#131 Parables for Everyday Living Part II (30/05/04)

Message by: Robert H. Schuller

In the next few weeks my son and I will be sharing thoughts on the Parables of Jesus, because the nation and the world are so impacted by Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of The Christ." People of all ages are asking to know more about Jesus Christ. I have never seen anything impact the world quite like it.

That's really amazing when you realize that Jesus lived a short life by our standards. And the years from his birth until the age of thirty were the silent years with only one exception. He appeared in the temple as a teenager and that brief exposure is all we know about Him until the beginning of His public ministry which started at the age of thirty. In the first year of His public life, Jesus Christ became known for His miracles. We call it "the miracle year." And He attracted great crowds because people were desperate for a miracle, and that was all they were interested in.

So, in His second year, Jesus began to teach by telling stories called "parables." What were the parables? Parables were teachings of wisdom on how to live an effective life dominated by happiness and lived for the glory of God. He wanted people to be attracted to more than just the hope of a personal miracle. He wanted people to move from miracle thinking to serious life thinking. So in His second year, He focused on the parables. Then in His third year of ministry Jesus was preparing for His crucifixion and discipling His chosen followers on how to carry on the ministry.

What are the parables of Jesus? I was taught as a little boy that a parable is, "an earthly story with a heavenly meaning." Jesus was never a preacher. He never delivered sermons. The Sermon on the Mount might be considered an exception, but He was a teacher of stories.
We don't know exactly how many parables there are, because they are subject to interpretation, but there are least thirty, maybe fifty, parables. One of the first parables Jesus taught, very significantly, is found in Matthew 13:31-32. These are the words:

"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds. But when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree so that the birds in the air come and branch on it."

A few thousand people are here in church today, and I don’t know how many millions are joining us through television in China, Russia and around the world - but I've learned something about each of you that I never knew before.

I am in a new study called "neuroscience." About a year ago the American Institute of Architecture honored me by electing me to be a lifetime Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects. And they are now establishing an Academy of Neuroscience in Architecture and I've been invited to be on the board. I knew nothing about nanotechnology until this past week. The University of California in San Diego is a leading place for the study in neuroscience and they are in conjunction with the Salk Institute. The American Institute of Architecture has established an office for the National Academy of Neuroscience and Architecture in the Jonas Salk Institute. I was invited to be a part of this study this past week. And I've learned something about the brain that I never learned in all my years of study in psychology, including my studies with the psychiatrists Victor Frankl and Carl Menninger and others.

Your Brain Has 10 Billion Neurons

I was shocked to learn that every human brain, young or old, has 10 billion neurons. I have 10 billion neurons in my brain and you do too. Everybody does, young or old. They are held in place by 90 billion glial cells linked together electronically through branches called dendrites to roots, called neurotransmitters.

Now there you are at the beginning of what is probably the most significant new science in the world today and you and I don’t know much about it, but we must be interested because it will be impacting us and the rest of human civilization in this next century in the same way atomic energy came and exploded in the last century. Every human being, every human brain, consists of 90 billion glial cells holding together 10 billion neutrons.

What does this mean to practical living? It means that since the neurons are the brain's primary components, that the generation of the energy and the facilities of these pieces of the brain will account for your consciousness. I was told, "Schuller, be sure to tell your people that the brain is nothing more than an 8-pound chunk of meat!" That is all it is. And it is the same weight in the short person, the tall person, the fat person, and the thin person. Basically it is the same weight … 8-pounds of meat … and it is not a mind! The mind is very separate and distinctive from the brain.

The Human Being Is the Only Creature with a Mind

So the study in nanotechnology is about the relationship of the brain with its 10 billion neurons and the mind, of which we know so little. The mind, I learned, is something that only the human being has. What is the mind? We don’t know. Nobody has ever seen the mind. What was made very emphatic to me is to understand that the human being is the only creature that has a mind! Animals do not. The mind is defined as a sense of consciousness, past, present and future. Put your arm behind your back and you cannot see it. Nobody is telling you it is there, but you know it is there. How can you explain that? That is one of the questions neuroscience is trying to solve.
Dr. Andrew Newberg, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania in this research writes, and I quote him:

"Are we "hardwired" for God?" The term "hardwired" suggests that we were purposefully designed that way. Neuroscience cannot answer the question of purposeful design. However, what we can say is that the brain has two primary functions that can be considered from either a biological or evolutionary perspective. These two functions are self-maintenance and self-transcendence. The brain performs both of these functions throughout our lives. It turns out that religion also performs these two same functions. So, from the brain’s perspective, religion is a wonderful tool because religion helps the brain perform its primary functions. Unless the human brain undergoes some fundamental change in its function, religion and God will be here for a very long time."

