Following on from yesterday’s video, Lessons from the Wrecker’s Yard, here’s an infographic on burnout. It’s one of the best and most helpful infographics I’ve seen.

Source: TheSimpleDollar.com

Pastors, teachers, parents, and employers are daily deluged with people’s problems. Oftentimes we resort to simplistic and formulaic practical counsel that has short-term benefits at best. Other times we are tempted to ignore the problems, to deny them, to run from them, or sometimes just to give up. Our advice is spurned, our help is rejected, our prayers go unanswered, and situations go from bad to worse. We try one counseling strategy after another, we turn from one step-by-step guide to another, from one disciplinary measure to another, and we end up going round and round in circles.

Stop and study the attributes of God.

“What? The last thing I need at the moment is systematic theology. I need solutions and I need them fast. Be practical, man.”

Actually, God’s attributes are the first thing you need, and they are eminently practical for both sinners and sufferers alike. Consider the practical value of God’s attributes for those you are trying to help.

God’s Sovereignty
Let’s plant our feet on this rock-solid foundation before we offer a word of counsel or advice to anyone. God is in sole and purposeful control of all past, present, and future events, both on a macro- and on a micro-scale, at the inter-planetary level and on the our-little-life level. God is the ultimate ruler of time and space. He has a plan that is being worked out perfectly from day to day, and from year to year.  It’s a plan that extends from creation to consummation. It includes all the good things and all the bad things, the pleasant things and the painful things.

Belief in the sovereignty of God changes the way we look at the world, at people, and at their problems. What looks like a mess is actually part of a meticulous divine plan that is being worked out for the good of those who love God.

God’s Holiness
God’s holiness is our model and motivation in counseling others. It is our model in that the aim of counseling is to bring people into conformity with the perfectly beautiful image of God in character and conduct, especially that holy image as manifested in Jesus Christ.

It is our motivation because we learn from this attribute how much God hates sin, opposes it, fights against it and will punish it. Thus we do not treat sin lightly, we do not cover it up, and we do not excuse it; rather, we seek to have it confessed, forgiven, and forsaken.

God’s Wisdom
The all-wise God has all the answers, and all the ones we need He has revealed directly or indirectly in His Word and in His world. The answers in God’s Word may take the form of a verse, a doctrine, or a deduction from a passage. It may be a story, a commandment, a promise, a proverb, a psalm, or a summary of truth from various places. Sometimes the answer may be very direct and obvious, sometimes indirect and yielded only to study.

However, God also communicates His wisdom to us through His World. Although God has placed all we need to know for salvation and sanctification in His Word, He has also placed much helpful wisdom in the world, which we locate, read, and interpret through the lens of His Word.

God’s Power
As we look at the brokenness and complexity of people’s personalities, bodies, minds, hearts, relationships, etc., we collapse in impotent helplessness. But looking up from there, we then see God’s infinite power, and His infinite willingness to help the helpless, toughen the tried, and empower the powerless via His Almighty Spirit.

God’s Love
The love of God is why we counsel and what we counsel. The love of Christ compels us to counsel, and the love of Christ is the content of our counsel. We are not in the business of condemning people but of pointing them to salvation and the Savior. The love of God in Christ is at the center of every counseling session – whether it is extending forgiveness through Christ’s blood or sympathy through Christ’s sufferings.

God’s Justice
God’s justice? Is that not a rather threatening attribute? Well it may be. And maybe it ought to be. We are dealing with souls who are heading to judgment and an eternal destiny of blessing or cursing. We will be called to account for how we direct such souls. And we should remind those we are trying to help that they too will be called to account for how they respond to God’s guidance through us.

But I included this attribute primarily as a comfort! So many of the injustices we face will not be resolved here. It is such a wonderful hope that Christ will return put everything right. He will perfect His people, deliver them from all their oppressors, and punish all who have wronged them. The Judge of all the earth will do right. He will renew His people and this world, and make everything new. He has promised. And He will keep that promise.

Unless we start with the attributes of God, we will never get started.

This article first appeared in Tabletalk. You can try it free for three months here.

I’m also looking forward to Brad Hambrick’s booklet, God’s Attributes: Rest for life’s struggles,  which takes a more in-depth look at the role of the attributes of God in counseling.

Summary: One of the best ways to learn how to counsel others is to learn how to counsel yourself by knowing your Bible, heart, body, past, social character, personality type, and learning style.

