Rewired by Love | Two Kinds of Knowing

Hey everybody, good morning. It's great to see you this

morning. Still feels like we are settling

into this new year if we haven't had the chance to meet.

My name is Josh. I have the joy of serving as

pastor here at the Garden Church and I'm excited to be entering

this new series that Mandy was sharing with us today titled

Rewired by Love. And over the course of the

series, we're, we're, we're attempting to answer a

fundamental question, maybe the question that I think is, is

most important, at least to me, in the world, which is how do we

change? How do we become more like

Jesus? And in order to do so, of

course, we're going to be rooted in Scripture and also the

insights of spiritual formation, but we're also bringing that

into conversation with insights from neuroscience and

psychology. Most of you already know that I

was a nerd. If not, just a quick disclaimer,

I am not professionally trained in the domain theologically.

Yes, neuroscience and psychology are areas of passion and

interest. So feel free to vet things that

I'm saying with your local doctor and residence.

But, but I, I believe that these, these conversation that

we're entering into over the next few weeks is hopefully

going to be enlightening, but also, whether you're a nerd or

not, really useful to us as we think about what it looks like

to live in the way of love and to follow Jesus.

And this morning we're beginning with a question.

And that question is simply this.

It's why is it that so often we stop at information rather than

transformation? Like, why do we so often seem to

get stuck at what we know and then it doesn't follow through

into how we live? And this question is of course

raised here by Jesus story which we find in Matthew chapter 21.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

In Matthew 21, we find a conflict which has been brewing

for a while in Matthew's narrative, a conflict between

the religious leadership on one hand and Jesus on the other.

At the very outset of chapter 21, there's this narrative of

Jesus entering Jerusalem to enormous fanfare and acclaim.

Everyone's excited to see him. They're they're, they're stoked

and and people are saying hail like this is the coming king.

This is the Messiah. None of which makes the

religious authorities happy. They were very content with the

status quo, with them being in charge.

This upstart for them is just a source of suspicion and they're

bothered by it. Then we move a little bit

further forward here in chapter 21 and we see the incident,

which many of you will be familiar with, of Jesus coming

in and throwing the money changers out of the temple,

right? He, he basically publicly

accuses the religious leaders of setting up a system that's all

about exploitation and, and capitalism and, and making money

and, and contaminating the spiritually holy place.

He publicly puts them to shame in front of everyone.

Of course, they're not big fans of this either.

And throughout this chapter, we see this conflict continuing to

escalate. Just before our passage today,

they come and they question his authority.

They say, hey, what gives you the right to do any of these

things or to say any of these things?

And it's in response to this question that we find our text

today here in Matthew chapter 21, where Jesus tells a story

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

about a father and two sons. The story is is pretty simple.

We see it pick up here in verse 28.

We see that the father gives directions to both of his sons.

He says, hey, go work in the vineyard today.

Now, while both of the sons receive the same instruction,

they respond in opposite ways. The one son, of course, we see

here in verse 29 flatly refuses. I will not, he says.

But later he changes his mind and ends up going and doing what

his father asked him to do. The second son, which is

recorded in verse 30, immediately commits to obey.

He says the right thing. Yes, Sir, he says.

I'm on my way. Got it.

Orders received. But then, of course, he doesn't

follow through. He doesn't actually do what he

has committed to do. And this, of course, it's a

rebuke of the religious leaders. The consequence of this is from

Jesus perspective, severe. He warns in verse 21, the tax

collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God

ahead of you. Jesus thinks that there is a

problem here. He's saying essentially this.

The religious people of his day say all the right things, they

have the right answers. They profess correctly, but it's

not matched by their lives. There's no follow through.

Of course a lot has changed since the 1st century, but I

think we'd have to admit that this problem seems to still be

with us. Too often Christians in the

church, and honestly me too, like have a gap between what

what we espouse as correct, what we know to be right, and then

how we actually show up. I know I feel this tension like

at a cognitive level, I believe that that prayer is powerful and

that I can depend on God. But at a nervous system level,

when I'm like anxious about something, I still reach for

like over functioning and working really hard trying to

persuade other people or or pressuring someone.

My, my nervous system believes that these are more reliable

strategies for solving for my anxiety at a cognitive level.