We are Hardwired for Faith

Are we hardwired for God? Prior to reading Dr. Newberg's brilliant research, I have long believed that we are hardwired for faith. And I’m sure of that. That is the same thing that Newberg is saying.

Now then against this background, two thousand years ago Jesus is talking about the mind! The human being! And He says that faith is built in us by nature. We are hardwired for faith, hardwired for God! Faith is like a grain of mustard seed, infinitely small to begin with … 10 billion neurons. Faith is the smallest thing, the smallest concept. Faith is like a grain of mustard seed! It seems like nothing. It is the least and it turns into the greatest power in the world! And that’s what we need to be hardwired for faith, hardwired for God. It begins with mustard seed faith which comes to us in the form of an idea, a concept, or an impulse.

It is very important that all of us have a connection with God. Or we are going to waste a lot of things that are trying to happen within our minds through the impulse of the 10 billion neurons in the brain and God is operative in all of this.

So in attending this study session, I visited the Salk Institute for the first time and that was very interesting. I met Jonas Salk once, at a dinner. We never had a chance to develop a relationship, but I learned an interesting insight to this great scientist. Jonas Salk is known as a scientist who believed he could find a cure for polio. Now many young people might not even know what a devastating disease polio is, that hit our country in the past century. When Jonas Salk shared his concepts of how a cure might be developed, it was only an idea, a very tiny idea … a mustard seed thought. But he believed in it. Everybody ridiculed him to begin with. Then other researchers said it would never work. Finally, after some years, he was so discouraged and depressed that a colleague said, "Don't give up, Jonas, you need to keep going. You know what you should do?" Jonas said, "No." "Get out of America for a while. Go to Italy. Go to the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. That is a spiritual based facility that is unlike anything in the world."

I was there myself only a year or two ago so I understand that great advice. Jonas Salk was not really spiritual, but he thought, "I’ll do it. Perhaps it will help me." So he went to Italy, to the Basilica of St. Francis and there, in that spiritual space of hills and valleys, he was alone and he had a transforming spiritual experience. I have no doubt, and neither does he, that it was an encounter with God.

That spiritual experience impacted the mind of Jonas Salk and he came home knowing he would find a cure for polio. He was a changed person. He was creatively inspired. He grabbed hold of that mustard seed and the rest is history. He discovered a cure for polio!
When that happened Jonas Salk became the recipient of a great deal of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, most of it from the March of Dimes, because that money was there for the discoverer of the cure for polio. So Jonas Salk decided to use the money to build a Research Institute. He searched for a place where he could build something so that other researchers could experience what he had in Assisi. It brought him to the cliffs in La Jolla. As he looked down over the ocean, he felt it strongly again. He then went to one of the greatest architects that time, Louis Kahn and brought him to La Jolla and told him, "I want to build an institute here where doctors and scientists can come to study and explore the undiscovered to really create new insights into reality."

Louis Kahn took the assignment and started to build the Institute, a huge place. Before it was finished, Jonas Salk came to check it out. As he looked at the facility on which many millions had already been spent he said, "It doesn’t work!" And Kahn said, "What do you mean, it doesn’t work?" Jonas Salk said again, "It doesn’t work. I don’t feel it. Tear it down! Throw it away! Start over!"

And then he took the architect Louis Kahn to the very edge of the cliff and said, "There is the canyon and over there is the ocean. Stand here! Feel it! Do you feel it?" Kahn said, "Yes, I do." "Now start designing with this feeling," was Salk’s challenge.

And Kahn built the building into two separate structures with a huge wide plaza which extends all the way to the edge of the cliff and the water. I could feel it when I went there this week. And there is only one sign. It does not say Salk Institute. Instead, as you approach the building and the plaza, there in the marble of the sidewalk are these words written by Jonas Salk,

"Hope lies in dreams, in imagination,
and in the courage of those who dared to
make dreams into reality." (Jonas Salk)

You are hardwired for God! You are hardwired for faith! Ideas are going to come to you. They come to all of us. If grasped, they can turn into dreams … and then God is in it … and your life becomes a glorious God-thing.

