"Be Ye Transformed" - The Story Of A Slug
Romans 12:1-2
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
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Anybody who has been saved for any amount of time knows these verses backward and forwards. We know them so well that we don’t … well … really know them well.
I’ve been saved since 1973. I’ve read these verses many times. I memorized them a very long time ago. And yet, I’ve always come up short when trying to conceptualize and actualize this transformation process by the renewing of my mind.
Sure, I have a general conceptual understanding. But, I need something almost tangible, tactile when it comes to wrapping my head around this sort of command.
God commands us to not be like the world. For that to happen, our minds need to be renewed. What does that mean? How does it happen??
I finally have a working hypothesis I’d like to share with you. And it is just that: a working hypothesis. It’s not written in stone.
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For the following, you’re going to have to put on your thinking caps.
Luke got me a book he recently read. It’s called The Shallows. Subtitled: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. This particular book is the 10 year anniversary edition with an Afterward about where we are now. Interestingly, the author says he changed very little of what he originally wrote 10 years ago. He felt, and rightly so, that what he wrote then still holds true now.
The author is “New York Times Best Seller Nicholas Carr.” Let me say up front that he is an evolutionist. Though he doesn’t acknowledge biblical truth, he still transmits that truth anyway because … that is the truth.
I want to share some very enlightening quotes from the book.
When you read the following quotes, remember my focus is on how we can be transforming ourselves by the renewing of our minds. Also let me add: I have a sneaky suspicion, God, when He created us, was already well aware of what Carr writes. But what I appreciate is that what Carr shares in his book has helped me conceptualize what God has told us to do.
Makes sense? I hope so.
Here are the quotes. Take the time to read them! Then I’ll wrap this up.
P. 19
“Scientists confirmed the existence of discrete nerve cells. They also discovered that those cells - our neurons - are both like and unlike the other cells in our bodies. Neurons have central cores, or somas, which carry out the functions common to all cells, but they also have two kinds of tentacle-like appendages — axons and dendrites — that transmit and receive electric pulses. When a neuron is active, a pulse flows from the somas to the tip of the axon, where it triggers the release of chemicals called neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters flow across … the synapse … and attach themselves to a dendrite of a neighboring neuron, triggering (or suppressing) a new electric pulse in that cell. It’s through the flow of neurotransmitters across synapses that neurons communicate with one another, directing the transmission of electrical signals along complex cellular pathways. Thought, memories emotions — all emerge from the electrochemical interactions of neurons, mediated by synapses.
P. 21
There are “biological consequences of habit, between the actions of water on land and the effects of experience on the brain.” These “biological consequences of habit” are compared to how “flowing water hollows out a channel for itself which grows broader and deeper; and when it flows again, it follows the path traced by itself before. Just so, the impressions of outer objects fashion for themselves more and more appropriate paths in the nervous system and these vital paths recur under similar external stimulation, even if they have been interrupted for some time.”
P. 27-28
“A series of experiments [by] the biologist Eric Kandel [were] performed in the early 1970s on a type of large sea slug called Aplysia. (Sea creatures make particularly good subjects for neurological tests because they tend to have simple nervous systems and large nerve cells.) Kandel, who would earn a Nobel Prize for his work, found that if you touch a slug’s gill, even very lightly, the gill will immediately and reflexively recoil. But if you touch the gill repeatedly, without causing any harm to the animal, the recoiling instinct will steadily diminish. The slug will become habituated to the touch and learn to ignore it. By monitoring slugs’ nervous systems, Kandel discovered that ‘this learned change in behavior was paralleled by a progressive weakening of the synaptic connections’ between the sensory neurons that ‘feel’ the touch and the motor neurons that tell the gill to retract. In a slug’s ordinary state, about ninety percent of the sensory neurons in its gill have connections to motor neurons. But after its gill is touched just forty times, only ten percent of the sensory cells maintain links to the motor cells. The research ‘showed dramatically,’ Kandel wrote, that ‘synapses can undergo large and enduring changes in strength after only a relatively small amount of training’.”
I found that all very fascinating.
In a nutshell …
He’s telling us (in spite of himself) how God has made it possible for us, through His creation process, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Granted, I’m making an application to the Christian world mindset versus the world’s mindset.
It seems relatively clear to me that God Himself has made it possible for us to be constantly conforming to the image of our dear Saviour -- by means of the new-birth. Our renewing, transforming, conforming transformation process is achieved through His Word energized by the indwelling life-force of the Holy Spirit.
Let me try to help our understanding with yet another working hypothesis.
Remember Kandel talked about the gill of the slug exhibiting a change of response after “just forty times”? The number 40 stood out to me.
I’ve always been intrigued by the frequent occurrence of “forty days” in the Bible. You might be surprised how many times in the Bible it’s mentioned. How many times, you ask? Ok, I’ll tell you.
Genesis 7 — It rained forty days and forty nights.
Genesis 50:1-3 —And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel. And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days.
Exodus — Moses spends forty days and nights in the mount with God.
Numbers 13 - The spies search the land for forty days.
I Samuel 17 - Goliath presents himself morning and evening for forty days.
I Kings 19 - Elijah goes in the strength of food forty days and nights to Horeb.
Ezekiel 4 — Ezekiel lies on his side bearing the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days.
Jonah 3 — Jonah cries out his warning that Nineveh will be overthrown in forty days.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us Yeshua was in the wilderness tempted by Satan forty days.
Acts 1 — Yeshua showed Himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days.
The significance seems to be attached to “forty days” in the Bible.
Hypothesis time again:
Perhaps God is indicating/demonstrating how change can be effected through means of constant, repetitious, active obedience to His Word.
If touching a slug’s gill 40 times produces lasting change, maybe we can affect change too.
Maybe, by means of our constant attention to obeying God’s Word in the areas in which He is dealing with us, we can actually enter into the process of transformation by the renewing of our mind.
Am I on to something here?
I trow so.
If nothing else, I hope to energize us to realize the Bible isn’t just a book to be appreciated, believed, and wondered at.
It is THE living, life-force of God Himself for us.
It IS what makes a person, through the new birth, a new creation. (“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” II Corinthians 5:17)
And, it’s also THE living, life-force that will transform us along our pilgrim journey to Christ-likeness and eternity.
Hebrews 4: 12 states emphatically:
“The word of God is quick (living, alive, God’s energizing life-force), and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Please, give all of this some thought.
Why?
Truthfully …
I’m having a hard time accepting that we’re less responsive to the touch of God than a slug is to the touch of a human.
He created us both, right.?
Let’s not be outclassed by a slug.