There are many ways to learn how to counsel: books, lectures, watching/learning from other counselors, and of course the actual practice of counseling others. All of these are vital components of a counseling education. But the best counselors of others are those who have learned how to counsel themselves first of all. I agree with Martyn Lloyd-Jones who said that the secret to the Christian life was to “learn how to preach to yourself.”

The best counselors understand themselves, their personalities, their hearts, their strengths, their weaknesses, their limitations, their vulnerabilities, etc., and they have learned how to address these needs with God’s Word and God’s Works from God’s World.

So, what does self-counseling involve?

1. Knowing our Bible
The Bible must have priority and primacy in all that we do. It is the only infallible guide and teacher in the world. If we start with ourselves, we are starting with error. But of course it is our error-filled and error-prone minds that process the Bible. That’s why we so much need prayer and the Holy Spirit in all our Bible study (1 Cor. 2:10, 11).

2. Knowing our heart
I know of no better example of self-counseling than Joe Thorn’s excellent book, Note to Self: The discipline of preaching to yourself. Please read and re-read that little book of “heart-surgery” to understand the kind of spiritual dialogue that you should be having with yourself continually. And that in turn will be a huge help to you in ministering God’s Word to others.

3. Knowing our body
But there’s more to self-counseling than preaching God’s Word to yourself. We are not just spiritual beings; we are also physical and social beings. And sometimes our needs are more physical and social than spiritual. The best self-counselors understand their bodily and social needs as well as their spiritual needs, and they also understand the mysterious interaction of these realms of need. Our physicality affects our spirituality. As our weight, our health, our fitness, and our sleep all impact how we think and feel, we must get to know our bodies.

4. Knowing our past
Have a good think about all the factors in your past that have gone into shaping who you are. Your parents, your education, your values, and your experiences all impact who you have become, how you speak, how you think, how you feel, how you act. This is not some Freudian rubbish; it’s basic common sense. And again, the more we can grasp the impact of the past on our present and our future, the better placed we will be to understand, sympathize with, and help others as they move from past and present problems into the future.

5. Knowing our social character
Perhaps using Adam McHugh’s Introverts in the Church, get to know the difference between extroverts and introverts, place yourself on the extro/intro scale and it will help you to understand others much better too.

6. Knowing our personality type
Knowing what kind of personality we have will also be a huge help in self-counseling. Questions to consider are: Do you like active or passive roles? Are you task-oriented or people-oriented? How do you respond to challenges and problems? What roles do you take on in a group? What are the strengths of your personality? What are your weaknesses? Are you a one-way or two-way communicator? One of the ways to find out about ourselves is to ask others or to consider the criticisms we’ve received from others over the years. Understanding the wide range of different personalities that exist and the way that personality impacts every area of life will be a huge help to you in counseling.

7. Knowing our learning style
Some learn by watching and listening, others by feeling and experiences, others by thinking, and still others by doing. If we are data learners, lots of practical work will be wasted on us. But if we learn mainly by doing, then lots of book work will be pointless. If we can grasp our own learning style, we will better identify the learning style of others, and help them to learn from us.

Conclusion: One of the best ways to learn how to counsel others is to learn how to counsel yourself by knowing your Bible, heart, body, past, social character, personality type, and learning style.

When I read some books on counseling, I’m left thinking that the authors have an extremely narrow and shallow view of their work. They often fail to get much beyond sin: finding it, confronting it, convicting of it, and forsaking it.

However a full-orbed theology of pastoral counseling goes much wider and deeper than that. I can think of at least 12 different kinds of counseling situations I’ve been involved in, and each of them requires significantly different pastoral skills.

Have a look through the following list and ask yourself if you have the pastoral resources to counsel people in each of these varied situations. How would you prepare for such situations? What would you be listening for? What questions can you anticipate being asked? What questions would you ask? What verses/truths/stories might be applicable? What biblical principles would you communicate and how? Who else might you involve? How would you pray? What books or sermons would you recommend?

1. Sinning: Margaret has fallen into sin and a family member asks you to speak to them. (I start with sin because everybody else does! But let’s not stop there).

2. Seeking: Frank is attending church for the first time and although he has many questions, he seems to be earnestly seeking the Lord. How would you help him find what/who he is seeking?

