What’s the Difference Between Neuroplasticity and Character Change?

I’ve been hiring scientific researchers and consulting with biomedical engineers to learn what treatments currently exist for psychotic disorders, particularly ones involving AI. I’m looking into developing technology if some of the ideas I have in mind aren’t already in the works. I need to know if they exist first, because if they already exist, then I will write about them and let people know they exist and where to go to for treatment, and there won’t be a need to create them myself.

The other day I spoke with a woman with a neuroscience degree from a prestigious college who has worked on some cutting edge projects in the field, including the new Computer-Brain Interfaces (BCIs) that allow people who have lost limbs, to have artificial limbs attached to their body that they can control using brain signals, to open the hand, move the fingers, and have a functioning, artificial arm, which is absolutely amazing! She has extensively studied neuroplasticity, the process the brain uses to learn new information and establish habits, or break harmful ones. She had many fascinating things to say, but unfortunately she is a huge proponent of meditation and mindfulness, a spiritual practice that originated with Buddhism and is now being embraced by a lot of atheists and secularists who see it as a secular practice, and have even convinced some Christian therapists of this. It’s rampant in the field of psychology and is the main line of treatment used by many therapists. Its reach spreads far and wide.

The Bible tells us we can’t take religious practices from other religions and use them in our worship to God, or use them in a secular way and be safe in doing this. The Bible calls it idolatry to do this.

Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.
You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.
Deuteronomy 12:3-4

Notice how the Christian is not only not to worship foreign gods, but we’re also not to worship the true God in the way that those who worship false gods worship their gods. This precludes adding foreign worship practices into the worship of the Bible God. In the original Hebrew the phrase is that not “with such things” shall you worship God.

One of the core, defining doctrines that separates Christians from the world, is that the Bible is our source of authority. We can’t pick and choose how we worship God. We can’t get creative outside of God’s revealed instruction and there are definite boundaries that truth stakes out. The bioengineer started pushing meditation very strongly in our conversation, believing she had been helped by it, and wanting that same progress for me. She claimed it’s not a spiritual practice and that it’s fine for all people of any religion or background to practice it as it’s perfectly neutral, so I explained to her that in her view it’s neutral but as a Christian the Word of God is our standard, and this makes Christianity very different from any other religion or belief system.

Things like holy yoga, which is claimed to be a Christian form of yoga where you channel the Holy Spirit and pray to the Bible God, rather than channel the higher self, and reiki where once again you commune with the Christian God while performing the healing rather than channeling the higher self or the universe, are becoming more and more prevalent. Mindfulness is another one of these dangerous spiritual exercises.

This engineer went on to say that she used to have a very strong anger problem, and that it took 20 years of meditation to change her brain pattern and groove out new neural circuits so she doesn’t react with anger. She had religiously worked on this over decades, utilizing her knowledge of neuroscience, and the spiritual practice of meditation to bring her brain to a state of calm so when someone cut her off in traffic, or some other rude and startling event occurred, she did not react in anger. She claimed as many others do that the fact there are scientific studies that show the benefits of mindfulness and meditation make it good and healthy and innocent.

I pointed out to her that any religion in the world has practices that would show up on brain scans as calming the mind, but that doesn’t mean all these various religious practices are now merely a health practice. You could quite literally find a Satanist who prays to Satan and scan his brain while reciting his prayers and it would probably show his brain was more sedated and calm. This doesn’t mean it’s a neutral thing to become a Satanist and that it’s perfectly harmless.

Her account really got me thinking about how what we do as Christians when we surrender our anger or jealousy to God, is not just neuroplasticity. Her description of painstaking years of grooving out new neural circuitry seemed lifeless and ineffective, and brought to mind Galatians 4:8-10 that calls all false religion as operating by weak and destitute principles.

“But now, having known God, but rather having been known by God, how do you turn again to the weak and destitute principles, to which you desire to be enslaved again anew?You observe days and months and seasons and years.I fear for you, lest perhaps I have toiled for you in vain.Galatians 4:8-10BLBAnd also Colossians 2 which goes over the same thing:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the principles of this world rather than on Christ.

