Transcription
[music] Hello and welcome to Common Sense with Dr. Ben Carson. I'm your host, Ben Carson.
You know, I spent years operating on and studying the human brain, and I believe it's truly one of the most fascinating things in the world. It can process more than two million bits of information in one second. It contains billions of neurons, remembers everything you've ever seen, everything you've ever heard. You can't really overload it. And God has given this incredible tool to us for a reason because he expects us to use it and to apply logic to joyful living and find answers to questions and most importantly to seek him and to know him.
But how do we care for and use our minds well when trials come? When we lose a loved one or face a horrendous diagnosis or endure other trauma? On a smaller scale, how do we take care of our minds and control our thoughts in a world of comparison, negative news, busyness, and chaos? Something we are hearing more and more these days is about mental health. And it seems like the general consensus in culture is that our brains are weak, frail, and in need of constant counseling and safe neighborhoods. Think about that. We're going to hear a little bit more about that today. But I believe that our minds and more importantly, the God who created our minds are stronger than all of that. And I think my guests today would agree with that.
So today, as we continue our podcast series on faith, we're going to explore the amazing minds that God has given us and the ways he has equipped our thought life to shape and change our lives even in the midst of suffering and pain. I'm excited to welcome Dr. Lee Warren. Dr. Warren is an award-winning author, a practicing neurosurgeon, a veteran of the Iraq war. Outside the operating room, his writings and teachings serve as a prescription for connecting neuroscience to faith for radical life transformation. Lee, welcome to the program and thank you for being with us. We really appreciate it.
>> Yeah, it's good to see you again, my friend. Thank you for having me.
>> Absolutely. Now you often talk about the brain as something that can be rewired. How does that ideal change the way we should approach trauma, anxiety, and grief?
>> Every way. It changes everything because it gives us hope and power again. So you and I were taught when we went to school, right, that the brain is what it is. That the human adult brain doesn't make new neurons. That it's pretty much fixed. That if you mess it up, you're going to have trouble in your life. And that's kind of the message that we're getting from society these days. We're getting this idea that you can break your brain, but if you got the wrong genes or the wrong parents or go through the wrong stuff that your brain's going to give you trouble and you have to manage it. But interestingly, 21st century neuroscience is teaching us a different story. We're learning, as scripture has said all along, that you really can actively change what your brain is structurally, and the thing that drives that change is the stuff we think about. Right?
>> So that means that we have this ability to change what we think about. The Bible calls that taking your thoughts captive. 2 Corinthians 10:5. It calls it renewing the mind in Romans 12:2 and Ephesians 4:23. This idea that if you change the stuff you think about, your brain will become a different brain. And we know now that that means it has a new neurochemical environment that you don't have to be as anxious or depressed or stressed as you were. All when you decide to take God seriously, take your thoughts captive, change what you think about, you create a new brain. It's very countercultural, but it gives us hope.
>> And it is interesting, you know, before people commit a crime, they always think about it first.
>> Yeah.
>> What they're going to do. It doesn't just spontaneously jump out and happen. So, that's a that's a very good point. Now, we both spend a lot of times focusing on the physical aspects of the brain, but you also speak openly about spiritual healing. How do how do those two realities intersect?
>> That's interesting. There's there's some research from people like Andrew Newberg from Penn who did brain imaging, spectroscopic and and functional MRI research to look at what people's brains do in response to prayer and meditation, spiritual practices. And the theory was always that people like Richard Dawkins always thought that some people were just genetically predisposed to believe in God or that something about their brains was different that made them have faith. So that people like you and me would have just been born with a different kind of brain that allowed us to believe and somehow that was evolutionary beneficial evolutionarily beneficial to us. But Newberg's work has shown that people who practice prayer meditation for up to 10 minutes a day. They scan them before and they scan them after a six six week period of that practice. And the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and resilience and peace and all those kinds of things, got 22% bigger in 6 weeks of prayer, meditation. So that means literally when you pray, when you engage with God, he makes your brain better able to handle hardship and stress. And this is why the psychologists keep proving it. When they look at people who have spiritual practices in their lives, they handle things more efficiently. They don't have less trouble, but they handle it better. And so faith and neuroscience intersect in the way that God has designed our brains to get better when we take him seriously and we focus on what he says.
>> Now that's very interesting. I hope people will think about that. I mean that's real. Those are facts that you're talking about. This is opinion.
>> And you know the Bible frequently talks about the renewing of your mind.
>> Yeah.