3. Sickness: 35-year-old William, a father of three, has been diagnosed with cancer and is facing surgery and chemo-therapy with no guarantees of success.

4. Sorrowing: Joe and Amy have just been bereaved of their unconverted son in an auto accident.

5. Sadness: Janet, a Christian mother of four young children, has emailed to say that she thinks she is suffering with depression.

6. Social: One of your elders has phoned to let you know that following months of bad-tempered arguing, his unmarried teenage daughter has announced she is pregnant, has left the home, and has started living with her boyfriend.

7. Suffering: A number of the previous situations involve suffering, but I’m using this category specifically for the pain of persecution for Christ’s sake.

8. Strengthening: Although counseling is usually associated with problems, why not also consider how you will counsel people in your congregation to grow and mature in spiritual gifts and graces, and in conformity to and communion with Christ. This is more about spiritual formation than problem-solving.

9. Steering: What principles of guidance will you provide to Paul about choosing a calling, and Sally about beginning a relationship.

10. Significance: Alice contacts you to say that her teenage son is really struggling with the meaning of life. He feels empty and hopeless and wonders what is the point of living.

11. Settling: Karen asks you to act as a peacemaker and help settle a series of disputes and arguments between her and her husband.

12. Satan: Mike phones you in deep distress because he fears falling into sin in the face of sustained and ferocious Satanic temptations.

I’m sure there are other categories as well (raising disabled children, unemployment, and loneliness spring to mind), but I hope that this sampling will encourage you to develop a much wider repertoire of pastoral skills and abilities. In fact, here’s a challenge: why not pick one category a month over the next year and really build up your knowledge and skills in each of these demanding situations.

And this challenge need not be restricted to pastors. All Christians are called upon to help people in these circumstances from time to time.  Why don’t you also focus on each of these areas, maybe one a month, and listen to one sermon or read one book on each subject over the coming year.

And while we’re at it, if anyone can recommend resources for us in each of these areas, please leave your suggestions in the comments, or email/Facebook/Twitter me, and if there are sufficient responses, I’ll collate them, organize them, and post them.

We all have haters. Christians have more than most. And faithful pastors maybe have more than anyone.

So how do you handle them?

Well, you can hate them back; but that’s not much help to you or them.

You can ignore them; but I don’t know too many who have succeeded at this.

You can try to make them like you; but that’s often an exercise in humiliating man-pleasing that usually only makes them more man-hating.

Or you can ask them for a favor! This counterintuitive approach is sometimes known as The Benjamin Franklin Effect, because Franklin perfected the art of turning his enemies into friends by asking them for help.

The Benjamin Franklin Effect
For example, Franklin turned one of his haters into a good friend by simply requesting to borrow a rare book.  After this man had lambasted Franklin in a campaign speech, Franklin set out to turn his hater into a fan; but he wanted to do it without “paying any servile respect to him.” Relying on his own reputation as a book lover, Franklin sent a letter to the hater asking if he could borrow a book from his library, one which was a “very scarce and curious book.” The rival, flattered, sent it right away. Franklin sent it back a week later with a thank you note. Mission accomplished.

The next time the legislature met, the man approached Franklin and spoke to him in person for the first time. Franklin said the hater “ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.” Franklin explains:

This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, ‘He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.’ And it shows how much more profitable it is prudently to remove, than to resent, return, and continue inimical [hostile] proceedings.

Or to put it simply: You grow to like people for whom you do nice things, and hate people you harm.

Psychologists and Jay Adams agree!
How does this work? Well, the psychologists explain it thus:

Despite the way things may seem—our actions determine our opinions about people and not the other way around. It is well known in psychology the cart of behavior often gets before the horse of attitude. Your actions tend to chisel away at the raw marble of your persona, carving into being the self you experience day-to-day…The things you do often create the things you believe.

But it isn’t just the deistical Franklin or secular psychologists who have identified this principle. In The Christian Counselor’s Manual, Jay Adams highlights Ichabod Spencer’s (also known as “The Bunyan of Brooklyn”) observation that “feelings flow from behavior.” This is why, says Adams, that Christian counselors do not focus on feelings because “they know that when they focus on attitudes and actions that the proper feelings will follow” (Prov. 15:30; 17:22).