Since you died with Christ to the principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: 21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? 22 These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. 23 Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”

All false religions operate via the principles of selfishness the one that actuates Satan’s heart. God’s true religion operates via principles of love and truth. While you may be able to meditate your way to having a more calm personality, you can’t meditate your way to having a heart of love, and while Buddhist practices like this have an appearance of restraining the body and the passions, and you may actually be able to retrain the brain over decades of repetition not to lash out in anger, you have merely made yourself more subdued and changed your personality; you have not affected the character in the slightest.

Having a lobotomy will make someone more subdued and calm too, but it doesn’t mean they have the victory over their anger or that they have now changed to be actuated by more love than they were in the past. Their character has not changed. To have the principles of love in our heart requires a new nature, something that is a divine miracle of God, and involves the Holy Spirit coming to live in our bodies, and not a mere change in neural circuitry.

While I don’t believe we are spirit beings and that we are fully physical beings, so our character is located in our frontal lobe and associated regions, we don’t have the divine ability or spiritual right to change our own character; it’s done by God’s power alone and is heavily guarded by Him.

Think of it like a website that can only be accessed, edited and changed by the admin panel. No one else has the authority or right to do it. Furthermore, God doesn’t merely make neural circuitry changes to our frontal lobe to change our character (though I do believe He does that too); we don’t know all that is involved in the transformation from a heart of selfishness to one of love that God performs at conversion. What we do know is that He actually puts His Holy Spirit into our body to actuate us. We are filled with His Spirit at conversion. This is the purpose of our physical body, to be a temple for the Holy Spirit.

God changes our desires and motives, something neuroplasticity can’t do. While someone who has meditated every day for 50 years may appear very different from how they were before they meditated, and vast changes in personality and demeanor have been observed, these changes are superficial; they don’t reach the heart. If we don’t have a new heart, we will still be actuated by selfish motives.

I couldn’t help thinking how far along this hard-working woman would be if she had spent those decades surrendering her will and attitudes to God and letting God change her actual character. She’d be nearly ready for translation! And what a shame it is that those of us who have the truth about character transformation don’t work hard at it! Satan likes to give people like her the lie that she can work her way to love and self-control, and he likes to give us Christians the lie that all that’s important is conversion and the initial change that occurs at that time, that progress past that point doesn’t really matter and isn’t urgent or relevant, or that we don’t have to do our part and God will do everything for us. Thus our characters are often selfish and lacking in the Christian graces and it’s not ok.

Those of us who do have the power to change – who have the true religion and the way to full peace and love – aren’t engaging heartily in the process of sanctification. And those who don’t have the true religion and have a counterfeit, Satan has made more zealous and at times they come across as more peaceful and loving than Christians because we aren’t letting God change us. Then Satan presents to the world the argument that what you believe doesn’t matter, and doesn’t have an effect on one’s character, that no religion is better than another, and people often choose to believe it, because they haven’t seen truly sanctified Christians who are vastly different from people of other religions; they’ve only seen lukewarm Christians.

What would happen if we worked hard to fight those battles with self every day, to surrender them to God? What would happen if we were fully committed and fully involved? What if we hungered to see progress in character and this was our chief objective?

We’d see God’s divine power work us like the potter works clay, into a useful holy vessel. God never says no to this prayer! But He will make us ask, seek, and knock in order to make advancement. We will have to put in a full commitment to see results. But far too often we experience a miracle at conversion when we are given a new heart, but we often stop there or a little ways out, and don’t continue the battle of surrender. Thus we lose our first love and do not make additional progress either, backsliding into old sins.

There is a difference between neuroplasticity and a new character. And it is a profound difference. There is a difference between meditating to control anger, and surrendering your anger to God and being given a new heart, that not only won’t lash out at others, but has actually had the anger removed at its root, and replaced by a deep love for people that is shown by a happy inner zeal to engage in practical works of meeting real needs in the family, community, church, and world at large.