>> I think this is exactly the stuff that it's talking about. But uh your faith is very important to you and you've had as all of us have a path full of ups and downs with a lot of learning. I'd love to hear more about your faith journey and uh how did you come to know Jesus and you know how has your life shaped your relationship with him?
>> Yes. So I was raised um fortunately in a family of believers. My earliest memories are waking [snorts] up in the morning and walking down the hall and my mom would be in in her room reading her Bible and my dad would be at the end of the hall in his office reading his Bible. We were always taught that whatever you face the word's going to have the answers. But at the same time, I was I was raised in a sort of uh sort of fundamentalist legalistic uh faith, which means that you you work hard to try to please God and you and you believe if you do all the right things that everything will work out and all that. So I had I had this drive by my parents to go to the word and this sort of shaping from my denomination really to try harder. And when I got to be an adult and started encountering some difficulties, I found that trying harder doesn't always protect you from those difficulties. So I had a little crisis of faith. And when I went to the Iraq war and I survived a 100 m rocket attacks, I I pretty quickly learned that I couldn't control everything. You know, neurosurgeons are kind of famous for wanting to control everything that we do. When you're outside caught in a mortar attack and you're just you're going to live if if you don't get hit and you're going to die if you do get hit, you don't have any control over that. So, I found that my faith was a little lacking in the fact that I thought I had to do things in order to please God. But when I relaxed and when I let him tell me that he was going to take care of me, that he was going to be close to me when I was brokenhearted, that he was going to to turn whatever I went through into something that I could use to make my life better or find my purpose or help other people. Well, then I started seeing how scripture it changed. It came alive for me in a way that hadn't been true before. And then I saw how it lined up so well with what I was seeing in my patients. I could I could see somebody that I give a diagnosis to been like a glioblastoma. And I could say, "Hey, this is fatal brain cancer and you probably won't survive this." And I could see that news make one person crumble and kind of fall apart in their life and become bitter and angry and scared. And another person, that kind of news would wake them up in some way and they would come alive and they would find meaning and purpose and fix their family and and do all these amazing things. And I've had more than one person tell me on their deathbed that, hey, the last year of my life was the best year of my life. And so I saw this this dichotomy that it's not the things we go through, it's our response to those things that determines what the quality and course of our life looks like. And that's what scripture is there for. Scripture says that you're going to have trouble in this world, but I've overcome it. Jesus says, "The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I've come that you might have abundance in your life." And so for me, it it it began to integrate all these things my parents had always taught me and the experiences that I was having and that there's only really one path to true peace and freedom and that's to trust Jesus that whatever you go through, he can use it to help you find your purpose and help other people.
>> Perspective gives you perspective. You know, when you when you think about tragedy and loss and you know, bad times in your life,
>> what is that against the backdrop of eternity?
>> That's right.
>> That less than a nanosecond. And that kind of perspective often gives you the strength to weather your way through it all. But um, you know, a lot of people uh in heavy science fields like neurosurgery, they've been through the same things you have. Uh, they've seen the same things in science. They've seen the amazing brain. How do you think they reject God knowing all that?
>> It's it's stunning to me that that really brilliant people and the Bible always talks about people like this. People who who have such a an intense desire to control their own world or to be their own king, if you will, or lord that they can't see outside of that paradigm. And then science comes along and people who who are supposed to be scientists say a lot of things that sound convincing like, "Oh, you're just the product of your brain activity." Or, "We know that there's no God because we because we can prove that that uh we understand how species evolve," for example. And people can look at that and think that because a scientist says something that makes it science,
>> right?
>> But what science is is a process of relentlessly searching for becoming less wrong and uncovering more things that are true over time. And what I saw is that scripture has always been pointed straight at truth. Like the scriptures never deviated one time. If God prescribes something and says it's good for you, eventually the scientists figure out, hey, that's really good for people when they do this. And and so what I saw is that science is bending towards truth over time and scriptures pointing straight at it. And so I think I think what happens is people think that science can give them all the answers. But when you encounter something really hard like my son was stabbed to death when he was 19,
>> and there's no science that can make that feel better. There's no science that can tell you what your what your life that your life can look okay again or that you can have some purpose in your life after something like that happens. Science can't get you there. And so what I think is that when people believe that science can give them all the answers, they find something missing at some point. And if they don't know where to look past that, then they're really struggling. And that's why we see so much despair, I think, in the world is that they believe that the the therapist, the psychologist, the psychiatrist, or the prescription pad can give you what's missing, and science just can't get you there. You're not designed for that,
>> right? And so that's that for me it's just always been I can look at somebody and see how smart they are but they can't get out of their own way because they've accepted an idea that's fundamentally false and that is that science can provide all the answers and science just can't do that. It's not designed to do that.