In Competent to Counsel, after expounding God’s counsel to Cain in Genesis 4:3-7 (If you do right, will your face not be lifted up?), Adams concludes: “Voluntary behavioral alterations will lead to involuntary emotional changes. It is important to understand, therefore, that feelings flow from actions.”

While I fear that Adams sometimes goes too far in applying this insight to all emotional suffering, I certainly believe that in many situations we can not only change our hater’s feelings by asking him/her to do something good for us, but that we can also improve our own feelings towards them by doing something good for them, perhaps praying for them.

For example, recently I’ve been very burdened in prayer for someone who did me and my family much wrong some years ago. To be honest, I never ever expected to be praying for him because whenever his name was mentioned in the past, imprecations came to mind more easily than blessings. However, through various providences in his life and mine, I now find myself praying for him several times a day. And, although I can hardly believe it at times, love is beginning to grow.

Q. What’s the best way to learn how to counsel others?

A. Learning how to counsel yourself (self-counseling).

Yes, there are many ways to learn how to counsel: books, lectures, watching/learning from other counselors, and of course the actual practice of counseling others. All of these are vital components of a counseling education. But I believe that the best counselors of others are those who have learned how to counsel themselves first of all. I agree with Martyn Lloyd-Jones who said that the secret to the Christian life was to “learn how to preach to yourself.”

The best counselors understand themselves, their personalities, their hearts, their strengths, their weaknesses, their limitations, their vulnerabilities, etc., and they have learned how to address these needs with God’s Word and God’s Works from God’s World.

So what does self-counseling involve?

1. Knowing our Bible
The Bible must have priority and primacy in all that we do. It is the only infallible guide and teacher in the world. If we start with ourselves, we are starting with error. But of course it is our error-filled and error-prone minds that process the Bible. That’s why we so much need prayer and the Holy Spirit in all our Bible study (1 Cor. 2:10, 11).

2. Knowing our heart
I know of no better example of self-counseling than Joe Thorn’s excellent book, Note to Self: The discipline of preaching to yourself. Please read and re-read that little book of “heart-surgery” to understand the kind of spiritual dialogue that you should be having with yourself continually. And that in turn will be a huge help to you in ministering God’s Word to others.

But there’s more to self-counseling than preaching God’s Word to yourself. That’s why I said that self-counseling also involves addressing our needs with God’s Works from God’s World. We are not just spiritual beings; we are also physical and social beings. And sometimes our needs are more physical and social than spiritual. The best self-counselors understand their bodily and social needs as well as their spiritual needs, and they also understand the mysterious interaction of these realms of need.

I do not believe that biblical counseling involves only quoting or explaining the Bible. True Biblical counseling also involves using the Bible as our guide to what we can use in God’s Works and God’s World to help ourselves and others. That means we must know more than our Bible and our hearts.

3. Knowing our body
Our physicality affects our spirituality. As our weight, our health, our fitness, our sleep, etc., all impact how we think, feel, learn, pray, etc., we must get to know our bodies.

4. Knowing our past
Have a good think about all the factors in your past that have gone into shaping who you are: your parents, your education, your values, your experiences, etc., all impact who you have become, how you speak, how you think, how you feel, how you act. This is not some Freudian rubbish; it’s basic common sense. And again, the more we can grasp the impact of the past on our present and our future, the better placed we will be to understand, sympathize with, and help others as they move from past and present problems into the future.

5. Knowing our social character
A hugely helpful book for me has been Introverts in the Church by Adam McHugh. I’d say it is vital reading for anyone involved in soul-care. By explaining the multiple differences between extroverts and introverts, McHugh will give you huge insight into yourself and your social behavior, and hence also greater understanding of others’ lives too.

6. Knowing your personality type
Knowing what kind of personality we have will also be a huge help in self-counseling. Questions to consider are: Do you like active or passive roles? Are you task-oriented or people-oriented? How do you respond to challenges and problems? What roles do you take on in a group? What are the strengths of your personality? What are your weaknesses? Are you a one-way or two-way communicator? One of the ways to find out about our personalities is to ask others or to consider the criticisms you’ve received from others over the years. Or why not take a “personality test.” While not infallible, it will at least help you understand the wide range of different personalities that exist and the way personality impacts every area of life.

7. Knowing your learning style
If we are data learners, lots of practical work will be wasted on us. But if we learn mainly by doing, then lots of book work will be pointless. If we can grasp our own learning style, we will be much more able to identify the learning style of others, and help them to learn from us.

