S10E16
· 27:49
Hey, Lisa.
Lisa Warren:Hey, Lee.
Dr. Lee Warren:It's good to see you today.
Lisa Warren:It's good to see you too.
Dr. Lee Warren:Will you help me with something?
Lisa Warren:Of course.
Dr. Lee Warren:I can't remember what day it is.
Lisa Warren:It's Frontal Lobe Friday.
Dr. Lee Warren:Good morning, my friend. I hope you're doing well. Doctor Lee Warren here with you, and it's frontal
Dr. Lee Warren:lobe Friday. Today, we're gonna talk about one thing. It was a response to an email that I got of somebody who asked me to help them sort out their quest for truth, and I think this is an important thing. We're gonna use our frontal lobes to do it, and we're gonna understand how to find what truth is and what that process of looking for truth actually is. And we're gonna do all that after you answer one question for me.
Dr. Lee Warren:Hey. Are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule. You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything starts to make sense.
Dr. Lee Warren:Are you ready to change your life? Well, this is the place, Self Brain Surgery School. I'm doctor Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired, take control of our thinking, and find real hope. This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier. This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.
Dr. Lee Warren:This is where we start today. Are you ready? This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time, my friend.
Dr. Lee Warren:Let's get after it.
Dr. Lee Warren:Alright. Let's get after it. Hey. It's Frontal Lobe Friday, and I got an email this week that I wanna talk about this morning. Somebody wrote in and their their work online is in another country, but, basically, it's this idea that we need to all be sort of unified and everybody's, you know, trying to find their way to God and all paths are are great and and her and the work has been this idea that society would be better off if everybody was sort of agreeing that there's no sort of one way that's better than another way.
Dr. Lee Warren:And as that person has pursued that work of trying to unite people through, hey. Don't get hung up on your truth, and I won't get hung up on my truth. We can just all sort of work together and try to find the way to God and and love and unity and all that. As they've done that, they came to some, for them, shocking revelations that when you try to include everybody in every path to truth, that you realize pretty quickly that that you can't actually get that done in a logically coherent way because multiple different people that claim to have access to truth have conflicting views that can't both be true. I don't know if that makes sense to you.
Dr. Lee Warren:I'm trying to be a little sensitive to the subject matter at hand here, but I thought it would be a good opportunity for us to just look at one concept today and use it to make sure that you're on solid ground. Here's my premise. Okay? My premise is that if you want to become healthier and feel better and be happier, you have to do that from a place of operating out of things that are true, not things that feel true. Remember, because feelings aren't facts.
Dr. Lee Warren:Feelings are chemical events. Sometimes they're true, but they're really barometers rather than compasses. Feelings are not a good way to navigate your life. They're a good way to pay attention to what's your brain's trying to tell you about what's happening, to be aware of your feelings and to operate out of an understanding of where they're coming from rather than reacting to them. Okay?
Dr. Lee Warren:So feelings don't often lead us to the truth. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they lead us off the cliff if we're not careful. But if you're not operating out of a place that's true and you're trying to find your way in the world, then you're in danger. Simon Sinek in his incredible book, Start With Why, he said if you start with the wrong questions, then even the right answers will get you in trouble.
Dr. Lee Warren:The the the right answers will lead you to the wrong place if you started with the wrong question. And so you may answer a question that was some something that is true, but if it's not the right question, it won't help you. It won't get you to the place that you're going. And so I just wanna I wanna point a couple of things out. If you believe well, let me let me back up one step and say this.
Dr. Lee Warren:There's a push in the world today. We've talked about it on the show with Natasha Crane. We've talked about it with Talisa Shoulders. We've talked about it with Susie Larson. There's a push in the world today, in the secular world, to say, hey.
Dr. Lee Warren:You do you. You find your truth. You follow your way. You you do what makes you happy, and I'll do what makes me happy, and we'll all get there together. There's another path, this sort of pantheism path that says all all diligent quest for truth leads to God, like like all religions are true, all paths lead to God, that as long as you love and as long as you're a good person that that you're gonna find your way to God, then my problem with that is that a couple of problems.
Dr. Lee Warren:1, just look at it like doctor Phil says and say, how's that working for you? If you look at people who live that way, do they actually ever find something that looks like peace and joy and meaning and purpose and happiness, or does the target keep changing? And when I say that, be honest with yourself. When you have pursued the things in your life that you thought would make you happy apart from god. Okay?