I, I believe that when somebody shares their heart with me and

they're naming kind of what's at play for them, that, that I

would serve them best by listening with openness and

curiosity, that I'd ask great open-ended questions and be

emotionally present. But too much of the time I like

really want to give advice because I think I have a great

solution that will simplify this and, and kind of make the

problem go away. At a cognitive level, I believe

that Sabbath is essential and a practice that demonstrates that

that I am not in charge and that we can trust in God.

And then a lot of the time I get to that designated day on my

calendar, my task list is overflowing.

And I say, well, we'll have to try again next week.

Does anybody else here relate to the dynamics that I'm saying?

Hopefully it's not just me in this today.

After all, this is the time of the year for New Year's

resolutions, right? We're still early.

We're still early. How many of you today in this

room have some kind of intention or resolution for the new year,

some kind of commitment that you've made?

All right, I see a lot of hands. We're not all entirely A cynical

bunch yet. I appreciate the resolve, the

the hope, the intention. I mean, many of us as we have

some time to reflect on the year, set these intentions.

We want to eat healthier or sleep more.

We want to save money or, or get more sleep.

We want to invest in certain relationships or or double down

on some new spiritual practices to develop our relationship with

God. If you've done this before, you

probably know how it typically goes.

The research says that 80% of us will completely abandoned these

resolutions by February. We're better at intentions than

we are at follow through. We're going better at knowing

the right answer than we are at living it.

As Derek Sievers famously said, if information was the answer,

we'd all be billionaires with perfect ABS.

I think that's funny. I don't know, maybe not anybody

else. Like there's a there is a gap

between just knowing what's right and somehow seeing that

information move to transformation in our lives,

right. And I don't know if this is

encouraging to you or discouraging to you, but this is

not a new problem. We see this throughout the pages

of Scripture as well. Paul names one of the things in

Scripture that I personally feel like I resonate most deeply with

when he says in Romans Chapter 7, I have the desire to do what

Romans 7 · chapter mention

is good, but I cannot carry it out, for I do not do the good I

want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, that I keep on

doing right. Sometimes this feels like our

lived reality. So what is up with this?

Why the gap? And why do we so often stop at

information or awareness without moving on to transformation?

Well, I think there's a few answers to this question and I'm

probably not going to give a full accounting of it this

morning, but I think 1 answer we see from history, and there's

another answer that we can help make sense of things a bit from

neuroscience. The first is historical reason.

Everyone probably here in this room has been shaped in some way

by Western culture. Not everybody here is from the

global West, but but the assumptions of the impulses, the

traditions of the West shape us, certainly me, certainly our

church deeply. And of course, there's a lot of

good in this and there's also some challenging things.

One of the main shifts that we've seen really some from the

16th century all the way up and now till now, it is the shift

towards increasingly focusing on the mind.

Of course, in the Protestant Reformation, those of us who

would self describe as Protestants, we're a Protestant

church, that we are are heirs of the Reformation.

In the Reformation was this historical movement which placed

this great emphasis on Scripture, sola scriptura. the

Reformation leveraged the advent of the printing press and

growing literacy at the time to place the Bible in the hands of

everyday people and said we need to to not just rely on

tradition. We need to not just rely on

ritual or communal practices or what somebody else has told us.

We need to find the truth for ourself.

Of course, the schism with the Catholic Church also revealed

kind of the need for for doctrinal clarity.

Confessions became a big thing. We began to be very focused on

having the right answers. How do we solve for the problem?

What's the difference between this group and that group at the

For the first time in history, the center of gathered worship

in the church shifted from communion through the 1st, 16th

centuries to the preaching of Scripture from then up until

now. And so in many ways, the church

began to move towards learning, towards content delivery,

towards understanding, towards a conceptual grasp of the truth.

At the same time, the Enlightenment followed shortly

on the heels of the Reformation with its focus on reason,

empirical evidence in the scientific revolution.

Science, of course, at the time first began to really discern

maps and patterns and and make sense of the world.

And because of the ability to translate those insights into

words which could be published and sent around the world, all

of a sudden we began this building movement towards

greater understanding, greater conceptual control of of the

world and how it worked. At the same time, Descartes is

developing this metaphysical picture in which the mind is

central, an immaterial thinking substance distinct from the

body. He says, I think therefore I am.

So all of these trends, all of these tendencies move us from a,

a place of greater embodiment to a great place of greater

intellectual life and focus on the mind.