What other areas of knowledge would help us become better self-counselors and hence better counselors of others?

Most Americans do not feel comfortable speaking to their doctor about symptoms of depression.

Why?

That’s the question a team of psychologists at the University of California recently tried to answer via a phone survey of 1054 adults. Time reports the results:

1. 23% were afraid that their doctor would try to prescribe them antidepressant drugs.
2. 13% said they were worried they would be referred to a psychiatrist
3. 12% said they didn’t want to be considered a psychiatric patient.
4. 16% didn’t think psychological issues fell under the purview of a primary care doctor
5. 15% were concerned about medical record confidentiality.

The first three certainly coincide with my own experience of counseling people with depression; and there is usually even greater resistance to seeking medical help among Christians. The majority of emails, letters, phone calls, cries for help, that I regularly receive contain extremely painful personal stories describing the impact of depression on people’s lives, and the lives of their loved ones. But they almost always conclude with some variation of, “But, I know that anti-depressants are not for me,” or “But, I want to beat this on my own.”

Why should this be?

1. Over-prescription
Most of us have seen far too many people put on to anti-depressants far too soon and often with limited investigation as to causes. We’ve all known people who run for a pill as soon as they feel a bit down; there’s no willingness to bear any emotional pain; there’s no seeking of God’s help, grace and counsel; “Just give me something to make me feel better!”

Others want pills (and are usually given them) to deaden the guilt of living sinful lives. They will do anything to avoid taking responsibility and facing up to the spiritual causes of their pain; and if that means some emotion-killing meds, then pour them in. (Here’s a previous post on the pointlessness of medication-only approaches).

The abundant evidence of over-prescription in our society, even among Christians, is a huge impediment to the really needy going for appropriate help.

2. Confusion
The vast majority of people know very little about the role of the brain in our thinking and feeling processes. I’m afraid that even many Christian counselors and pastors lack vital understanding of brain science, and especially of the role the brain plays in our spiritual lives. It’s so embarrassing to see 20 and 30-year-old medical research, theories, and cliches still being quoted in modern Christian counseling books.

Yes, of course, some depressions can be caused by sinful actions, thoughts, and feelings. But depression can also be caused by the “machine” that processes our perceptions, thoughts, and feelings breaking down and malfunctioning. Like the factory with a broken conveyor belt, it doesn’t matter how many high-quality raw materials you put into it, the goods are going to come out damaged until the machinery is fixed. You can press the switch as often as you want, but if the cable is broken you will remain in the dark.

It’s actually amazing how much the church has gone backwards in its understanding of how the physical and the spiritual interact. I often hear the Puritans being promoted as models of men who used only Scripture to deal with depression. However, Puritans like William Perkins, Richard Baxter, Timothy Rogers, and Jonathan Edwards all understood and taught that there was often a physical or bodily element to many depressions, that needed to be treated with medicine, crude though their own solutions were at that time. For example, Richard Baxter wrote The Cure of Melancholy and Overmuch Sorrow by Faith and Physic (Medicine).

(UPDATE: I was just sent this fascinating Wall Street journal report on the impact of oxytocin on schizophrenics.)

3. Pride
We do not want to think of ourselves as weak (and we certainly don’t want others to think of us like that). Strange isn’t it that no one would view taking medication for any other malfunctioning bodily organ as a sign of weakness; rather, that’s wisdom!  Yet, taking meds for problems with the most complex organ in the body is somehow only for “losers!”

Pride can also be manifested among Christian pastors and counselors who think that they can “do it all.” Instead of viewing themselves as a vital and central part of a team of helpers from various disciplines working together to help a depressed person get better, some actively discourage the sufferer from working with anyone but themselves. This too deprives a person from benefitting from the gifts and talents God has distributed among different specialties.

4. Hyper-spirituality
Although Christians with heart disease, diabetes, blood disorders, cancer, etc. do not think that it is unspiritual to seek and use medicines to relieve their symptoms and even cure their illness, many seem to think that there is some special spiritual virtue in suffering depression for months and years without any medical intervention. Their family and friends don’t usually see much super-spirituality in this approach!

And the next time someone tells you that taking medication for depression shows a lack of faith, or a lack of trust in God’s Word, ask to see their usually overflowing medicine and vitamin cabinets!

