind of its own, much of what you think you know is not quite what it seems.

Most of what we now know about the way our minds work has been discovered in the last 50 years, so the research upon which Fine bases her observations was not available to Schweitzer. If it had been, he might have held his views with less certainty.

The evidence which Fine presents has been in the public domain for a long time, though not easily accessible to the ordinary person. The problem for the likes of you and me is twofold. First, psychology is vast field and it's difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Second, not many of us understand the tortuous methods and language of experimental psychology. We have to rely on the forked tongue of journalism for the little we know.

Long before modern psychology was born, the heroes of the Enlightenment guessed - as did Socrates - that we often delude ourselves. As a result, they thought, nobody has an entirely accurate perception either of self or the world. But Socrates and later sceptics didn't know exactly how we arrive at false conclusions about reality. Fine explains with remarkable clarity, brevity and good style just now that comes about.

For a start, our predecessors could not recognise that every man jack of us is a bigot. As the author explains, research demonstrates beyond doubt that my brain and yours are stuffed with stereotypes. No matter how liberal we think we are, those stereotypes have the capacity to change our behaviour towards others. Most importantly, they are almost always beyond our awareness.

For example, it's fashionable nowadays to condemn the Church at large for its age-old anti-Semitism. But condemnation comes less easily when one realises the lengths to which the Bigoted Brain will go to preserve its inbuilt antagonisms. It doesn't much help liberal illusions that being bigoted turns out to be a useful survival mechanism . The stereotypical mental constructs we build

... provide a quick means of extracting and interpreting information from the complicated world around us, of forming useful generalisations, and making helpful predictions ... a bigoted brain is an efficient brain. A brain unburdened by egalitarian concerns can decide 'Thug ... tart ... slob... nerd ... airhead', and then move swiftly on to the next thing ...

The good news is that we can and do repress our stereotypes - but only with great effort:

... it seems that we may be able to train our brain to replace its spontaneous prejudices with more acceptable reflexes.

The story doesn't end with bigotry. Numerous experiments show that we are also incurably conservative. The Pigheaded Brain frequently prevents us accepting new information. Worse than that, we often totally ignore the facts if they don't suit us:

We don't seek refreshing challenges to our political and social ideologies from the world; we much prefer books, newspapers, magazines and people who share our own enlightened values.

And, yes, I must admit that I seldom read anything which staunchly opposes the need to find a Jesus of history. Nor do I usually buy books which treat the Bible as the undisputed, literal Word of God. So much for my impartiality.

There is more. The evidence is now cast-iron that our Pigheaded Brain seriously mangles how we interpret the data we do take notice of. It will even create its own supporting evidence - the rightly-named "self-fulfilling prophecy". Scientists have found ingenious ways of not contaminating their experiments with their own beliefs. But the rest of us are left high and dry.

Therapy is all about bypassing the Pigheaded Brain. So bigoted and deluded are we that we deceive ourselves at every turn. Some optimists may suggest as a solution that we all focus clinically on counter-evidence and alternative hypotheses. The problem? Our belief that we're already doing this is set in concrete. Our Pigheaded Brain knows it's not pigheaded.

How is it possible then to properly research a Jesus of history if we're each of us so convinced that our position is impervious? The answer is "With great difficulty and slowly, over considerable time". In other words the best answers come only after long and patient debate between people who admit their intellectual fallibility. Nobody does any good by refusing the enter that debate - which is pretty much what those who claim access to divine inspiration do.

As if our instinctive tampering with evidence isn't bad enough, our brains have yet more difficulties in store for us.

The Vain Brain insists that we always dress up the negative in positive clothes. Defeat is given the appearance of victory. (Only the clinically depressed are likely to get close to a realistic assessment of themselves.) And if that doesn't prove effective, then we are likely simply to forget the negatives:

The really bad news is that even our relatively rare moments of conscious choice may be nothing but an illusion.

Forgetting is the job of the Secretive Brain - which is too useful to get rid of. It enables us to walk and drive a motor car with little or no conscious thought, for example. We can, however, think without too much interference from the unconscious if we try. But experiments have shown that this requires great effort. It's tiring to think without the Secretive Brain getting in the way. Fine warns:

Never forget that your unconscious is smarter than you, faster than you, and more powerful than you. You will never know all of its secrets.

Add to all this the extremely strong evidence that our Emotional Brain constantly undermines many of our attempts at rationality. Anger, jealousy, anxiety and paranoia are among the emotions which shape our supposedly rational thoughts. Top it all off with the incapacity of our Deluded Brain to follow even the most simple logic, and we're in a pretty pickle.

As well as being a really good read, Fine's book turns out to be a stark challenge to Christians. We have a choice: switch off our brains or be alertly sceptical about even our most cherished articles of faith. My brain may not be as reliable as I'd like - but it's all I've got if I want to penetrate to the truth about anything.

Not even Jesus is immune to the tricks our brains play on us. The payoff for thinking as hard as we can about him is not that belief is weakened, as some claim. Rather, it is that faith is made all the stronger by undiluted scepticism and a determination to live out what our bigoted, emotional, pig-headed, vain, deluded, secretive brain delivers to us.

Given that the brain is what it is, it is sheer folly not to accept that every single one of our beliefs may be at least partly wrong, and that therefore they should all be held at best provisionally.

In short, faith as rock-like belief ceases to be faith since it admits no possible error. The evidence that the brain has a mind of its own is incontrovertible. And because we are so inevitably error-prone, it seems wise to hold loosely onto what we think we know.

The merit of the search for a Jesus of history is that at least it attempts to set aside delusional beliefs. Blind faith is path which leads to a precipice. Only sceptical reason will keep us on the straight and narrow.

I would hazard the opinion that this book is a must-read for any Christian who wants a stronger faith - that is, an approach to the world which is intensely sceptical on one hand, and stubbornly determined on the other.

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