Of course, here in Boston, we are proud champions of this

tradition, right? The, the like academic capital

of the world. We, we got a we got a community

rife with pH DS in here. Like people love to learn and

grow and understand and grasp and look, I am myself a product

of this, grateful for this heritage, committed to the

reality of Scripture, right? Most of this, I believe, was

deeply good and necessary shifts things that brought us great

gifts. But is it possible to swing too

far? Is it possible to focus on one

kind of knowing as opposed to another?

See neuroscientist suggest that there are two different ways of

knowing. There's what we might describe

as knowing that, and then there's knowing how knowing that

is the kind of knowing that is familiar to most of us from

school, a Bible study, from sermons.

It's the kind of knowledge that we can put into words, we can

explain and argue for, we can write down.

It's the kind of knowing that remembers state capitals and

dates and histories, ethical principles and theological

commitments. This is knowing that or, or what

we might more technically refer to as explicit knowledge.

So yes, we know that that Jesus died and rose again.

We can say it, we can declare it, we can defend it, we can

teach it. But there's also a second kind

of knowing, a knowing that is not stored primarily in

sentences. And this is is knowing how.

It's what neuroscientists often call implicit knowledge or or

non declarative knowing. And it's the system that governs

the whole range of our relational life.

What we love, our emotional reactions to our surroundings,

our ability to calm ourselves and regulate our nervous

systems. It's where our habits live and

our reflexes. It's how we make sense of our

identity and who we are in the world.

And this is something that happens in a totally different

brain system that's not even accessible by way of language.

Our gut level sense of what's safe and what's threatening, who

we are and what we reach for when we stressed this is knowing

how the really important thing here is that these two systems,

these two kinds of knowledge can function relatively

independently from one another, right?

They're, they're related for sure, but distinct.

One way that we see this very clearly is in amnesia patients.

Amnesia patients will lose their explicit memory, right?

They may not remember a name, their birthday, who the

president was, but they continue to remember and often can

continue to gain implicit memory.

They know how to do things. They may still remember how to

braid their hair or drive a car, how to walk, or other things if

these brain systems were not affected.

And this is because you can store information and knowledge

you can know in more than one way.

So why does all this matter? Why am I taking the time to

break this down? It's because I believe that it

is possible to have a beautiful explicit theology, to be able to

explain what God is like in great detail and sophistication,

to have encyclopedic biblical knowledge, the right answers,

the right language, and to have implicit reflexes that still run

on fear, shame, avoidance, anxiety, and control.

This is a serious problem for us, according to Jim Wilder and

Michael Hendricks, that the Western church, because of these

streams that I talked about earlier, consistently

prioritizes and privileges knowing that over knowing how we

keep giving more and more and more information, hoping that it

will somehow simply result in transformation.

So more sermons, more Bible studies, more discussion groups,

and we get that, that that neurotransmitter which signals

that that this is good. We have fresh awareness.

We get a little dopamine hit that says this is great, I

learned something, I discovered something.

And then so often we stop precisely at that point with

greater awareness but without any transformation.

And I know I do this like sometimes, to use a non churchy

example, I'll find myself watching like reels and how to's

on the Internet. And I love learning things.

I remember a little while ago, I was watching this video where

these gymnasts were explaining the mechanics of a backflip and

they had lots of tips. They had lots of specific

structures. You do this, then you do that,

and this is how it works. And you got to tuck this way,

You got to rotate this way. And like, I think I know how to

do a backflip, but I very much do not know how to do a

backflip. You know what I'm saying?

Like if I attempted A backflip right now, we would be calling

911. It would be a serious, serious

problem because I have no idea how to do a backflip.

But I know a lot about doing backflips for no apparent

reason. And maybe you've noticed this

tendency in your own life too, right?

You read or or watch a documentary about something.

There's this flash of dopamine. Like, I understand this, I've

got this conceptually, but then does it?

Does it translate to anything different in my life?

I'm aware of the political realities, but do I show up in

any way in our community for my neighbors?

I'm aware of these these these insights about how to eat

healthier, how to work out, or how to structure my morning

routine or my habit stack. Does it translate to how I live?

Far to answer, I'm afraid that the answer is no.

We're told to pray without ceasing, but we're not.

We don't actually learn how to turn to God when anxiety wakes

us up at 2:00 in the morning. We believe that we should

forgive just as we've forgiven or been forgiven, but we haven't

actually developed the capacities to release the

resentment when our body keeps bringing up and rehearsing the

offence. We believe we should bear each

other's burdens and show up for one another in community.