Dr. Lee Warren:Have they actually made you happy? The person, the relationship, the job, the money, the whatever. Has it actually made you happy? Or when you get it, do you find yourself still wanting something more? So that's the question.
Dr. Lee Warren:How's it working for you? Okay. Now if you believe that all paths towards truth lead to God, that that you'll find your way somehow. Or if even if you don't believe in God, if you believe that all it takes to be a happy person is just to pursue your truth and find your way and, you know, don't bother anybody else and all that. If if you believe that, then I would just submit to you that you cannot, in an honest way, you cannot include Christianity as one of the paths to truth.
Dr. Lee Warren:So if you think there are multiple paths to truth and if you think there are multiple ways to find God or multiple ways to find meaning and purpose and happiness in your life, Christianity cannot be one of them if it's not the only one, and I say that because of internal claims that it makes about itself. So if you if you follow me for just a second, the logic would be this. If if a belief system or a set of instructions or a set of operating manuals, whatever whatever it is that you might be reading to try to find out something that's true about how to build this machine or how to live this life or how to find God or whatever. If if the system itself makes internal claims that turn out not to be true, then it can't be trustworthy as a path to truth. Right?
Dr. Lee Warren:If you have a an instruction manual for how to put this desk together that I'm sitting in front of, and you you find out that it actually describes how to build a bicycle and not a desk, then it's not true, and you can't use it to build a desk because it's not true. The things it says of itself, even though it says on the cover that it's an instruction manual to build a desk, when you actually follow the instructions, you don't get a desk, you get something else, a bicycle or a microwave oven. You you've you've built something that wasn't true to the claims of the instruction. Right? So backing up to the point that I made a minute ago, if you say that all paths are equally valid, all religions are true, that there's always to God, or that everything as long as you're honest and you're as long as you're living your truth as long as you're pursuing your happiness, that you'll find something that's good for yourself or your life, then I would say that may be fine for you.
Dr. Lee Warren:I don't believe it is, but but let's say it is. Christianity cannot be one of those if you actually follow Christianity, and I'll give you the reasons why. Okay? Internal claims to truth. John 146.
Dr. Lee Warren:Jesus said his own words, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. So, internally, Jesus is saying of himself that he is the only way to truth and life. He is the only way. Nobody can get to God except through him.
Dr. Lee Warren:So if there are, in fact, multiple paths to heaven, multiple paths to God, multiple paths to enlightenment, multiple paths to peace and happiness and purpose and all of that, if there are multiple ones, Christianity can't be one of them because Jesus would have then lied if he said he was the only way. Right? Now I said this to my friend who's an atheist one time. We were having a conversation about this, and he said, well, no. That doesn't mean that.
Dr. Lee Warren:Maybe he's still away to the path. Maybe he's still a path to the truth, and he's just not telling the truth that there aren't other ways. And I said, well, if he's saying he's the truth but he's lying about that, how could that be logically coherent? But furthermore, you can use other scripture like Hebrews 618-nineteen. So God has given both his promise and his oath.
Dr. Lee Warren:There are 2 things that are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. So that my friend's statement that maybe Jesus wasn't telling the truth and there are other paths out there, maybe he's one of them, but there are other ones, well, the Bible says of itself, it's impossible for God to lie. Jesus is God and he can't lie. So if if that's true, if it's true that God can't lie and God says in John that he's the only way, the only truth, the only life, then there can't be another one that leads to heaven, that leads to god, that leads to purpose and meaning and happiness and salvation. You see what I'm saying?
Dr. Lee Warren:And, finally, if you needed one more, second Timothy 316 and 17, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. So, in other words, if it's scripture, then it's profitable and true. It's impossible for god to lie, and god says of himself that he's the only way to life, the only truth, the only way, the only life, then I would just say I'm I'm trying to sort of beat this thing to death, but I'm saying it because it's so important. If you find yourself sort of pursuing what you think will make you happy or pursuing some version of truth, and it doesn't seem to be making you happy, it doesn't seem to be leading you to peace, it doesn't seem to be answering the big questions, then maybe you're pursuing something that isn't true. Maybe you're asking the wrong questions and getting some right answers to the wrong question and leading yourself around in a circle.
