Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Why Your Mind Cannot Die

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Why Your Mind Cannot Die · Pastor John Piper's answers

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Well Man by the name of Francis Crick won a
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  Speaker 1: Nobel Prize. He won it for being one of the
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  Speaker 1: two scientists who famously discovered the double helix of DNA
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  Speaker 1: back in nineteen fifty three. I believe that was at
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  Speaker 1: Cambridge in the UK. Four decades later. That same Francis
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  Speaker 1: Crick wrote this quote, You, your joys and your sorrows,
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  Speaker 1: your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity
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  Speaker 1: and free will are in fact no more than the
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  Speaker 1: behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their
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  Speaker 1: associated molecules. End quote. Wow. You basically are what happens
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  Speaker 1: materially in your brain, and when your brain function ends,
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  Speaker 1: you are extinguished. Poof gone. Of course, the Bible says otherwise.
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  Speaker 1: In this episode, we examine scriptures teaching on the soul,
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  Speaker 1: the consciousness, and how our true personhood survives death and
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  Speaker 1: flourishes in the resurrection. Today, unasked Pastor John why our
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  Speaker 1: mind cannot die? The question is from Paul and Indianapolis. Hello,
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  Speaker 1: Pastor John. I have a pair of college friends, non Christians,
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  Speaker 1: obsessed with a debate over the human consciousness and where
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  Speaker 1: it exists. At this point, they're both firmly convinced that
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  Speaker 1: the consciousness is non material, not explained by physical realities.
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  Speaker 1: They both firmly believe consciousness exists outside or beyond the brain.
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  Speaker 1: Until recently, I was completely uninterested in their debate. Then
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  Speaker 1: I begin to ponder the intermediate state of the Christian
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  Speaker 1: between death and bodily resurrection, and I arrived at the
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  Speaker 1: same conclusion. My consciousness is non material. It's not a
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  Speaker 1: physical part of me, which is why Jesus could tell
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  Speaker 1: the thief on the cross today you will be with
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  Speaker 1: me in paradise in Luke twenty three forty three, and
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  Speaker 1: why Paul speaks of being away from the body and
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  Speaker 1: at home with the Lord in seven Corinthians five eight.
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  Speaker 1: These passages imply a continued awareness independent from a physical
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  Speaker 1: functioning brain. So is consciousness the soul or part of
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  Speaker 1: the soul? And then what do we make of people
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  Speaker 1: whose consciousness is distorted by a brain in dementia and
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  Speaker 1: other degeneracies. What are the implications? Is there a deep
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  Speaker 1: authentic me that is for now masked and distorted by
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  Speaker 1: physical limits?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think Paul, I mean the Paul who asked
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  Speaker 2: this question of the Bible. Paul, but the Paul who
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  Speaker 2: asked this question. I think he's absolutely right that human
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  Speaker 2: consciousness is not identical with the physical brain, and gets right.
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  Speaker 2: I think the reasons he gives from the Bible are compelling.
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  Speaker 2: We are going to be conscious persons in presence of
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  Speaker 2: Christ after we depart from the body Philippians one twenty three,
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  Speaker 2: second Corinthians five eight. Our brain is going to be
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  Speaker 2: lying in the grave, and our personhood are conscious relating
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  Speaker 2: to Jesus is in heaven in the presence of the Lord.
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  Speaker 2: That's a clear teaching, I think in the New Testament,
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  Speaker 2: and that shouldn't surprise us. Since God himself existed from
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  Speaker 2: all eternity as consciousness, not as a body. Physical matter
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  Speaker 2: of which the brain is apart, was created created, It's
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  Speaker 2: not an eternal part of God. Therefore, God is personal
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  Speaker 2: personal consciousness, and we are created in his image. The
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  Speaker 2: wonder is that He created not just persons with consciousness
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  Speaker 2: who could communicate with him in truth and love, thoughts
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  Speaker 2: and affections, but that he decided to link those centers
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  Speaker 2: of consciousness those persons with bodies and brains. That introduced
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  Speaker 2: a great mystery, namely, how do our personal consciousness, that
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  Speaker 2: is our very personhood. Yes, soul interact with or interpenetrate
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  Speaker 2: our physical brains, because clearly they do. I mean, I
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  Speaker 2: remember thinking about this a great deal in Germany fifty
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  Speaker 2: years ago. I was a graduate student, and I can
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  Speaker 2: remember sitting in my little pantry off the kitchen where
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  Speaker 2: I studied for three years. I was thinking. Now, patience
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  Speaker 2: is called a fruit of the Holy Spirit. In other words,
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  Speaker 2: patience is the work of a super natural being producing
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  Speaker 2: in me a spiritual reality that's a matter of consciousness.
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  Speaker 2: And yet patience is clearly affected by physical sleeplessness. I
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  Speaker 2: mean obvious to me that I get more irritable and
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  Speaker 2: less patient when I get less sleep. So my body
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  Speaker 2: and my consciousness clearly interact somehow. Maybe one of the
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  Speaker 2: best things I can do for Paul and his friends
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  Speaker 2: who are thinking about this issue is to direct them
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  Speaker 2: to an essay by C. S. Lewis to just go
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  Speaker 2: get it. It's free online. Just type it in you'll
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  Speaker 2: find it. You can, or you can buy the book.