>> Well, it's you mentioned that your your son died tragically. Obviously no preparation for that whatsoever. Um, that must have had a negative impact on your faith for a little while or or how did you manage to get through that?
>> It did actually. It was devastating. And you know, all the other things I've been through, Ben, I never questioned God in them. I just I found solace in him. But when Mitch died, I really did. I had that, I hate to say it, kind of stereotypical thing where, you know, how could a good God let this happen and all those things. And I was devastated. Um, and then Lisa, my wife, um, ran our practice at the time, and we lived in Auburn, Alabama. Um, and we we practiced on the campus of Auburn University. And on the first floor of our building, they were doing what we call functional magnetic resonance imaging research.
>> And so after about a month after Mitch died, I had to go back to work. And on my calendar at the end of that week, there was a meeting down in the MRI scanner. We were supposed to go watch some research happen. And we were bereaved and grieving and angry and upset at God and all those things. But we had our own business and we had to work and you know we had to pay our employees and all that stuff. So we went to this meeting and they put a woman in the scanner and functional MRI as you know and if the listener doesn't know is this this machine that can look at what the brain is doing instead of just what the brain looks like. So you can see what parts of the brain are active when you're thinking or moving. You see what what chemical things are happening, what transmitters are happening. And so we went down to this meeting and they put a woman in the scanner and they said, "Mrs. Johnson, think about the worst thing you've ever felt in your life." And I was thinking about that night in Alabama when my son died. And so she thought of something and then we saw her brain change. Her fear center amygdala lit up and got really active. Really on the screen you could see this really active metabolic stuff happening in the fear center after she thought of something. And then we saw her vital signs change. Her heart rate went up and her breathing went up and her and all that stuff changed in her body. So, we saw this sequence of of what she thought about changed what her brain was doing and then that changed what her body was doing.
>> Mhm.
>> And then they said, "Hey, Mrs. Johnson, stop thinking about that." And now think about the best thing you've ever felt in your life, your happiest memory. And very quickly, Ben, her amygdala calmed down. Her frontal lobes came online. Her cingulate gyrus came online. Insular cortex came online. All these parts of the brain that are involved in stuff other than fear and anxiety. And then we saw her body change again. Her her heart rate, her respiratory rate, blood pressure, all that stuff came down. And my wife said, "Hey, that reminds me of Philippians 4." And I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Well, it it says if you don't want to be anxious, be grateful instead." Like like think about this thing and not that thing, and you'll feel better. [snorts] And I started thinking and God sort of revealed this idea to me at that moment that hey, if you want to feel different than you feel right now about Mitch, you're going to have to change the things you're thinking about. You're going to have to change the perspective of what you're looking at and how you're looking at this and believe that it can be different someday. And that's the same thing that you do in the operating room. Like what we do in the OR, you and I as brain surgeons, is we we intentionally make structural changes in somebody's brain to try to help them in some way, right? And what I saw that day is when we change our thought processes, we are choosing intentionally to change our brains to try to help us. And then that goes back to what Lisa said. Philippians 4 says, "Don't be anxious for anything, but with everything be grateful, and the peace of God will fill your hearts and minds." Guard your hearts and minds. So, if you're looking for some way to guard your heart and your mind, you got to change the perspective of the things that you're thinking about.
>> And so, I started chewing on that and researching that and trying to understand what the brain is and what it does and what the mind is and what that does. And and my faith came back because I saw the only path to peace is to use God's design, which is good. It's for our healing and not for our harm to use the fact that our brains are actually designed to get better when they go through hard things. And then I found out about the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex is the part responsible for you getting stuck in certain emotional situations when your complex grief or whatever.
>> And it gets stronger when you make yourself do hard things like when you choose to get out of bed when you don't feel like it. When you choose not to drink alcohol and go for a run instead. You you make yourself do something hard. The cingulate gets better at getting better across the board. And then I found Romans 3, Romans 5:3-5, which says suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope. And it just all came together for me. Like, okay, your brain is neurologically wired to improve your ability to go through hard things, but to do that, you have to go through hard things. And
>> so it's not a catastrophe when you go through something catastrophic because God will use his design for your brain to help you navigate it in a way that turns you into the kind of person with the character who can go through hard things.
>> And then that gives you hope because sadly none of us just go through one hard thing.
