Brain Chemistry and the Faith

By OWEN THORNTON

Two thoughts have struck me in relation to Daniel Goleman's Book Social Intelligence and issues around faith. One begins with a serious and fact-based examination of why fewer men attended a national church seminar on prayer than women and another is speculation on the experience of God during worship. While neither of these ideas is scientific, the questions that arise from them are worth considering.

Social Intelligence reveals a factual story about 'brain chemistry.'  It should be noted that Social Intelligence is the study of how others affect our minds. For example in a crowded room a man sees a woman he's attracted to.  When she looks him in the eye, he gets a 'shot' of a happy brain chemical in his mind, making he feel good.  This increase in happy brain chemicals takes place only while the man is looking at this woman eye-to-eye.

A question about why fewer men than women attend sessions about prayer

Since happy brain chemicals are striking us at all times of the day and night ... and we're not sure that habit created their release or if their release created our habits ... let's move to a Christian learning session.  In the room where a male instructor is about to teach a short course on effective prayer, one man and over a dozen women wait for any stragglers before the session begins.  I was that one man.  As we waited I asked if, because I was the only man in the group, if I was in the wrong room.  The instructor said that he has found this experience to be very common.  He then launched into a fascinating observation that men typically don't find their way to groups where people pray or learn to pray.  The instructor speculated that the type of people in sessions like this stems from Sunday school for children.  There, these sessions are led primarily by women, with a female's perspective which, while well intended, can miss the boys in the group.  The instructor sited his own experience where he was the only man in another group learning about prayer.  There the female leader had the attendees feel swatches of material and asked them to express how they felt as they touched each fabric.

It was a sensitivity exercise used to help people increase their vocabulary and to touch into their emotions and offer them new ways of expressing themselves.  But the man said he 'didn't want to feel swatches of fabric and express his emotions' any more than he wanted to be a man on the moon.  He wanted to learn about prayer.  He said the exercise was designed by a woman and geared to women, but that men experience things in different ways.

I know.  I know.  Already feminists amongst you are shouting that this exercise could have worked for men or at least some men.  Quite true.  I am the first to say that men and women are and should be equal, but we are not the same.  I also know that the swatch exercise could have missed some women too.  And yes, here at www.thehumankindnessproject.com we acknowledge that there are visual, audio and kinesthetic learning styles AND we acknowledge that male/female stereotypes don't always mean that all men would have hated this exerice and all women would have loved it.  But if we can accept that men and women are different in essential ways, let us move on with the story.

The male instructor then added that because women often lead Sunday School, they come to it with a female's approach which sometimes misses boys and that the result may be seen in the very room we were sitting in: with 12 + women waiting to learn about prayer and one man.  I will note that my church's Sunday school, led by an ordained female minister is busy advocating to hire a young man so that he can relate to the boys in our youth programs. 

Now, for more insight about men and prayer we need to go back to Goleman's book.  He sites a story with some fact and speculation.  It is a fact that when a woman is experiencing troubles and when she tells another woman about them, she receives a positive hit of a happy brain chemical.  Goleman then speculates that this positive response to the emotional conversation encourages women to tell many others ... because the act itself makes her feel good.  It is also true that men release the same happy chemical in their minds when they talk about their troubles, but because of testosterone, this chemical is not taken back up into the brain at the same rate as a woman's mind would. Therefore men receive less of a positive happy 'hit' from talking to others.  Goleman then speculates that this is why men don't open up as much or as often.

So, linking these two stories together my question is: do we see fewer men in a session learning about meaningful, effective ways of talking to God, because in the process of talking to God this same happy chemical process is taking place when we talk to God is a similar experience as when we talk to others and men simply don't see the need for prayer because it just 'doesn't do anything for us for the same reasons that talking to others about our problems doesn't help us?'  I don't know, but in light of the evidence I have at my disposal, isn't it an interesting question?

What are we experiencing when we raise our hands and our heads in dedication to God?

In this next instance I will have to be more speculative for while I know that Goleman's book leads us to believe that many of our actions release positive brain chemicals I do not know if positive brain chemicals are released in this case.

Personally I have struggled with the idea of "experiencing God in worship."  I go to church to thank God for the gifts he has given me regularly and especially over the week, but I do not have a sense of a divine presence around me when I attend church.  Maybe I don't know what I'm looking for.  Maybe the presence is there and I'm just missing it ... I don't know, but I know others say they DO experience God in worship.

Now I do know the following.  When you raise your hands in the air and look up, and then you say something contrary to this body position, you will experience something very strange.  If you say, "I feel awful," there will be a disparity between your words and your body language.  In fact, it is your body language which is telling the truth and your language which feels like the words are false.

First, and I don't know this, but I wonder if that good feeling we achieve when we look up IS a positive hit from some kind of brain chemical.  I mean to ask is: upon every occasion that we feel good, is that sense of feeling good a positive chemical release in the brain?  If so those who raise their hands and heads in song during worship ... and when they say they 'experience God' when they do that ... are they truly experiencing God, or are they only experiencing an automatic release of positive brain chemicals because they put their body in a position to release those brain chemicals?  Hmmm.