The difference is humanism vs. faith in God. In humanism you’re trusting that you can form these new habits and new grooves in the brain. You’re attributing divine power to yourself. Also since it’s a spiritual practice you come in contact with demons, who can influence you to appear calmer and in control, when really they are possessing you and controlling you unaware. In Christianity, you’re asking God to change your character, and you realize you can’t do a divine work on yourself, only He can. You’re surrendering the actual attitudes and desires that actuate you to God, so He can give you His righteous and benevolent desires, something that can only be done because Christ lived a perfect life on our behalf and won those victories for us, and died to pay our debt so we have a right to a heart change and new life in Him.

The meditating secularist has no right to a new heart. They are still under the penalty of death. They also have no power to generate a new heart within themselves; it takes the divine power of God to do that.

This is not to discredit neuroplasticity or habit formation, or medical treatments that retrain the brain and help someone with psychotic thoughts to think logically. You need to be thinking logically before you can even engage the will, the part of the brain involved in surrendering to God. So it’s crucial logic and moral perception are restored to a person through medical treatments, so that they can use their will to choose God and have their character changed by Him. God has blessed us with amazing medical treatments in our day and age when people are at their weakest and most sick and need them the most, and I believe He wants us to utilize medicine to be effective stewards of our body and health. This is a core Bible doctrine. But neuroplasticity is not the regeneration of the Spirit of God, and they are two distinct things.

There is no other righteousness but the righteousness found in Christ.

There’s an interesting problem that can arise in people with mental illness. Sometimes we’re surrendering our character and sinful attitudes to God, but we can’t stop doing a certain sin because it’s actually not a character problem, it’s a problem of neuro-inflammation. For instance, a person may have Tourette’s syndrome, and blurt out curse words, but be a Bible-believing Christian. They may endeavor to surrender their cursing to God, and see no results or improvement. Normally a person with a cursing problem stops when they surrender their vulgarity to God. They may struggle with it for a while, and the struggle may be intense, but they overcome, they get the victory over a period of weeks or months, in a reasonable amount of time, in accordance with God’s power working in them to will and to do of His good pleasure. Beholding God’s holiness as they read the Word of God stirs up in them a desire to be holy like God is holy, and to worship Him in reverence and awe. They feel rebuked by their crass, vulgar language, and see their sin for what it is. Then, taking hold of His help, they don’t continue to curse for years after becoming a Christian, they don’t settle into a life of cursing and vulgarity.

But the Christian with Tourette’s shows a different pattern. They don’t actually curse to be crass or to demean someone. Their motive isn’t selfish. They curse randomly or when under stress. They feel bad about it, and surrender it year-after-year to God but never stop. It’s now been 10 years and they haven’t stopped. Or a person may have a compulsive hair-pulling problem, and surrender it constantly to God, yet see no improvement; no self-control gained over years and years of praying. In fact, under stress the problem worsens. But then the person is treated with medication, and suddenly the hair-pulling stops and they didn’t even have to try to stop. They didn’t even have to exert effort. Or perhaps they exert a normal amount of effort expected to kick such a habit, and with the help of the medication, they are able to stop.

This can be confusing to many. But it really is true – especially with SMIs (severe mental illnesses) that some problems we have are just brain problems. A more obvious example of this is a man who was an upstanding Christian his whole life, and then begins compulsively sexually assaulting nurses at the rest home, because he’s fallen into late stage dementia and his brain is atrophying and malfunctioning. Cases like this make this fact more clear, that some problems are just brain problems.And sometimes people with these compulsions or rages can think they are lost and will go to hell because they aren’t seeing improvements in these “sins”. When it really is just a case of needing to reduce inflammation in the brain, and then they regain control. It’s actually not a character problem.

I think it’s important to understand that we are finite beings who sin. We are not infinite beings, outside of all physicality and time and space who sin. Ellen White tells us God actually cannot sin, because He’s infinite and cannot be tempted. His infinite nature makes this impossible.Christ actually had to become a man in order to be tempted and be capable of sin, and then He had to choose not to sin and to overcome sin on our behalf, so He could pass on His victory to us and give us the moral strength to resist sin.