>> So every one of them God uses to prepare you for the next one. And then something amazing happens. You know, Victor Frankl wrote about the concentration camps and he said if if somebody can find purpose in their suffering, it stops feeling like suffering. And this amazing thing happened to me and Lisa because people started coming to us and saying, "Hey, how did you get through losing your son? Cuz I just lost mine." Or, "How did you get through this this problem in your marriage cuz I'm I just lost my wife." And and we would see, wait a minute, people are asking us questions about how to use what we've been through because it's going to help them. And that started to create purpose. And it started to show me that Mitch's death wasn't in vain. That that it was tragic and was horrible, but I could still make something of his life mean something in the future. And it didn't have to just be this meaningless loss, right?
>> And so all of a sudden, I came alive in my faith and it helped me navigate that hardship. And now that's my mission and my purpose because you and I, we're not just here to be neurosurgeons. We're here to help people figure out what's hurting them and what to do about it. And we could do that on a podcast.
>> That's amazing. Now, you know, if you were sitting in a room, a tiger walked in, think about all the physiological things that would happen. [laughter] Your heart rate would go up, your blood pressure go up, your pupils would dilate, your bladder would constrict. All kinds of things would happen. But if someone immediately told you, "Oh, that's Buddy the tiger. He's completely friendly." all those things start to go away.
>> And he never touched you. Uh, which gives credence to exactly what you were saying. But what if you're always in that state of anxiety? Think about what it does
>> physiologically to your body to your brain. So, we have a lot to do with the way that we react, the way that we control the environment that we put in.
>> Yeah.
>> Rather than let the environment control you. And that's I think the reason that God gave us these amazing brains.
>> Yeah. Now, your newest book emphasizes how you can intentionally change your brain by changing your thinking. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you've discovered about the world of neuroplasticity?
>> Yeah, it just keeps getting better. I mean, the more you dive into it, you see that God has designed our brains not to keep us in a state of fear all the time, but he did give us a baseline default state that will push you towards protection. So that means that that if you don't direct your nervous system, it is going to default to safety and protection. And sometimes that looks like fear and anxiety and stress. And so that's where we get caught in in our lives. We're we're taught to focus on our feelings. We're taught to believe everything we think and feel. We're taught to honor our truth and all these things and you know and and stuff like that. Then what happens is you you tell your brain to automate a set of baseline responses that are designed to protect you and keep you safe. But that doesn't mean that that doesn't help you live a meaningful and purposeful life. But once you start directing those thought processes instead, then you train your brain to become more hopeful and oriented towards decision-making and choice instead of fear and running away. That fight or flight thing, then the brain becomes better at default. This thing called the default mode network of our brain, which is the stuff that your brain's doing when you're not actively thinking about things. The untrained default mode network is intensely self-focused, which means that you sit around and you think about all the different ways that you got passed over, messed up, or somebody did something wrong to you in the past, or all the ways that things are not going to work out for you in the future. That's what most of us do most of the time. And the research is clear that something like 80% of the baseline thoughts and feelings that we have are either biased towards negativity or just flatly wrong. And so a lot of us that are teaching our kids to follow your feelings and follow your heart, most of those automatic feelings and thoughts are negative and false. And so if you go around following them, you don't get good results. And then you get frustrated that you're not getting good results in your life and then you take a medication or go back to therapy or do something because you're not getting good results. But what God says is if you transform, don't be, he says, don't be conformed to the pattern of this world. That's Romans 12:2. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So what's the pattern of this world is think about your feelings. Get a get other people to validate them. You know, believe your own truth and find your own way. And what God says is no, reject that because that's going to build you a brain that's going to keep you afraid and stuck. It's going to keep you anxious. It's going to keep you stressed because outside of you, the target keeps changing. If you think somebody has to change or do something for you to be happy, they're never going to be enough for you to really be happy. The target will always move. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Which is kind of a two-part promise. He's saying, I will change you into something that you weren't before. I'll make you new. Paul also says in Ephesians that I've or in 1 Corinthians 2:16, I've given you the mind of Christ. So, you're not in this alone. It's not self-reliance. It's self-help, but it's not self-reliance because God's in there with you. He says, "I'll give you a mind that will rewrite your brain in a way that helps you become more resilient and more hope-oriented in spite of the fact that you're going to go through hard things." And so, the more I study neuroplasticity, the more I see that it's a process that has a baseline operating system that's not very good for us most of the time because we keep remaking the same brain over and over if you keep thinking the same thoughts over and over. But the design is that we take that captive. That's what 2 Corinthians 10:5 says. The design is you be in charge of your brain and it will respond by creating an automatic brain that works more in your favor. And what you'll start finding is that when you're under pressure, you start having a better reaction to it than you did before. Our responses get better, our choices get better, and we become more hopeful.