Dr. Lee Warren:Or maybe, like my friend who emailed me, you're trying to to build this system, this social platform where everybody can come together and all find their way forward, and it doesn't really matter what you believe as long as you're honest about it and pursue it diligently. Well, maybe that's not producing the result you want because it's not true. Now let's talk about truth for a minute. The secular culture that we're living in right now says, hey. You do you.
Dr. Lee Warren:You follow your heart. You you live your life. You you have your best life. You find your truth. You find your happiness.
Dr. Lee Warren:And the problem is the world is getting progressively more bitter and angry and upset and divided because everybody's trying to find their own version of the truth. Right? And I'm not trying to be judgmental. Okay? I'm trying to be a good doctor.
Dr. Lee Warren:Like, if your life isn't working and you're saying, I'm not happy. I'm having trouble. I'm having to numb myself. I can't get my brain to work on my own behalf, and everything I try isn't working, then my job as a good doctor is to say, well, let's look at what you've been doing. Maybe you're asking the wrong questions.
Dr. Lee Warren:Maybe you're pursuing the wrong truth. Maybe you're applying the wrong self brain surgery techniques. Maybe you need to change your definition of what truth is. Because if you're not asking the right questions, you can't get to the right answers. Right?
Dr. Lee Warren:Does that make sense? Okay. Now, again, I'm not trying to beat this to death, but I've been reading this incredible book by Iain McGilchrist called The Matter With Things, Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. And right at the very beginning of that book and by the way, this book is immensely long. It's thousands of pages long.
Dr. Lee Warren:So just getting into it now. So I'm not recommending it yet, but, but he starts with this conversation about what truth is. And he made an important distinction that I thought perfectly landed with this concept that I've been trying to put together for a couple of days now. I apologize for my voice. Lisa and Tata and I all have a cold.
Dr. Lee Warren:I've been sneezing my head off, and I just can't get the rattle out of my throat, so forgive me. Somebody wrote in the other day and said that that my breathing noises were gross to them on a particular episode cause I had a cold. And I'm sorry. I can't not breathe. So forgive me.
Dr. Lee Warren:Let's just stay with me. So I have a cold. Anyway, so Ian McGillchrist is talking about truth, and he made an important distinction. I've never heard anybody else say in this postmodern kind of nihilistic world that we're living in where everybody's got their own truth and everybody's pursuing their own thing. He says this, truth as correctness is not the same as truth as unconcealing.
Dr. Lee Warren:Now understand listen to it again. There's there's truth as correctness. Like, I'm right and you're wrong, and I've got my truth and it's right for me. And even if your truth is right for you, mine is right for me, and I'm correct, and you can't convince me that I'm not correct. That that's one way to look at truth.
Dr. Lee Warren:Okay? Another way to look at truth is unconcealing something that's already there. So I'm not trying to decide what I want and decide what makes me happy and decide where I want to go, but I'm trying to discover what's actually true so I can know what to follow and know what to pursue and know what to use as a basis of decision making and know where to point my life because I'm pursuing something that's actually true. So if you build your truth on what you want and what your feelings are, and those aren't the right questions, as to how to find truth, then you won't get there. But if you build your life on pursuing what is true and deciding to follow it no matter what it looks like or no matter how hard it seems, I I would just submit to you that if you actually find what's true, you'll be able to find what will ultimately produce peace and joy and purpose and meaning and happiness no matter whether you've been through trauma and tragedy and other massive things.
Dr. Lee Warren:So understand this this word discover. If you say I wanna discover the truth, discover doesn't mean that you decide what you want and you make that true. Discover, break the word down, look at the etymology. Dis like like disassemble, disarticulate. You're taking something apart.
Dr. Lee Warren:You're revealing something. Apart. You're revealing something. You're removing something that's covering. Dis, d I s, and cover.
Dr. Lee Warren:So to discover the truth means, like, think about an archaeologist down on her knees with a little brush, and she's brushing dirt away very carefully, And she finds underneath the dirt the the thing that she's been digging for, the the truth, the gold chalice or the skeleton or the ark of the covenant or whatever it is that she's looking for, she's discovered it by removing the things that were concealing it. That's what discover truth means. You're removing impediments. You're removing things that are hiding the truth, and you're finding what's actually been there all along, then I would just submit here on frontal lobe Friday. Let's use our brains to say, Jesus said a long time ago, I am the way and the truth and the life, and nobody comes to the father except by me.
