Change Your Brain Every Day - The Science Behind Evil with Rice Broocks

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

The definition of “evil” can be both elusive and fluid. Some say they can’t define it, but they know it when they see it. So then how do we wrap our minds around the concept of evil? In the last episode of a series on God and faith, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen are joined by “God’s Not Dead” author Rice Broocks for a discussion on the broad spectrum of what’s considered to be evil.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back. We are having the best conversation with Dr. Rice Brooks, the author of God's Not Dead. And we're going to talk about something a little sticky in this one, if we can. If we can continue this week of where is God in this world that is a little crazy right now. You brought up something earlier, and I want to continue with that.

And it's going to get a little touchy. So a lot of people who listen to us have been hurt. I mean, like really hurt, traumatized. And I actually had a pretty traumatic childhood myself. I had a father who was a minister who, you know, my dad was very far from the perfect minister. Let me just like start with that. And he was not a part of my life growing up. So that'll give you some, some idea. And then just a lot of trauma drama growing up with my mom. Now, personally, I can tell you where God was when I was growing up and there was a lot of trauma and drama. He wasn't there. That was the problem. So for me, that was the problem. So personally, my life was full of chaos and drama

and trauma until I figured that part out, until I made peace with God and allowed God back into my life. Then there was purpose, then there was hope, and then there was healing. But not everybody's there that listens to us. Not everybody feels that way, and they don't understand. And so what do we say to people who have experienced that kind of trauma and pain and even far worse than I have? And where maybe even the church hurt them. And that was my case. So I grew up Roman Catholic. My mother was not kidding about that. And I went to Catholic school. But I'm completely horrified by the sex abuse scandal in the church. And it's not just that.

It's someone who's treated a lot of people who grew up in what really is abusive church families. When you hear that, what goes through your head? And how do you counsel people? Because I know this isn't new for you. No. And the first thing is always to listen to the people's individual stories. So rather than just generically, when I'm asked this,

each person has a story. Each person's life was dramatically affected. And if they were negatively affected in the name of God or by somebody representing God, the highest condemnations of Jesus, the highest. When people talk about hell and why would God send people to hell, I say, well, just to be specific, Jesus really talks specifically about hell to religious people

because who they were and what they represented had such an impact. The New Testament says, let not many of you become teachers for there's a stricter judgment. In a short way, you know, just because somebody claims to believe in God, I mean, I believe in the police and I believe in the speed limit, but that doesn't mean I'll slow down. So just because somebody claims they believe in God and even claims that they know what God's instructions are, just makes them more culpable, not necessarily more prone to do it. That's why atheists can be good. When somebody says to me, are you saying atheists are bad? No, atheists can be good. When somebody says to me, are you saying atheists are

bad? No, atheists can be good. They do good things. Why can an atheist be good and a religious person be bad? Because we're both made in God's image. So there's a moral code written on the inside of us. Romans chapter two, Romans one says that the evidence of God is everywhere in creation. But then Romans two says that the conscience bears witness to the fact that that moral law is within us. So even though you don't know where it comes from or you can account for it, you still can act morally. But even more so, if you know where it comes from and you know there's a source to it to perpetrate an act against a child. I mean, Jesus said, if you hurt one of these little ones, it would be better than a millstone tied around your neck. So the strongest condemnations are for those that would hurt somebody.

The strongest judgments come for those that misguide people. And if you represent God to steer them off or to get them to where now they hate God because of what you did and they thought you were a believer or thought you were a representative of god so if i really want to get tana going uh you know there has to be a neuroscience part of this discussion right because you know we have a database of 150 000 scans now and part of our database we have about a,000 convicted felons, including 100 murderers. Oh, and we could not agree on this.

We still don't a lot. I actually had no opinion on the death penalty. I do. Until attorneys started sending me people who did seriously bad things. And when you see their brains not always but most of the time they're severely damaged brains and then I'm like it is not the sign of an evolved society to be killing sick people and so I've been in court on

death penalty cases and ultimately I realized that's why in the Bible it says multiple times not to judge because it's complicated, right? Behavior is complicated and just because you have a bad brain doesn't mean you're going to do something bad, right? It's complicated. There are spiritual factors, there's psychological factors, there's social factors, but my work has softened my heart. And what I get horrified by is often they have brains that could be better. And, you know, that's what i believe god put might be on earth to do was was the mission i'm i'm here to do god and i are still working out my let me respond to that god and i are still

wrestling if someone hurts my child okay yeah jail's the only place we have had no not gonna happen i'll do it quickly and then i'll i know you're not happening we've had none of it we've had many discussions. Yeah. No, and it actually talks about not judging individually. If I'm correct, it says that as a society, our laws are made to be one hook and hook. It's kind of like cholesterol. There's good and bad.

