Truth, Logic, and my Emotional Connection to God

I have always had a physical reaction to music. Mom has stories of how I could clap in time to the music on Sesame Street and how I would move my body to music when I played the piano. Therefore, it was easy to take that reaction and be able to worship with my whole being. People always comment at how I'm always moving during the music part of church.

However, the emotional connection with God came gradually. Even during The Rock, I danced around and stuff mostly to blend in at the beginning. When people got really passionate and emotional during prayer, I didn't get it at first. It might seem odd to people who know me now, but it's a process.

Here is the process:

Much of my early Christian development was focused on learning about God. I first had to learn about God as Creator. This is the most tangible example of how my emotion process to worship worked, so I'll use this as an example. I first had to learn that He was Creator. This meant that I had to learn about why evolutionary theory didn't work and why the idea of an intelligent designer made sense. This was logic.

The next thing that happened was experience. As I went through my biology classes, I saw the complexity of the cell and organ systems in the human body, I realized that an intelligent agent was behind it. This reinforced the logic. I could see and experience it.

Once I was convinced logically and experientially that God was Creator, I felt happy. Someone made me. Therefore someone cares for me. I am not alone. Someone made this world and made it to make sense, therefore, curiosity about the world glorifies Him!!!!!! That excited me because I enjoyed learning about His world anyway :) Then the happiness and 'eeks' flowed out!!!!! When we at The Rock first sang a song that I recognized as a song to our Creator, I went up front. I was a little nervous because I knew it was going to be loud, but I just felt like I had to jump around and praise God as Creator because I finally realized He was Creator and He showed me - He graciously showed me even though I denied it to His face for so long.

I believe God had to teach me physical foundational truths of His presence and how He addresses the larger problem of evil and sin before He began teaching me more about how to have a relationship with Him. Getting concepts about Him as Creator and learning apologetic tools to explain His existence to others tapped into my intellectual side. I got excited about those things first.

However, having a relationship with a largely abstract Person was different. I would see my friends cry at a prayer meeting because they "were feeling their hearts drawn toward Jesus" or longing for Him. I could understand crying for a friend in a biology class that needed to know Jesus because I could see the inconsistency of studying God's intricate creation of the cell and not acknowledging Him for it.

I only really started to get it after my sophomore year of college when I realized that The Lord's prayer started out: Our Father. Somehow God was a parent to us. Back to logic. As I saw in the Bible of how God cares for us, guides us, has rules for us, comforts us, gives us strength and encouragement, I realized those are all things that competent parents do for their children. Trust formed out of that and I would ask Him for simple things. Seeing tangible answers to prayer like having little circumstances work out built that trust and thus reinforced my praying. After trust and that experience that was built on logic finally allowed me to feel God's love.

Why do I draw out this diagram and explain things the way I do to break down my thought processes around my emotional connection to God? Because Dr. Grandin says that she doesn't feel the same awe toward God or scenery He's made like other people due to her autism. That made me wonder for a long time if a lot of my reactions were contrived in an attempt to be neurotypical - especially before I knew I was on the autism spectrum.

Yet I know I have an attachment relationship with God. Recently I read an article about adults with high-functioning autism / Aspergers Syndrome / PPD-NOS who completed the Adult Attachment Interview. They were able to be classified in the usual way and came out with a variety of attachment patterns. Therefore people with autism can form connections to people. Dr. Grandin talks about her mother and Mr. Carlock a lot and I can see from her history that she trusted them growing up and saw them as attachment figures. Therefore logically, I know it is possible for me to have an attachment relationship of some sort with God as He is indeed a personal God. An all-knowing Creator who wants to connect with me will do it taking into consideration on how specifically my ASD affects me because He knows how it does. He knows exactly how my DNA is sequenced and how that affected my brain. That just makes logical sense. I came back to that when I was asking myself if my emotional connection was real.

I realized that I needed more of a logical / intellectual base to have that initial emotional reaction, but once I did and my intellect was convinced of the truths about who God is, the emotion I feel toward Him is indeed real.

Multiply Your Life - Turn it up as a case study!

Yesterday I was looking up some random stuff & found this article here about deep pressure as a therapy for people on the autism spectrum. The author, Dr. Grandin (yay CSU profs!) used her life as a case study and then incorporated other research to support her experiences in her literature review. After that, she wrote about an experiment she conducted with other college students using the same deep pressure techniques she used on herself. Research backing her experiences and the data from her experiment with college students verified that the technique she discovered is valid & works.

Something that hit me in the midst of me reading that like, "THIS IS SO NERDY BUT SO AWESOME!!!" is this: she opened her life up to help other people and she's used her strengths to improve life for animals. In her journal articles, she backs up her work with research, but there's a sense that she pours her life out on these pages because she wants others to benefit. Her life is a bit convicting because I have to ask myself: how much am I willing to pour out my life - both its weaknesses and its strengths for others? The apostle Paul admits that his life is poured out like a drink offering (2 Timothy 4:6) and in multiple places he speaks candidly about his weaknesses, the most famous being in 2 Cornithians 12. where he boasts about his weaknesses. In a way, Dr. Grandin does this by being up front with her sensory struggles or other issues related to autism and how she's used research to figure out how to cope.

