Mentoring by God

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. (John 5:19)

I have been learning some background information about how our brains work over the past few years that have helped me understand a little bit more about this verse. Our right brain is actually the control center of our being, especially whenever we find ourselves in very stressful or emotional situations. Our right brain cannot be trained directly through the use of words (unless set in music), but most of the education that we focus on in our culture is primarily directed at the left brain. Unfortunately as a result, whenever we actually need all that information the most it is very often unavailable because the right brain resorts to imitating what it has absorbed from observing significant people in our life and what they did under similar circumstances instead of utilizing all our new information that was only conveyed to us intellectually.

In this verse Jesus is actually referring to this very principle that is in place within our makeup. That should be no surprise at all since Jesus Himself created our brains and knows exactly how they were designed to function. All of God's instructions and laws for us are designed to restore us to healthy functioning in the ways we were originally designed to operate. Sin has interfered with the natural process of how our original design would have us live and as a result we see all the dysfunction (sin) that results from trying to live in ways we were never meant to live.

The primary method of training our right brain is by association with people who are more mature than us and consequently absorbing into our own internal circuitry the spirit and reactions and methods that those mature minds demonstrate under various circumstances, especially times when they are under intense stress themselves. All of the wonderful intellectual education that we primarily use to train people for how to live is often wasted because it is not intimately connected with personal demonstrations of what it can look like under real-life circumstances. We are often deceived into thinking that the most educated people actually have greater maturity when that is very often just an illusion reinforced by our artificial labels and social priorities.

The kind of training that is most effective for actually increasing maturity and true growth in a person's life is the mentoring process of living in close proximity with more mature people who are going to shape us somewhat into their image by their examples in everyday life. That is the reason that Jesus drew His disciples into close association with Himself for 3½ years. It is true that during that time they received a great deal of instruction from Him and later were able to better comprehend what much of that actually meant. But the far more important training for them during that time was their opportunity to personally observe up close how Jesus treated people and His reactions during times involving very tense emotions or dangerous situations.

The disciples were given the unique opportunity to watch up close how God wants to relate to people and how He feels about people in contrast to the commonly accepted religious teachings of the religion of their culture. As they saw Jesus respond in situation after situation differently from how they would have reacted, they began to see a pattern emerging of how God feels towards sinners that was completely new and foreign to them and to most everyone else who claimed to serve God. The picture of God that Jesus portrayed to humanity was such a radical departure from the pictures painted by religious leaders that Jesus found Himself in constant conflict with their insistence that God was a stern, exacting, demanding authoritarian more interested in strict compliance with His laws than in having an intimate relationship with His children.

This point was what aroused the anger of the religious leaders in this very story. When Jesus began to talk about God as a loving Father who had a close relationship with Himself, the Jews were horrified and even scandalized to the point of considering this kind of thinking to be blasphemy. Surely no one should ever feel so relaxed and intimate about their relationship to God as to ignore the fundamental beliefs prevalent in all religions that God operates through the use of fear and intimidation. Most people believe that God uses a mixture of threats and force and anger along with offers of love and mercy to those who have enough fear from His threats to comply with His demands. But these ideas are fabrications of God's archenemy the devil, not an accurate portrayal of the real God of heaven.

But I still struggle as I have for many years to grasp with my own mind and heart the much deeper experience of what it actually means to see what God is doing. Clearly Jesus here is revealing a model of living and relating to God that is largely foreign not only to me but to most people I know. I can see how in my own life my reactions under stress have most often been shaped by similar reactions I learned observing how my parents acted under similar circumstances. That has actually been a serious problem all of my life as it is for many people. The important people in our lives, particularly when we are very young, have the most influence on our outlook, our concept of God and our ideas of what is right and wrong and on how we raise our children. That part is starting to make more sense to me as I learn about the true function of the right brain.

But what still baffles me is how Jesus intends for me to follow His example by getting retrained, re-wired and to have new circuits put into place deep in my own brain to displace all the malfunctions that were originally set into place from my past. I can see how I got the faulty wiring from close association with people who typically malfunctioned under stressful situations, but how can I see what my good Father is doing when I cannot see Him literally like I could my own parents?

Even the disciples of Jesus seem to have had a huge advantage over the rest of us because they got to observe God in the flesh up close and personal as He demonstrated His true character and interacted in every situation with the grace and unconditional love that the Father has for us. But in this passage Jesus implies quite clearly that He could not even do that Himself unless He stayed in such close connection with His Father that somehow He 'saw' how His Father acted in similar situations and responded likewise.

At the same time, Jesus did not literally see His Father anymore than I can literally see Jesus or the Father myself. So whatever it is that Jesus is talking about in this verse it must be something that I can actually do just as much as He did it. If Jesus could somehow see what His Father was doing all the time and download that kind of attitude and responding into His own circuitry and then use that as His context for relating to any and all circumstances, then there is surely a way that I can do the very same thing or He wouldn't be my example.