Yet our default is self-reliance.

I'll take care of it myself. I don't need help, Friends.

There's a gap, a gap so often between information, between

what we know and between transformation, how we live.

And I believe that this is not a minor problem, that it is

actually an existential crisis for the church in the West.

It's a real problem for us. Just this week the news of

course broke. The popular Christian thinker

and author Philip Yancey confessed to an 8 year

extramarital affair. Yancey is just one more figure

in a long line of Christian leaders who were famous, who

were successful, who were looked to throughout the church as

people who are models of how we ought to live.

Somebody who understood the gospel at a deep level, who who

wrote about it for decades, and yet in his relationships it was

absent, Yancey said in his. Confession.

My contacts defied everything I believe about marriage.

It was totally inconsistent with my faith and my writings.

Friends, when these things happen for me, for you, for us,

for the church, it's an embarrassment to the gospel.

It suggests to people out there that that we're not really

authentic about what it is that we say to be true.

Friends, hypocrisy is such a problem.

And I get that sometimes there is an explicit, intentional,

conscious decision to deceive, to hide, to fake, to lie.

But I also think very often we simply haven't been formed in

the implicit systems. We know something to be true,

but we've never actually taken the steps to walk it out.

I'm suggesting that we have a problem, that we've tried to

distill church and spiritual formation into blocks of content

which could somehow be delivered to individual minds without

embodiment and results in transformation, and it is not

working. As my friend Dan White Junior

says, discipleship is more than a solo endeavor.

With the latest books and podcasts.

You cannot follow the way of Jesus and grow into likeness of

Him by yourself. It is not possible, see, because

so often we get this flash of new awareness, this dopamine

hit, and that's great. Like, I love awareness.

I am currently standing before you here as a preacher talking

about neuroscience, right? I clearly think the Reformation

is an OK thing, the scientific revolution is a good thing.

And I want to impart information to you, right?

All of these things are good, but awareness is not the end

point, it's the entry point. It's only the first step.

If we don't pass through the doorway, then what are we doing?

So often we consume information without putting it into

practice, and the result is simply spiritual bloat.

In order for us to become like Jesus, we have to move from

knowing that to knowing how. We need not only information but

also transformation. When we fail to do this, it can

leave us with the illusion of maturity without its substance.

And I think this is exactly what we see in the Pharisees.

The Pharisees are people represented in this text who

have extraordinary explicit knowledge.

If you want the people in this day, in this moment, in the 1st

century, who know the Bible best, it's these guys.

They have read it, they have memorized it, they can recite

it. They can give you chapter and

verse about everything. These are the guys with the best

knowledge of Scripture. Their explicit knowledge is

fantastic and they're implicit is a mess.

It's characterized by judgment, control, contempt, anxiety.

They're concerned about losing status and power.

They're reactive and ultimately they reject the living word

which is standing before them. This is where Jesus accusation

really lands. They are like the second son who

says all the right things and then doesn't go.

A living witness to the reality that knowledge puffs up while

love builds up. In contrast to the Pharisees

imagination and understanding of what it means to be spiritual,

of what it means to be mature by having the right answers, Jesus

points us in a different direction.

In the very next chapter of Matthew's Gospel, we see this

conflict is continuing to unfold between Jesus and the religious

leaders. And in the like most arrogant,

explicit, knowledge centric way possible, somebody who's

described as a quote UN quote teacher or expert in the law

comes to Jesus to test him. Their idea of a battle is we're

going to have a theology exam and see if you can pass the

test. So they come to Jesus and in

verse 37 and 38 of chapter 22, we read the question, teacher,

what is the greatest commandment in the law?

He gives him a hard one trying to stump him up.

But what Jesus responds is essential.

He says, of course, and you know this.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, with

all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Do you hear what Jesus is doing here?

Friends, this is so important. There's so much in these short

words. See, Jesus is repositioning the

very center of the Christian life from knowledge to love.

He says at the very heart of it is not how much you know, it is

how you love. And he's not dismissing the

mind. This is not a contrast.

It's not that the Pharisees are on team explicit knowledge and

and Jesus is on team implicit knowledge.

And he says, no, that doesn't matter.

The first thing he says about how we love is with our minds.

And he's not giving a theological anthropology of like

the different parts of humans here.

His point in aiming these component parts is rather to say

you need your whole self, all of it.

