I really wanted to like this book.   Unfortunately it is, to be blunt, a theological disaster.

The Premise

The premise of The God-Shaped Brain is that having a “right” view of God is physically beneficial and having a “faulty” view of God is physically harmful.  In this most basic form, I found the concept quite intriguing.  The way it’s executed, however, results in a touchy-feely postmodern theology and the overwhelming message that if you believe God is anything other than “warm and fuzzy,” you’re wrong and that’s harmful.

Some of what’s wrong here is so subtle and/or convoluted it’s hard to articulate.  It would make a cult leader proud.  But the core common thread(s) running through the book I can summarize.  (To be fair, Dr. Jennings points out early on that he is not a trained theologian.  I believe he means well and isn’t twisting Scripture knowingly or intentionally.  However, he should, perhaps, have left the public theologizing up to someone more rightly able to divide the Word.)

Expanding on the Premise

Let’s get a little broader & deeper with this premise.  What is a “right” view of God, from Jennings’ perspective, and how does it impact our health?  He points to Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”  (NIV, as used in the book)  Jennings goes on to interpret God’s “divine nature” here to be exactly equivalent to “love,” saying that “God’s nature of love is seen in creation because all nature, all life, is built, designed, constructed to operate on the template of God’s love.”  He refers to this “law of love” in nature or “circle of beneficence” as the created pattern, and contrasts it with fear.

Now, there is some truth to this, and it’s hard to convey in a brief summary how unbalanced it is, but this is treated in such an overly simplistic manner that it utterly derails sound theology.  We’re told that “when we worship a god other than one of love — a being who is punitive, authoritarian, critical or distant — fear circuits are activated.”  Again, this may be true as a technicality, but when examined in the larger context, we gather the idea that, to put it in anthropomorphic terms, a God with any backbone is bad.

The general idea is that positive thinking about God — like most positive thoughts — put us into a calm state, while negative thinking about God — like most negative thoughts — put us into a state of fight-or-flight.  The author does an excellent job of describing and summarizing what happens physiologically when we’re stressed or unstressed.  He’s very good at putting such medical concepts into laymen’s terms and using clear illustrations.  If only the theological concepts weren’t taken too far, then rehashed repeatedly!

Repetitive

The repetitive nature of the book is probably my other major complaint.  It would be easier to overlook the imbalance in the theology if the book weren’t comprised of a few basic ideas repeated again and again in different words.  We really only get the foundation once, and then the author spends the rest of the book beating us over the head with this “nice” God, telling us all how the orthodox theology we’ve been hearing all our lives is really wrong.  (I assume for the rest of the book, anyway.  I got about 70% of the way through the book and then skimmed the rest because I just couldn’t stomach any more.)

There’s something to be said for not viewing God as cruel, as a harsh taskmaster, as just sitting in wait for us to screw up, etc.  The problem is, the author seems to have discarded one extreme for the other, and wants us to believe in a God who is “nice.”  But as I’ve said before, God is not “nice.”  Nice: “pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory.”  He is kind, gracious, and long-suffering, etc. yes — but He is also awesome (in the literal sense), mighty, powerful, just, holy, and even vengeful and jealous. He has promised to take care of His own, but He is not all “warm and fuzzy.”

A right view of God is not extreme in either direction; it’s balanced.

Jennings downplays the depravity of man, failing to draw proper distinctions between regenerate and unregenerate humanity, or even between man and God.  As much as I would like to be able to recommend this book, I have to actually recommend against it.