That is what happened to me one day as I was walking down these pulpit steps after a worship service. A mustard seed thought hit me, "I need to call Armand Hammer and ask him to fly me in his plane to Russia." As soon as I got to my office I placed a telephone call and told him I need to minister in Russia. I need to. I just know I have to go. That tiny little idea was a mustard seed.
The next week Armand called me and said, "Can you make it Thursday?" I said, "Sure." He said, "You and your wife?" I said, "Yes." And the next week on a Thursday we went to the Los Angeles Airport, got into his huge airplane and flew to Russia. We went immediately to the Department of Television and Dr. Hammer negotiated with the government officials for three hours in my behalf and that began our ministry to Russia. That was in November, 1989, and I became the first religious leader allowed to preach on their only television channel to the 200 million people in communist Russia.

There was a young Russian, as well as many other Russians, who didn’t like this preacher talking about religion on television. That Russian is here in church this morning. Andrei Danilenko didn’t like what he heard. Not at all … but today he is a believer! And he said to me the other day, "Anybody who can watch a seed sprout, or a child born has to believe in God" … Andrei Danilenko.

Six months later I was invited back to Russia. This time to the White House, the Parliament, to the offices of the top leaders who control agriculture. And Andrei was with me as my interpreter. The government official who controls agriculture in the parliament said to me, "Dr. Schuller, we don’t have enough food to feed our people. Armand Hammer said we should talk to you. We will offer to you, Dr. Schuller, tens of thousands of acres of the best land. It will be your property if you will just come and start raising food for our people."

I looked at him and said, "I am a farmer’s son and I can put together the people who can tell you how to raise food, but I won’t take your land. It belongs to the farmers in Russia and no one from America has a right to take ownership of it." Three days later I spoke to CUGM (Churches United in Global Mission) and challenged them to help with this ministry project and they responded. "We will find the best agricultural specialists in America to go to Russia and find out why their farms are not bearing good crops. We’ll do something about it!"

May-day in Russia was a special commemoration when normally they would carry their weapons through the Kremlin and show off their military power! But something else happened on May 1, 1993. I, an American, was there with about forty other Americans heading a new program to bring food to Russia. With us were two experts, Ralph Hofstad who had retired as Chairman of the Board of Land-O-Lakes Company, and also there was a professor of agriculture, who had just retired from Iowa State, the greatest agricultural school in the world. They were determined to help the Russians.

On this May-day, 1993, I was assigned to plant the first potato. Only one potato. And my wife also dug a little hole to plant her potato. Then the priest of the Russian Orthodox Church came to the field and blessed it. (That priest is now the Metropolitan of the Church of Russia, which is like a Cardinal.) So I planted the first potato in the ground. One potato, May 1, 1993 … and the farm ministry was on its way. We insisted it be a separate non-profit corporation from this church. And today, there are sixty thousand acres we manage. It is the largest research and development agricultural project in all of Russia! It delivers fresh grains, vegetables and potatoes to the people of Moscow who can buy this fresh food at half the price it was costing to import it. Four million families who live in Moscow eat food from the farms that we manage. It is phenomenal.

Mikhail Gorbachev was so impressed that his 20,000 acres of land that his father farmed were put under our management. The Russian Farm Project has become the single model for farming in Russia where 50 percent of their potential tillable land is still untilled! Now this is a five-year business plan where Russia will be able to export food to hungry nations … and it all started with one potato!

Mustard seed faith! One idea into the mind … not the brain … and choices are made … decisions!

What idea is going through your brain? What idea comes into your mind? What dream? It may seem so insignificant or totally impossible. I have been preaching mustard seed faith for 50 plus years and now this positive thinking … possibility thinking is on the verge of being proven by neuroscience. It works because God is in it! Yes, we are hardwired for God. Grab hold. Jesus knew it all before there was anything called nanotechnology. Let’s pray:

O Lord, I am Yours. Open my mind. Open my consciousness – use my mind to grab hold of Your idea for my life. Use me. Impact me with new discoveries of faith in Jesus Christ. Amen.