Dr. Lee Warren:And we're saying, why can't I seem to get my life on track? Why can't I seem to find what will really hold me up when things get hard? Why does my truth keep crumbling? And every time I think I get what I was after, every time I get what I thought I wanted, the target changes, and it doesn't satisfy. It doesn't leave me full.
Dr. Lee Warren:I'm still hungry. It doesn't satisfy my thirst. I'm still thirsty. And the Bible said all along, taste and see that the Lord is good. Eat this food and you won't be hungry anymore.
Dr. Lee Warren:Drink this water and you won't be thirsty anymore. Jesus has said, come and discover me. I'm the way and I'm the truth and I'm the life. And nobody comes to the father except through me. I want you to understand this.
Dr. Lee Warren:I want you to discover it and live it richly. I want you to find a truth that you can hang your hat on and build your life on and plant your feet solidly on when things get hard. And we're gonna go deep into the science as we continue to press into this idea that your nervous system I believe God created your brain and your spinal cord and your peripheral nerves and your enteric nervous system and your autonomic nervous system and all the gut brain connection and all the connections between your heart and your vagus nerve and your brain and all that incredible stuff, god created that as the interface between your mind and your creator. The the the interface is your mind. The creator is in communication with your mind, and your mind is in charge of your brain and your nervous system to properly operate your life if you will let it.
Dr. Lee Warren:But remember what I've told you. There's multiple paths to operating your brain, and they work. Okay? There's the 10 Percent Happier method, which is just learning how to kinda calm things down and get the crazy voice out of your head and just calm it down a little bit enough to to to steady yourself and move forward. And you can be a little happier by just learning this, some basic meditation techniques, some basic thought control techniques so you're reacting, you're responding instead of just reacting.
Dr. Lee Warren:And, like Dan Harris says, you can become a little happier doing that, And it works. You can operate that way and you can be a little happier. Or you can even become significantly happier if you understand how the machine works on a little different level like we talked about the other day. The the paths to to operating your brain, the one that's a little bit deeper level is like the guy that at Verizon that can fix things when they're broken on my phone that I can't fix because they've gone to school and they've studied and they've learned and they know more and they can operate their mind and operate the equipment better than I can. Okay?
Dr. Lee Warren:It's a deeper level. You can become significantly happier, significantly healthier, significantly better able to control your thoughts and your emotions and and operate your life. Even if you don't give God the credit for it and even if you don't connect your mind to your spirit and to your creator, you can operate at a higher level than you can by just understanding the basics. Okay? And my grandson, Ryker, was here the other days too.
Dr. Lee Warren:He's at well, he's 3 now. But when they were visiting, Ryker got on the tractor with me, and he wanted to learn how to we had this big pile of dirt, and he wanted to move the dirt around with the tractor. So I showed him how to operate the bucket and he would push the handle and learn how to scoop up the dirt. And at 3 years old, he was able to learn how to operate that the bucket on the tractor. And we'd we'd get a bucket full of dirt and I would drive around and he would dump it and we moved the whole dirt pile 3 or 4 times.
Dr. Lee Warren:And he got really good at operating the bucket. Okay? So he could operate it. But if I asked Ryker to explain hydraulics, he wouldn't know what I was talking about. Right?
Dr. Lee Warren:He's 3 years old. He doesn't understand the science behind how that bucket is operating. He just knows how to push the handle and pick the dirt up. He's good at it. He got really good at it.
Dr. Lee Warren:He could do it as well as I could, but he couldn't do that and drive the tractor. And he couldn't understand that I had to keep my feet on the brakes while he was doing that, and I had to keep watching the the the bush hog on the back to make sure we had adequate balance so that he didn't tip us over when he had the bucket extended really far forward. He didn't understand all that stuff was happening. He didn't understand the internal combustion engine and the reason that the engineers chose diesel fuel instead of gasoline to operate the machine. He didn't understand that we have to have hydraulic lines and had that I had to make sure that there was hydraulic fluid in the system so that the bucket could operate.
Dr. Lee Warren:He didn't understand that we had the heater on in the cab because it was a really cold day, and he didn't understand how refrigeration and heating work, and he didn't understand how that machine was put together in a factory and how the factory was built and how the engineers created the machines that built that machine. Riker couldn't have possibly understood all of that, but he was really good at operating it. Do you see what I mean? There's multiple levels. And every time you look at a deeper level, you can discover something that's still true, and you can find that the thing that you thought you were building your set of data on continues to be true no matter how deeply you look into it.