The Bible also tells us that Christ will always give us the victory over sin. It’s true that we may have to really battle to surrender self, and it’s a daily battle, but Christ has pledged for the one who wrestles with Him as Jacob did they will have the victory over their sins and they will make continual progress upward along the path that leads to heaven and shines brighter and brighter until it reaches the full shine of the noonday sun. This is the path of the Christian and this is what a converted Christian’s life will look like.

But Jesus has not promised to always heal our brain. It’s possible to be a Christian and have Tourette’s or OCD. It’s possible to be a Christian and have dementia and all the complications and symptoms that brings. We have not been promised perfect health or a healing of our mental illness, though in many cases God does choose to improve or heal us, there are some He chooses not to.

And if we get things confused and think our OCD is sin, we can mistakenly think Jesus isn’t giving us the victory over sin and we aren’t right with Him, when really we are. And so if there’s a way we can come to see the truth, we can be spared a lot of psychological pain in fearing we’re lost.

The key I think is that God is always faithful to do what He promised to do. But sometimes we think He promised things He never promised and we confuse His promises, and that can lead to false conclusions.

One thing that really helps is look at your life as a whole. Let’s say you have a compulsion you can’t stop like hair pulling. Look at the rest of your life. Are you getting the victory in other areas? Is your love and gratitude towards God growing? Do you find you’re becoming more humble, more effective at serving and helping others because of your increased humility and increased ability to give people what they really need and not the things you’d like to do or give? Look at all these kinds of things, and if you do have self-control and love in many other areas, there’s a big possibility your compulsive cursing is due to neuro-inflammation and not character. And it needs to be treated for what it is before you’ll be able to stop.

But sometimes people in these states of compulsivity are very out-of-control in an all-around kind of way. They are explosive, they can’t focus to do work or school, they are jumping off the walls or easily stressed. They may hallucinate or have personality changes. They may not have access to their emotions or be able to understand their own motives or desires. They may feel mentally scattered or lose memories. This means they probably have severe inflammation through their whole body and they need treatment before you can even see what kind of a person they choose to be with their will. Their whole system is hi-jacked and overridden by the inflammation.

You can look to who they were before they became this inflamed to get a better picture of who this person is, and after they are effectively treated you will also see the real them emerge too.

The Bible tells us we have a high priest who was made in ever way like we are. In His humanity Jesus experience physical infirmity, including things like cognitive impairment after a long night praying and no sleep, brain fog, mental exhaustion. He understands mental malfunction…He understands the limits of our finite nature because He was born in a human body and experienced what it was like to be human. He suffered, was thirsty, experienced mental anguish. And the Infinite One who took on flesh can help us with all of our physical malfunctions, and our need for wisdom as we confront health issues.

We are finite beings, so this means we’re subject to and limited by our finite physical nature. If our body malfunctions, we can’t override that malfunction. A good example of this is a paralyzed leg. While God has given human beings the ability to walk, and we normally have that ability, there are conditions that can take that ability away from us. Paralysis in a leg can make it impossible for us to walk. This reveals our finite nature.In the same way, brain malfunctions can limit our agency too. Excess inflammation in certain regions of the brain can hi-jack our normal functioning and hi-jack our agency and lead to compulsive acts that are actually outside of our control. Damage from stroke or dementia can do this too.

God holds us responsible for the things within our control, not the things outside of our control, and as long as we are fighting a serious battle on our knees to surrender our heart and actions and life to God, He has promised us by His very blood that we will come out the victor.

However, while you may not be held responsible for having a compulsive behavior that hi-jacks your agency that you actually can’t control, you definitely will be held responsible for not seeking out supplements and medical treatment to lower the inflammation in your brain and regain control, if you have access and know about treatments that can help.

So while the battle may not be one of mental surrender at that point, because you’ve done your part to surrender to God and this is an inflammation issue – the battle becomes one of will you obey God in the area of health and do treatments that could help you, or will you just accept the compulsions (which in some people can be dangerous) and be unfaithful to your Christian trust in the area of health.

God definitely holds us responsible when we have access to treatments that can help us and we don’t pursue them, especially when these compulsions can make us a danger to ourselves and others, and health is a sacred duty, since Christ died for our bodies and we belong to God.