SGIG E321 Healing Life’s Hurts Through Understanding Forgiveness & Identity  With Paul Siddall Pt. 2

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Dr. Jerome D. Lubbe, a neuroplasticity expert, discusses his journey and the intersection of faith and science. He shares his experience growing up in South Africa and immigrating to the United States, as well as his personal health struggles.

Dr. Lubbe explains the Enneagram as a tool for understanding motivations and behaviors, emphasizing the importance of exploring all aspects of our personality. He also introduces the concept of neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to change and adapt. Brooke Waters co-hosts along with Jason as they challenge the idea that we cannot change and highlight the potential for growth and transformation. Dr. Lubbe emphasizes the importance of framing conversations through the lens of a safe and healthy parent or adult. He also explores the idea that change is not about being less broken, but about becoming more whole.

What happens when faith shifts from intellectual certainty to living assurance?

In this weeks episode of Across All Worlds, Dr. C. Baxter Kruger and Jason Clark explore deconstruction, the impact of Enlightenment thinking on Western Christianity, and why so many believers are rethinking inherited theology. Together, Baxter and Jason explore why faith anchored only in ideas can leave us searching, while lasting assurance is discovered through encounter. 

People argue that there is no reason for faith, and thus it is unreasonable. And yet, there are all sorts of things for which we can find no reason, especially not with the scientific method. They’re all around us. Here are a few:

1. 1. Love… At least not real love or the logic of love: self-sacrifice.
2. 2. Beauty, what the Bible calls “the Good” or the “Glorious.” You can’t reason your way to Beauty.
3. 3. Light. For light, there can be no temporal reason, but perhaps it is the reason for temporality.
4. 4. Life. Darwin did not explain life, but death. Life is a communion of self-sacrifice.
5. 5. Persons, Consciousness, Spirit. Even physicists will tell you that matter doesn’t matter, but you, the observer, do. That’s the “I” that observes “me.”
6. 6. Existence. Not things in existence, but existence. Philosophers refer to God as the Uncaused Cause or Necessary Beingness (“ousias” in Greek). Yahweh’s name is “I Am that I Am.”
7. 7. Reason. There is no reason for Reason. How could there be?

All creation is the manifestation of a Love (God) Song, the Logos (logic) of God. Music is not illogical but more “logic” than we can comprehend. And so, to appreciate Music, the Music, the Logos, must comprehend us. Physicists argue that all elementary particles are different ‘notes’ on a fundamental string, such that “The universe… is akin to a cosmic symphony,” (Brian Green). Aslan sings Narnia into existence. In Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, God through angels sings creation into existence, and when a fallen angel sings discordant notes, God Himself sings those discordant notes into a deeper harmony. The dissonance creates a longing for consonance and ecstatic delight in a deeper resonance. In the Revelation, a slaughtered lamb stands on the throne (the top of the ark) and sings meaning into the Seven Sealed Scroll as all creation worships. Reality is a dance, and if you’re not dancing to the Logos of Love, perhaps you don’t actually exist. When you nail the Logos to a tree, what do you get? Sheet music, dance steps, science, and technology — it has its place, but it’s not the same as feeling happy or dancing in the moonlight.

“The Logos became flesh and we have seen his glory—grace.” Jesus lived gracefully; He lived His life like a dance. The dance fulfilled the law, although it was not at all what we expected. We had the sheet music; we had the knowledge of good and evil; we had the law in a coffin in a stone temple. We had the dance steps, but we were all surprised by the Dancer and His Dance.