5. Side-effects and mixed results
The side-effects of anti-depressants are often over-played by those who oppose any medical contribution to the treatment of depression. And it’s often used as an excuse by those who are resistant to taking them. However, we must accept that, as with all meds, there will usually be some side-effects to taking anti-depressants. Again, it’s strange to see the way that we will put up with some quite serious side-effects when it comes to the treatment of strokes, angina, cancer, etc; yet, with anti-depressants, we seem to demand perfect results with nil side-effects.

The question really is, “How desperate are we?” If we are truly desperate, then we will be prepared to put up with some lesser side-effects in order to start feeling and thinking normally again.

Brain scientists are increasingly referring to the brain as a “universe,” a universe that we’ve barely begun to explore. With new brain-imaging techniques, the previously slow pace of medical research is beginning to take some leaps forward. Let’s pray for God’s blessing on these researchers, that He would permit them to discover what He already knows about the role of the brain in our thinking and feeling processes, and that the relatively primitive medicines we presently have would be replaced by much more sophisticated and successful treatments.

And let’s pray for pastors, counselors, and Christian doctors that they will be given increasing skill to discern where each person’s depression lies on the spiritual/physical scale. God forbid that we help someone excuse and reason away their sin. But may God also forbid that we heap blame and responsibility on people for something that is not their fault.

Who is sufficient for these things?

This is so fascinating. Oxford University scientists studying how to repair learning circuits in stroke victims have discovered that the same techniques when applied to healthy people can significantly improve learning speed.

The technique? Well it’s a bit Frankenstein-ish, but it involves being fitted with a “trans-cranial current stimulation” device, in which two electrodes are placed in a specific position on the head. A very small current is passed between the electrodes in an arc through the brain and, depending on the direction of that current, either increased or decreased the activity of that part of the brain.

The BBC reports that, “The experiments have explicitly shown that stimulating the motor cortex of the brain can increase the speed of learning motor skills. It is the hope of the researchers that the same method may be applied to other parts of the brain to improve educational learning, simply by positioning the electrodes in different locations so the current is focussed on the correct area.”

And before you think, “Well great science, but completely impractical,” the report concludes: “The relative simplicity, low price (around £2,000 per unit), and portability of the technology may mean that, following further research, a device could be designed to be automated for use at home.”

Sounds like Apple’s next product, doesn’t it: the iBrain.

But, more seriously, this research helps us much better understand why sometimes the brain can go awry. If electricity can improve our learning and processing skills, then electrical shortage or malfunction in the brain can obviously have a serious detrimental effect on our thinking, and hence feeling too.  I’m guessing maybe this is why ECT can sometimes jolt someone out of deep and serious depression.

At any rate, it’s wonderful to see the way that God is leading scientists into a better understanding of our inner “universe,” as some neurologists are increasingly describing the brain.

I hope and pray that Christian counselors will allow such research to help them better understand the interaction of the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual, and adjust their presuppostions accordingly.

God answers our (usually unprayed) prayer for daily bread with bodies for our food and minds for our food. Tomorrow we’ll look at how He provides food for our souls. But today I’d like to briefly think about the link between food and mood. Does what we eat affect how we feel? Well, obviously there are many factors that influence our emotions:

• Our spiritual condition: The back-slidden Christian is not going to have the joy of a Christian living close to the Lord.
• Our circumstances: Maternity wards are usually happier places than funeral homes.
• Our health: Someone fighting terminal cancer or multiple sclerosis is not going to laugh as much as a fit and healthy 20-year-old.
• Our upbringing: Happier homes and marriages generally produce happier children and adults.
• Our models: It’s hard to be the life and soul of the party if we’re surrounded by sullen, pessimistic, and morose people.
• Our nature: Some are just constitutionally more bubbly and optimistic than others
• Our food: Our food?

Yes, food not only impacts our bodies and our minds but also our moods. In a way this should be obvious. If our food affects our thinking (see Brain Food), then it will also affect our feeling, because what we feel is hugely impacted by what we think. So food indirectly affects our moods (through our thought-processes).