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  Speaker 2: The place that I'm quoting from is The Weight of Glory,
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  Speaker 2: which is four essays or four sermons HarperCollins, pages ninety
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  Speaker 2: one to one fifteen, just called transposition. It's about this
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  Speaker 2: very issue more or less. And here's what Lewis says.
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  Speaker 2: It's a little aside in his essay, but provocative. It
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  Speaker 2: seems to me. I'm quoting Lewis now. It seems to
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  Speaker 2: me very likely that the real relationship between mind and
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  Speaker 2: body is one of transposition. That's what the essay is about.
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  Speaker 2: We are certain that in this life, at any rate,
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  Speaker 2: thought is intimately connected with the brain, right the theory
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  Speaker 2: that thought, therefore is merely a movement in the brain,
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  Speaker 2: which is what naturalists think a theistic evolutionary naturalists who
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  Speaker 2: don't think anything about supernaturality. This idea that thought is
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  Speaker 2: nothing more than movement in the brain is, in my opinion,
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  Speaker 2: Lewis says, nonsense. For if so, the theory itself would
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  Speaker 2: be merely a movement, an event among atoms which may
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  Speaker 2: have speed and direction, but of which it could never
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  Speaker 2: meaningfully be called true or faulse. We are driven then
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  Speaker 2: to some kind of correspondence, so between brain and mind consciousness.
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  Speaker 2: But if we assume a one for one correspondence, namely
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  Speaker 2: between what happens in the mind and what happens in
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  Speaker 2: the body, the brain, this means that we have to
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  Speaker 2: attribute an almost unbelievable complexity and variety of events to
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  Speaker 2: the brain. But I submit that a one for one
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  Speaker 2: relationship is probably quite unnecessary. That's what his essays about.
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  Speaker 1: Really.
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  Speaker 2: All our examples from the earlier part of the essay
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  Speaker 2: suggest that the brain can respond to the seemingly infinite
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  Speaker 2: variety of consciousness without providing one single, single physical modification
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  Speaker 2: for each single modification of consciousness. Now that's the end
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  Speaker 2: of the quote. Let me see if I can shed
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  Speaker 2: some light on that statement. For example, the conscious experience
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  Speaker 2: of love, in its richness and depth and diversity, cannot
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  Speaker 2: simply be identified with the physical counterpart of the experience
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  Speaker 2: of sexual desire in the brain or in the body.
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  Speaker 2: In fact, the consciousness of fear or some other emotional
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  Speaker 2: pain may use the very same neural pathway in the
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  Speaker 2: brain as sexual desire. But because the higher level of
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  Speaker 2: consciousness love and fear is vastly more complex than the
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  Speaker 2: lower level of physical responses, the lower level has to
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  Speaker 2: make do so to speak with the same anatomical neural
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  Speaker 2: sensation for both love and fear. But we experience these
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  Speaker 2: two acts of consciousness as very different physical sensations. Because
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  Speaker 2: the consciousness embodies itself in the same nerves, but interprets
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  Speaker 2: those sensations sensations for us differently. Lewis puts it like this,
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  Speaker 2: The emotion or consciousness descends bodily, as it were, into
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  Speaker 2: the sensation the nervous system, and digests, transforms, transubstantiates, so
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  Speaker 2: that the same thrill along the nerves is delight or
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  Speaker 2: is agony. End quote. Now this is only an analogy
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  Speaker 2: to illustrate the fact that consciousnes business, the realm of
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  Speaker 2: thought and emotion, reasoning, and affection, are vastly richer, more varied,
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  Speaker 2: more subtle than the physical nervous system. This may all
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  Speaker 2: sound a bit heady, but there are serious implications if
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  Speaker 2: we believe that our true personhood, our human consciousness, is
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  Speaker 2: both distinct from our physical brain and profoundly interwoven with it.
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  Speaker 2: I'll mention three of those implications because that's one of
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  Speaker 2: the things that Paul was asking about. Number One, it
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  Speaker 2: helps us take seriously the spiritual significance of taking care
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  Speaker 2: of our bodies, because the body can seriously affect the
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  Speaker 2: mind consciousness. But the same conviction keeps us from the
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  Speaker 2: superficial notion that because the body interacts with the consciousness.
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  Speaker 2: Therefore consciousness is nothing but brain, nothing more than physical,
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  Speaker 2: and we go utterly out of existence when we die.