Your mind, your soul, your heart.

Everything has to be in play. The center is love.

You need everything you've got. And the direction that tell us

of this is a renewed relationship with God and with

your neighbors. This is what Jesus has to say

about what it means to be mature, about what it means to

follow him. If we are to follow him, we must

recognize that it's not that explicit knowledge is bad, but

but it's incomplete. It's only a partial answer.

And it's a partial answer that because of our particular

history and culture and place in the world, we are very tempted

to get stuck at. And Jesus insists that we move

on from explicit to implicit to holistic transformation and

seminary, which is like the home of explicit knowledge.

And I spent way too much time in there.

There's they use Latin words to talk about these 3 dimensions,

orthodoxy, which is maybe the word that you guys know.

It means right thinking, essentially having the right

beliefs about things. But you may also know there's

these other words, orthopraxy and orthopathy, which come from

the words praxis and and pathos. But our feeling, and basically

the idea here is that we need right thinking.

It's crucially important to think well, but it has to be

paired with right practice and even right affections, our

emotional state, the way we feel in relationship.

And I think for some of us who have done a lot of school, live

in Boston, this feels honestly kind of daunting because we're

like, I know how to learn stuff. How do I how do I change how I

feel about stuff? Right.

We tend to gravitate to these things that we know how to do.

We know how to control we're we're well practiced in these.

We get more knowledge and we feel confident about it.

But Jesus is writing us beyond yes, knowledge is apart, but

also our practice, also our feeling.

This is what we mean at the Garden when we talk about being

shaped by and sharing Jesus love.

We're trying to say that our mission here is is about more

than just understanding things. It's more than about cognitive

ascent to a particular set of propositional beliefs.

It's not less than that, but it is absolutely more than that.

To follow Jesus means being transformed by him, being

changed by his love, until that love becomes not just something

we cognitively know about, but something we experience,

something that shapes us. In the coming weeks in the

series, we're going to attempt to dig further into these

questions of how do we change? How does this all happen?

How do we get to be the kind of people who don't just have the

right answers, but go beyond into practices and and actual

affections? But this morning, I want to

pause. At this point, I want to stop

here and just invite you to consider what does this look

like for you this morning? Because if you're anything like

me, this is honestly kind of convicting.

Because I know it's, I've already said there are plenty of

places in my life where there's a gap between what I intend and

what is real, between what I espouses the way things should

be, the way we should be, and my ability to live that out, to

walk that out. And this morning I want to

invite you into a space of reflection to consider where is

that gap for you between what you know and how you live?

Are there ways this morning that as you inventory your life, you

have to admit that you look more like the second son than the

first? That you give the right answer,

but there's no follow through. You don't actually show up doing

what the father has asked friends.

The point of this reflection, the point of this awareness is

not shame. It's not to make you bad or to

call you out. It is rather to help us begin to

close those gaps. It's about growing and

integrity. And I have good news.

I'm full of hope as we enter this conversation, which will be

having over the next several weeks.

You can change the gospel is good news.

It's not just something that changes our worldview and the

way that we think about things in the world.

It can change your very life, your relationships.

Bottom up, whole picture from the inside out.

This is the promise and possibility of the love of Jesus

which we have received. Don't stop at awareness.

Notice the doorway and continue down the path as the band comes

and we enter into a space of reflection.

I want to invite you to pray with me and again to consider

where is there a space this morning that God might want to

highlight for you without shame, without blame, without guilt,

Just to notice that there is a, a gap in my formation.

I know something to be true on one level, but it's not

manifesting in my life on another.

I want to be more wholehearted. I want to be more connected.

I want to be more embodied. And friends, as we enter into

this, we're going to enter into a time of, of musical worship.

We're going to enter into a time of communion and friends.

The reason that we do these things, among many other things,

maybe you've noticed, a lot of what we do in church is

embodied. It's with our bodies, right?

We have relational and communal practices.

This can't be distilled and experienced over a Zoom screen.

And so as you enter even into these practices, as you reflect,

and then that you move into a space of worship, as you receive

communion this morning, I want you to pay attention to what's

going on with you, even physically to notice and to

receive to maybe maybe you're uncomfortable moving your body

in worship. Maybe, maybe, maybe put a hand

up, all right, maybe move your feet a little bit.

Allow yourself to come into the space which you are and respond

to the love of God and His invitation to become more like

Him.