“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
In his book “Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic”
Dr. Paul Conti illustrates how we respond to traumas in our own life
much the same way we will respond to other things in our life.
He explains that there are neural pathways,
which we create in our brain that are physiologically and biological;
neural pathways that will create responses to certain stimuli.
And once we choose those neural pathways,
it gets easier and easier and easier to repeat that action.
It is what we use to learn certain things.
When we learn them, we just sort of repeat them over and over again.
That is for good or bad!
He gives an example:
If you were to repeat the word “platypus” 200 times:
platypus, platypus, platypus, platypus, platypus, platypus…200 times,
it would not be a shock to you
that you will be thinking later, tomorrow
or even the next day about platypus.
That is sort of self-evident. Right?
Platypus, platypus, platypus.
It might not change you, but you are going to be thinking about it.
It is the same methodology that we use when we learn things.
We repeat them over and over again
and we get it engrained and then it becomes,
it is a physical and biological, neural pathway that gets it.
Now, with trauma and other things
we can learn negative ways that repeat and repeat and repeat.
And we keep doing them.
We have to learn alternative neural pathways to change behavior.
Jesus was not talking about neural pathways per se.
But he was trying to change behavior.
And he was trying to change a response
and for us to become different.
He gives us this very colorful example:
If you love only when other people love you,
everyone does that and there is no distinction.
If you are kind to those who are kind to you;
or you are forgiving to those who forgive you;
the sinners and the thieves will do the same thing!
But what Jesus wants is to create a neural pathway of change.
That no matter what the input is,
we will always be kind in return.
No matter what the neural input in that we get,
we will always be loving;
we will always be forgiving;
we engrain it in ourselves
in order that no input will change that.
It gets ingrained.
In a sense, a neural pathway of the heart
so our response will always be loving, kind, and forgiving.
Jesus just doesn’t say this, he does it.
And he does it over and over again.
He gives us this golden command:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
And he models it.
He becomes what he asks us to do.
He was always kind.
He was always forgiving.
He was always merciful.
And to the point that the leaders of the Pharisees
and the Sadducees would always complain about him.
They said, “You cannot be doing this;
that is not the right thing. “
Jesus says “If you do what everyone else is doing,
we are no different.”
Now here is what is interesting:
All of that, we sort of know.
But for some strange reason,
we do not actually follow that path.
We have our own neural pathway
and we continue to do what we have always done.
But it is not what Jesus does.
Jesus models what he wants us to be.
If we who call ourselves Christ-followers, Christians,
we are called to act like Christ.
And we are called to do it all the time
so that it becomes engrained and
literally becomes a neural pathway of the heart
that we will respond like this no matter what happens to us.
If we are honest, that is hard work.
And we have responses. When somebody is not nice to us,
we are not nice to them.
As Paul Conti says in his book, “Trauma begets trauma.”
You shout at me.
I shout back at you.
You are nasty to me.
I am nasty back to you.
And so the world goes and goes and goes.
But as Christians, as Christ-followers,
we claim to do something different.
We claim to not do that.
We create a new neural pathway that
always responds in kindness.
Always responds in love.
Always responds in forgiveness.
I’m convinced that if we did that, this Church would be full.
If we were really that transformed,
people would want to find out how we do that?
I saw you do that, how did you do that?
How did you respond that way?
How are you so kind when that person was so nasty to you?
I don’t know. I follow Christ.
Where? Where is that done?
I am not finding anyone else like you.
They would say, “I want to go down to St. Simon’s.”
Then they would keep coming.
Or those of you on line:
You would find a way to come down.
You would find a way to be here.
But because we find alternate neural pathways,
we can do what we want to do.
And we are really no different from the rest of society
and that is the problem.
We have to find a way to be different;
to follow the One who leads.
Let me give you an example:
Last week, I was at a funeral.
It was the mother of a friend of mine.
It was in the Palm Springs area.
There are all these gated communities.
I was staying with my friend down there in a gated community.
But this gated community is a nice, really nice, gated community.
It was spic and span.
There is not a single piece of paper to be seen anywhere. Nowhere.
It is pristine.
I was going along with my friend for a walk.
And this guy comes up to us in a golf cart
and he starts talking to my friend
and they are chitter chattering away.
I remember he was wearing a bright blue shirt.
He is the CEO of this whole campus.
Later on, I was walking in the same area,
and I saw that same guy driving the same cart,
getting out of the cart and picking up trash.
Every time he saw a piece of paper,
he would stop and pick it up.
I thought was that the same guy?
I was just wondering, “Is that the CEO picking up trash?”
They all wear the same shirts; it’s all part of the club, you know.
Sure enough, I see him, and got up close to him
and it is the same guy.
Now here is the thing about it.
If the CEO was picking up trash,
you can be darn sure that every single other employee
is going to pick up trash when they see it.
I try to pick up trash here on campus
but I don’t do it as faithfully as the CEO does it.
I am going to start doing this as my experiment.
I am going to pick up trash every time I pass it.
But if I catch you walking by a piece of trash,
and you do not pick it up. . .
Because you know what, no matter how much trash I pick up,
I am never going to be able to pick up everything.
That is the way it works.
We will all need to do it and then this place will be pristine.
But you see if everyone of us picked up trash every time,
anywhere on campus, this place would be pristine.
That is why they do it.
That is why it is pristine because it is not just one person.
It is everyone.
The one person, the CEO, led it.
I am hoping to run the experiment to do the same thing here
but not just about trash.
We are following Jesus as our CEO
and we are called to be kind to every single person.
If everyone of us did it, it would be different.
This place would be pristine and in a pristine community,
people would know here is where you go to be a better person.
Neural pathways of the heart.
You see the thing you have to understand, it does not just happen.
We have to choose them.
And we have to choose them over and over and over again.
Platypus, platypus, platypus, platypus, platypus, platypus, platypus;
so we keep doing it over and over again
until it becomes a completely new way of being.
My friends, today may we become what we receive
the Body and Blood of Christ today.
May we follow our CEO Jesus,
who tells us how to be in the world;
to be kind;
to be gentle;
to be forgiving;
to be loving at all times.
If we continue to do that, over and over again,
we will have a neural pathway of the heart:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