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  Speaker 2: On that view, that's not true. We know it's not
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  Speaker 2: true from the Bible, and it does not follow from
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  Speaker 2: the fact that the consciousness and the brain interact. Second,
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  Speaker 2: since our true personhood is not identical with the brain
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  Speaker 2: or the body, we should be slow to assume that drastic, traumatic,
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  Speaker 2: negative physical alterations in the brain also mean that the
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  Speaker 2: true person is also drastically altered. What if a person
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  Speaker 2: has been a humble, godly lover of Jesus for seventy
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  Speaker 2: years and then, after a stroke is sullen, with drawn
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  Speaker 2: cynical I would be very slow to pass judgment a
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  Speaker 2: judgment of apostasy on such a one, God knows the
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  Speaker 2: true person. And Third, since the life of the soul
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  Speaker 2: or consciousness is vastly to use Lewis's words, richer, more varied,
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  Speaker 2: more subtle, it is likely that our glorified bodies in
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  Speaker 2: the resurrection will not merely duplicate our present brains. Instead,
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  Speaker 2: it is likely that our glorified brains will be of
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  Speaker 2: a whole new order, so that they can create sensations
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  Speaker 2: of joy that dare we say are infinitely richer, more varied,
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  Speaker 2: more subtle, so that they can accommodate the immeasurable fullness
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  Speaker 2: of joy and pleasures at God's right hand that we
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  Speaker 2: will experience.
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  Speaker 1: Hey man, yeah, I just read that essay a month ago.
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  Speaker 1: He's a gift.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems to me. I mean, as I read
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  Speaker 2: it again yesterday, I was struck again how thankful I
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  Speaker 2: am that God led me to Lewis in college, and
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  Speaker 2: how I think college students need to go there, because
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  Speaker 2: quite apart from the conclusions that he draws, his power
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  Speaker 2: of analogy is something. It's simply amazing, yes, and it's
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  Speaker 2: just astonishing what he must sit there. He must sit
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  Speaker 2: there with his with his head in his hands, saying.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, what's this like?
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  Speaker 2: I got to make this understandable? And he comes up
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  Speaker 2: with drawing drawing lines on a page that use an
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  Speaker 2: acute angle to draw a cube made up of right angles,
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  Speaker 2: because it makes it look like they're right angles. And
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  Speaker 2: all you've got to work with on the sheet is
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  Speaker 2: acute angles. So acute angles have to do double duty.
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  Speaker 2: They have to present the shape of a dunci's gap
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  Speaker 2: and they have to create the shape of a cue,
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  Speaker 2: and they're totally different in reality. To illustrate his point
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  Speaker 2: that the higher level of consciousness is richer, and it's
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  Speaker 2: gotta and caarn itself into a two dimensional flat surface,
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  Speaker 2: and all you can do is with lines. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: how do you come up with something like that?
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  Speaker 1: Yes, it's so vibrant.
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  Speaker 2: I just want our young people, yes, to develop those skills,
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  Speaker 2: because they don't come out of nowhere. I mean, it's
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  Speaker 2: not like I don't think he just spontaneously thought of that.
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  Speaker 1: No.
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  Speaker 2: I think he sat and he pondered, and he worked
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  Speaker 2: it through and then God mercifully gifted him with yes.
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  Speaker 1: Yes. And I think one of the things he did
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  Speaker 1: so well was he could remember experiences of his childhood,
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  Speaker 1: so he used those things as illustrations too, Like you
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  Speaker 1: know people who play around with religion like they're you know,
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  Speaker 1: playing cops and robbers, like kids playing cops and robbers
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  Speaker 1: in the house, and then all of a sudden you
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  Speaker 1: see the foot with the shadow of a foot on
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  Speaker 1: the other side of the door, and you realize a
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  Speaker 1: real robber has just broken into the house. And it's
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  Speaker 1: like it gets real when God shows up, you know
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  Speaker 1: that that's some sort of experience that he had as
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  Speaker 1: a child that he never forgot that he then employs
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  Speaker 1: as a metaphor. I think that's why the Narnia series
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  Speaker 1: is so fascinating too. It's like he is so well
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  Speaker 1: acquainted with what it's like to be a child. He
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  Speaker 1: just had this endless fascination with life. But he could
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  Speaker 1: just record all of these experiences and things and then
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  Speaker 1: draw from them. Really remarkable mind transposition the first ever
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  Speaker 1: appearance of Lewis's essay on APJ which is hard to
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  Speaker 1: believe it It has never been mentioned until now, over thirteen
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  Speaker 1: years later. So, yeah, while our brain is going to
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  Speaker 1: be lying in the grave, and our personhood, our consciousness
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  Speaker 1: relating to Jesus is in heaven in the presence of
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  Speaker 1: the Lord. Hey man, that's so good. The mind isn't
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  Speaker 1: just the brain. It's not just the brain. The mind
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  Speaker 1: is like a three D box drawn on a flat
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  Speaker 1: piece of paper. The paper holds the drawing, but the
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  Speaker 1: two D page isn't the box? So good? I love
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  Speaker 1: the imagery here speaking of what we have covered over
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  Speaker 1: the past thirteen years. For more end of life questions,
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  Speaker 1: see the last section of the ask Pasture John Book
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  Speaker 1: beginning on page four point forty one for more there
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  Speaker 1: on end of life questions. Many people believe joy must
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  Speaker 1: wait until the suffering ends, and that's not what we
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  Speaker 1: see in scripture. Next time, don't wait for the pain
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  Speaker 1: to stop. I'm Tony Ranky. We'll see you on Monday.