But at times, food directly impacts our our moods. For example, our body’s blood/sugar levels have a big impact on our emotions. When we are hungry, when our blood/sugar levels are low, we tend to be cranky, fearful, weepy, irritable and confused. When we have eaten too much candy and ice cream, we can also have swings of emotion. This is a developing area of science, but God is allowing researchers to actually watch via PET scans the impact of certain foods upon certain parts of our brains and the subsequent emotions that are generated. Some of the early findings are:

• Soluble fiber foods such as oatmeal, strawberries, peas slow the absorption of sugar into the blood, smoothing out mood swings.
• Some foods like walnuts, salmon, and vitamin-D rich foods increase the number and efficiency of neurotransmitters (the brain’s messengers – see yesterday’s post)
• Tuna, and higher fish consumption in general, has been linked to lower rates of depression, and a stabilized mood (depression is virtually unknown among Eskimos!).
• Combining carbohydrates and proteins lifts serotonin levels, which in turn can have a calming effect upon us.
• Lentils and broccoli are an excellent source of folate, a B-vitamin that appears to be essential for balanced moods and proper nerve function in the brain. A Harvard study showed that 38 percent of depressed women are deficient in folate.
• Junk food contains a type of fat that does not help mood but rather raises stress levels.

Now, of course, this science can be abused. Let’s not start blaming all our bad moods on what we ate for lunch. As I said above, food is one of many factors in our feelings. If I’m feeling angry or depressed, I usually have to confess sin not change my diet.

However, we need not expect to have strong and stable emotional health if we break basic nutritional rules that God has built into our world. Unfortunately, many depressed and stressed-out people turn to Macdonalds rather than to the salad or sushi bar.

Yesterday we saw how God graciously provides sufficient and suitable food for our bodies. But do you know which organ of your body has the most dietary requirements? The brain! The brain requires 20% of our oxygen, 20% of our carbs, and 50% of available glucose to do its job. Over the last 10-15 years, research has increasingly shown the impact of diet on our intellectual capacities and abilities.

• Studies have shown that skipping breakfast reduces cognitive performance because it deprives the brain of the nutrients, vitamins and glucose that breakfast supplies.
• In a 2003 study, children who ate lots of sugar and fizzy drinks in their breakfast diet, performed at the same cognitive level of the average 70-year-old in attention and memory tests. Toast, on the other hand, boosted kids cognitive scores.
• Salads are packed full of antioxidants that eliminate damaging materials from the brain.
• Fish oil contains good fat which helps develop brains and ward of dementia by up to 3-4 years.
• Blueberries and strawberries boost short-term memory, focus, and coordination.
• Avocados increase oxygen and blood supply to the brain (and lower blood pressure)
• Eating a healthy diet slows age-related memory loss. For example, eggs are rich in choline which your body uses to produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine which helps improve memory and alertness.

Chemical cars
In that last stat, I mentioned neurotransmitters. What are they? These are chemicals that our brain uses to process our thoughts. Imagine your brain is like a road system, with many different highways, bridges and tunnels. Neurotransmitters are like the cars that carry our thoughts around the brain. There are about 14-15 different “models” or types of these neurotransmitters; and just like cars they depend on fuel. That’s where food comes in. If our diet is healthy, these “cars” multiply in number and efficiency. In other words, what we eat affects what we think.

Thus, God answers “Give us this day our daily bread” not only by giving sufficient and suitable food for physical life but also for intellectual life. How we should praise Him for providing so abundantly for all our needs, and also for matching our bodies and minds to this food. Each human brain has more switches in it than all the computers in the world. (Yes, your brain too.) What an incredibly complex organ, and yet God fuels it by what we put in our mouths at breakfast, lunch, etc. Truly we are awesomely and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14).

Re-fuel and re-start
But, of course, as it is the most complex organ in the body, its functioning has also been affected by the fall and the divine curse on our bodies. Just like our kidneys, pancreas, heart, liver, etc., the chemistry in our brains also sometimes goes awry, sometimes affecting the way we think. Though this is still frontier medicine, doctors, dietitians, and nutritionists can help us with diet and medication to re-balance that chemistry, or we could say “re-fuel and re-start” our chemical cars. How we should praise God for this science, and also prayerfully encourage those who are trying to advance knowledge and expertise in this complex area.

This prayer also implies human responsibility. We can’t expect our minds to function well, if we are stuffing our faces with junk. And remember, God works through our minds; He does us spiritual good by imparting truth through our brains. Thus, if we are not caring for our brain by giving it sufficient and suitable fuel, that will ultimately damage our spiritual lives as well.