I've struggled with attachment issues, low self-esteem, and other issues because of different things in my past. All this has been complicated by an ASD and I have had to learn how to cope as well. However, I have more than just research to lean on. I have the words of my Creator!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :) He has seen me in my darkest moments. When I was crying too hard for words & was alone, He heard me when in my little heart I asked where He was. When I tried to get to Him by doing good, He showed me that all have sinned and fallen short of His glory, but I could be justified by His grace by Christ. As I let Him free me from the effects of my past & remove the shame of having multiple disabilities, I can share this experience with other people. If others learn from my life - not about what I did, but more about how God can help them, than this is pouring out my life in a similar way as Dr. Grandin has. Yet, that journal article focuses only at relieving physical/neurological sensory issues. God - when I allow Him to use my life - can change people's life here on earth, but also give them hope for eternity.

'Secret' philosophies in the Light

So today, (Easter) during the service at the hospital chapel, the chaplain's homily centered around rebuking this book / DVD called 'The Secret' or Law of Attraction.' It's this new philosophy someone put in a book about how we attract positive stuff by thinking and doing positive and attracting negative outcomes by thinking and doing negative things. New-Age stuff, but apparently a lot of people are caught up in it. The chaplain presented it in a play (put on by the other chaplains) about a woman in the hospital visited by two different people. One believes in The Secret and tells her to think positive and do positive things and her disease will go away, and another tells her to trust in God because He will see her through it and ease her suffering through the doctors and staff in the hospital. The play ended with the patient accepting God's truth versus 'The Secret' because she realizes that false philosophy doesn't make much sense and is therefore a lie.

That was amazing to see that truth brought right there to healtcare workers from houskeeping staff to patient transporters to nurses and clerks as well as visitors and two patients. There was a rousing "AMEN!" when the chaplain proclaimed that trusting in the light of God as Jesus was the ultimate hope. Twenty voices rising from a classroom sized chapel in a public hospital is powerful because the Spirit of God is behind them in power. I prayed that we'd all be able to unite in prayer and testify that this new false philosophy or any others are false compared to the hope and truth found in God.

"But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who ask you to give the reason for the hope you have." 1 Pet 3:15

More info: google 'The Secret DVD' or 'Law of Attraction'

Christianity Explained

This essay was written as part of the application proccess to this newspaper my church is trying to get off the ground. The applicant had to write it to be a candidate for the position of writer (all positions unfortunately are unpaid...). Anyhoo, the essay had to answer the question, why should I become Christian? So, here it is. I'm including this in my blogs because all my posts touch on my identity as a Christian.

Christianity Explained

Many people believe that to accept Christianity is to accept a set of moral codes with a corresponding set of viewpoints that influence the actions of people that associate with it. Christianity, according to this assumption is to be followed because it will provide a moral framework for one's life and a set of guidelines to judge one's actions by.

However, Christianity does not answer the question of how to lead a moral life. Its basis is set in the fact that humanity has not lived up to a moral code prescribed by its Creator. God's moral code is stated explicitly in the Ten Commandments. Though one may not have violated them through one's actions, God looks at one's motives. If one had the intention of violating a commandment, one is already guilty of breaking it.

These thoughts or actions that break any of the ten commandments separate ourselves from God because He must separate Himself from anything that is less than His perfection. This separation of mankind from God is the cause of physical death and suffering as well as separation from God after death in a place referred to in the Bible as Hell.

The reunification of mankind with God can only be achieved when the wrongdoings of mankind are paid for. This idea of justice happens many times when a crime is paid for by jail time. However, we can't pay for breaking God's commandments ourselves by acting civilly or by doing acts of charity because we are imperfect and any attempt to pay for our wrongdoings is overshadowed by our predisposition to disobey God's commandments.

Christianity addresses this problem through the solution of Jesus Christ. He was the deity of God in the form of man. This meant that He had all the capabilities of God such as power over nature and power to heal people from incurable diseases. These capabilities were demonstrated through the miracles He performed which were recorded in the New Testament. He also followed the Ten Commandments both in His actions and His thoughts. Thus, Jesus was perfect and all powerful in every way. This perfection allowed Him to pay the fine for us by dying on the cross. This payment was not overshadowed by any imperfection, so the payment was the only valid one God would accept.

Therefore, one should become Christian by accepting the fact that he or she can't pay the fine he or she owes his or her God for their violation of the Ten Commandments, and having the faith that Jesus died on the cross as the only viable way to repay that debt. In this way, one can now be reunited with God both in his or her physical life and after death.