Dr. Lee Warren:And that, my friend, is what I would tell you will happen if you build a life of pursuing the truths that God reveals to you when you seek after him. And we're gonna do that in the context of looking at the nervous system. Okay? We are going to dive in to this idea that the nervous system gets progressively more complex. And as you look further and further and further in, you reach an inevitable conclusion that it could not possibly have happened or arrived by a system of random errors and mutations and small evolutionary steps over time, that the system is irreducibly complex, that there are component parts when you get down to the smallest levels of what happens inside the cell and how information is transcribed and how DNA and RNA work together to produce proteins that build the machines of life and how 2 of them have to be present at the same time to connect to one another to create cell replication, and that could not have happened by accident.
Dr. Lee Warren:As we dig deeper and deeper and deeper, we're discovering, we're removing impediments from, We're uncovering what's true. And I would just suggest to you that if you want to build a life that will hold you up when things get hard, you've got to build it by starting with the right questions. And that's why, on this podcast at least, every day, we're going to dig deeper and try to look at truths. We're not just gonna keep learning how to operate the system a little more effectively. We're not just looking for hacks.
Dr. Lee Warren:We're self brain surgeons. We're members of the Society of Self Brain Surgery. We are interested in finding truth and pursuing it no matter where it takes us. Like doctor Lennox said yesterday, mathematics and science actually point to god if you ask honest questions of them and answer them honestly and then modify your assumptions based on the answers. And I'm gonna take you down that path.
Dr. Lee Warren:Okay? We're gonna do that together because I believe that you can't change your life until you change your mind. I believe that if you don't define truth correctly, then you're sort of trying to to create it instead of discover it. And what you'll find when you create your own truth is that you'll never be happy because the targets will keep changing. They will crumble under the weight of the hard things of life when you face trauma and tragedy and massive things.
Dr. Lee Warren:And if you don't build your life on the right questions and plant your feet on things that are actually true, then you'll keep operating the bucket like my 3 year old grandson. But when something breaks, you won't know how to fix it. But if you build your life on the truth, the truth, the way, then you'll find the life. And that's what we're after. We want to transform our minds.
Dr. Lee Warren:We want to rewire our brains, and we want to transform our lives. And that's why Romans 12:2 says, don't conform anymore to what the world says. Don't don't build your life on things that other people say will make you happy. Don't say, pursue your own truth. You do you, and I'll do me.
Dr. Lee Warren:Don't say that, and don't accept it of people you love because you care so much about them that you don't want them to crumble when life gets hard. And so you challenge faulty thinking in a loving and caring way. We've we've allowed society to redefine tolerance mean, and we've allowed them to tell us that it's not loving to correct someone when they're in error. But the truth is if I if I watch you play Russian roulette with a handgun, knowing that you're probably getting ready to blow your brains out, and I don't stop you because I'm afraid to hurt your feelings, I'm not loving you. That's not loving to be tolerant of you doing something that's going to lead to you dying or hurting yourself.
Dr. Lee Warren:And as a physician, I can't stand by and watch you do that. Well, I'm just saying that the path to peace and joy and meaning and purpose and happiness is not in letting everybody pursue what they think will make them happy. It's in solidly standing on things that are true and telling other people where they can find it too. And sometimes it's just in living your life in a solid way so that people can see it. I've got to reply to this email and help this person articulate what they're struggling with to figure out why what they thought was gonna lead to peace and unity actually isn't.
Dr. Lee Warren:And the reason it's not is because there's not more than one truth. There's only the truth. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about today on frontal lobe Friday, my friend. I want you to discover the truth, and we're gonna do it together here by doing self brain surgery. And I want you to change your mind and change your life.
Dr. Lee Warren:And I hope that you'll join me as we start today.
Dr. Lee Warren:Hey. Thanks for listening. The doctor Lee Warren podcast is brought to you by my brand new book, Hope is the First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things. It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audiobooks.
Dr. Lee Warren:Hey. The theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker, available for free at tommywalkerministries.org. They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the most high god. And if you're interested in learning more, check out tommywalkerministries.org. If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at wleewarrenmd.com/prayer.
Dr. Lee Warren:Wleewarrenmd.com/prayer. And go to my web site and sign up for the newsletter, self brain surgery, every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60 plus countries around the world. I'm doctor Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your life until you change your mind, and the good news is you can start today.
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