There's good and bad judgment. We're to judge with righteous judgment. Yes, thank you. Judging something is— And they're to pay for that. Judging something is like the guy that sees a woman on the bus and her kids are unruly and he's going, that woman's terrible. That's personal judgment. And then all of a sudden he finds out, he corrects,

he can't take it anymore to, hey, get your kids under. And the woman says, I'm sorry, I just lost my husband. Yes. So here's a woman who's just come from seeing her husband die and she's on the bus. And so you judge based not on the full facts, but there is an entire book of the Bible called Judges. So it's not necessarily a bad thing. And there will be eternal judgment, as it says in Hebrews 6, that one of the basic doctrines is eternal judgment. So I think what, and I'm not going to intrude

on your area of expertise because I think that there's always case by case things. That's why a good judge will listen to every case. When somebody asks me, is God gonna give a blanket pass to this group of people in eternity? Oh, y'all go to heaven. You've got the stamp on your hand.

You said the right words. So the judgment, because God is eternal, he has an infinite amount of moments to to to listen to every detail and every word of your life it says we will matthew 12 stand in account for every idle word so god has an eternity to each individual that's ever lived to stand before him and to go through every second of our life and why it happened so ultimately i think that there is a righteous judgment i think there are factors that live, to stand before him and to go through every second of our life and why it happened. So ultimately, I think that there is a righteous judgment. I think there are factors that have to be dealt with individually. So back to the earth, not to eternity, back to the databases and the brains. I think that's why we have to bring every factor. Now, I think as a whole, I don't think a

person who commits some crazy act though, did that all in one day. In other words, there's probably a pattern of other things that led to that. So when it comes to, I think if a person is mentally ill, then obviously they should be given that consideration. In general, the general principle, though, is that there's the strongest judgments. And for somebody to hurt a child, that's obviously God's not behind that, and God will deal with it. And that's why I think there's – think about the mercy of God that all this is coming to light. But we can't help out a little until that time, until God takes over?

Well, we're not – So let's talk about James Holmes, who was the Batman shooter. Yeah, no, it's okay. That one actually makes me cringe. I'm not totally without... Empathy? No. You know, the whole imaging stuff for me, it just gave me pause.

Yeah. And I admit it did me too. Pause and purpose. So for those of you that haven't seen the Facebook talk I did at Saddleback Church it's now about nearly 40 million views and I tell my passion story and my nephew when he was nine years old attacked a little girl on the baseball field for no reason out of the blue he was drawing pictures of himself shooting other children

and hanging from a tree he's calling mine or aurora or sandy hook waiting to happen and it ended up he had a cyst the size of a golf ball occupying this space easy to call them bad, hard to go, why? And my faith has always been the same. There's complex reasons for behavior, and I'm not the judge. It isn't as hopeful though, you think about it, that people that like, I think it was Garfield who was shot and he didn't die from the assassin's bullet because of his physician's dirty hands that operated on him. Yeah. Interesting, right?

Yeah. So here we are, we're learning so much. Imagine being able to get brain health early on so that the person never gets to the point of doing what he did or she did. That's why I love what we do. Yeah, because you're actually, we're getting better. And I think that's why collectively is, I think if I look back 200 years ago, 300 years ago, I mean, the world was a pretty crazy place in the Middle Ages. I mean, even though it seems bad to us, a lot going on, I think collectively as a society, there's an overall globally from poverty to sicknesses being eradicated to, I think we're, I think it doesn't seem like it because we tend to judge things on the immediate moment. But I think that there's

such an understanding coming and there's so much insight into our DNA and to brain scans into, you know, how do we take, how do we, how do we operate in civility with other religions? That that's possible. That's not a pipe dream. That's not a distant dream. I think there are massive areas and massive examples that we could go into if we had the time of where the good is taking place. The problem is the bad news sells. That gets amplified. Where you bring your attention determines how you feel.

Thank you so much. This was a joy. Thank you both. Amazing. How can people learn more about your work, your church? I mean, obviously they can go online and get God's Not Dead. You were showing me an app earlier that was really cool too. Yeah.

Yeah, they can just download. There's a God's Not Dead app. That's one thing. Ricebrooks.com, that's kind of a central location. And your last name is of a central location. And your last name is spelled a little funky. Yeah. Thank you. I've been explaining that. But the Rice is even more of an explanation. We're going to have dinner later, so I wanted you to tell me that.

Well, that was Rice University. That was actually my relative was the one that founded that, but that didn't do me any good when I'm growing up. I played basketball in high school and and I got to play one minute, so they called me Minute Rice. Oh, that's so funny. So when I speak to sports teams, I'm always quick to say, look, it has nothing to do with my athletic background. That is so funny. I was Minute Rice. Minute Rice. So ricebrooks.com. B-R-O-O-C-K-S.

Yeah. God's not Dead app. Thank you so much. Thank you both. And thank you for what you do. I wish I could have interviewed you. I'm going to do it on the God's Not Dead app. So your turn's coming.

I'll look forward to it. Take care. It was wonderful. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.