God & the Brain

It’s as Simple as A, B, C

Three out of every four people have, to varying degrees, some sort of dysfunctional experiential/emotional relationship with God. In September of 2006, Baylor University published the findings from a religious survey they took in partnership with Gallup in a report titled “American Piety in the 21st Century.”1 The survey had over seventeen hundred respondents who answered nearly four hundred questions that dealt with a variety of topics on religion in America. Of note for this article is the finding on the character and behavior of God. Participants were asked twenty-nine questions that revealed the respondent’s belief about God along a scale of God’s engagement level (y-axis) and God’s anger level (x-axis), which fit into four different categories: 1) Benevolent God, 2) Authoritarian God, 3) Distant God, and 4) Critical God. Interestingly, 71.8% of respondents’ belief about God fit into a non-benevolent category. Thirty-one percent believe God is highly engaged and highly angry (authoritative), 24.4% believe God’s engagement is low, as is his anger (distant), and 16% believe God is not very engaged but is highly angry (critical). Twenty-three percent of Americans believe God is highly engaged and not angry (benevolent). Five percent denied God’s existence. According to this survey, 77% of people, or three out of every four people, believe God is angry, distant, or critical, or they reject God altogether. In the summer of 2014 I began a personal journey of grappling with the dysfunction of my own experiential/emotional . . .