>> That's fascinating. Now, would would that extend to someone who has an addiction?
>> It can. Yes, sir. Addiction is a is a hijacking of the brain's reward system, right? It's this this trick that we play on ourselves that says that we're going to get some helpful neurotransmitters if we engage in this act or the ingest this substance. But what the truth is, it's never been about the delivery of joy. It's about the delivery of the reward mechanism that's been hijacked. And so addiction turns into this seeking the release of a neurotransmitter that gets harder and harder to get with the same dose of the thing that we're after. Right? And so what we have to do then if we want to break addiction is we have to get a different set of thoughts around the reward that we really want. So what I really want is that calm sense that I get from alcohol. But when I drink alcohol, I find instead of the calm sense lasting very long, the next day I'm hung over. I don't feel good. I've spent money. I've said things I shouldn't have said. I've done things I shouldn't have done. And the reward didn't pay off like I thought it would. So, we have to interrupt the cycle and say, "No, if I want the reward of feeling better, being more calm, not being as stressed, I need to change the the way I'm getting that neurotransmitter release." So, my brain learns that the way to get real joy is by engaging the system in the correct way. So, again, it comes down to to the decision of what you're going to think about because what you think about turns into what you do. So there's this fascinating thing in Ephesians chapter 4 starting in verse 17 where Paul talks about what he calls the Gentiles, you know, the people that aren't saved, don't know God. And he says they do all these things, drunkenness and orgies and and all these all these terrible behaviors that they do. But then he says all of that stuff comes from the way they think. He says don't be like them. They're lost in the futility of their thinking. So all the behavior that gets us in trouble starts with the things we're thinking about.
>> And then he says in Ephesians 4:23, he says, "No, don't be like that. Be renewed. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." So if you don't want to end up with behaviors that give you trouble, addictions or whatever, it starts with redeeming and changing what you're thinking about all the time. By by choosing to get the reward in the right way. Andrew Huberman said, "Anything that gives you dopamine that you didn't have to work for will progressively control your life." And that's a good way to sum it up. That's what I'm trying to say.
>> Well, that that's very useful information. I suspect maybe that's what David in the Bible recognized. Uh, he was very much a follower of God.
>> Yeah.
>> A very devout Christian. And then he kind of went astray. Yeah.
>> And he said in Psalms 51, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." Restore unto me that dopamine that I can get with a different way of thinking.
>> That's right.
>> That's very good. Now, what's the name of the book and and where can people get it?
>> The new book is called The Lifechanging Art of Self-Brain Surgery, [gasps] [laughter] and it's available everywhere books are sold. Um, you can get it on my website at drleewarren.com or Amazon or anywhere you find books.
>> Okay. Now, in a culture that prioritizes comfort, how do we develop the kind of resilience needed to endure hardship? Well, you know what I think about the mental health conversations and counseling that's so popular today. Um, is it is it good or is it not good?
>> Well, so there's there's two parts to that question. The first one is how do we develop this resilience? And what I would tell you is that the the as a neurosurgeon, let me just give you a quick story. As a neurosurgeon, if I'm going to take my patient to surgery and right before we go back to the operating room, they grab their chest and say they're having chest pain, I'm I'm not qualified to figure out what's wrong with that person's heart. So, I need to call a cardiologist or a colleague who has that kind of training and expertise to come and help me manage my patient, but I'm still in charge of my patient. I'm still making the decisions and choosing what needs to happen to help my patient survive. And if you're going to be your own brain surgeon, if you're going to be the doctor and the patient in this scenario, then you have to realize that sometimes you might not be equipped to answer all the things that need to be answered to help you make the decisions you need to make. So, sometimes you might need professional help. You might might need a counselor, psychologist, a psychiatrist, a pastor, somebody to help you think about things in a different way. But every good mental health professional, Ben, will tell you that the things that have to change have to change inside of you. Like, you have to decide. You have to be in charge. And so, the answer to the resilience piece of that is this, that knowing that God has designed your nervous system to get better when it goes through hard things as long as you're willing to take your thoughts captive. Those are the two components of that.
>> You can't avoid suffering, but you can choose to use that suffering to engage that Romans 5 little engine of suffering producing endurance and character and ultimately hope. And so if you can press through hard things, if you can believe God has designed your nervous system in a way that will help you get better over time and not worse. So you're not actually fragile. You're you're what the psychologists call anti-fragile. Actually, in order to really grow and change, you need some hardship. So it's clay and and and God says in Isaiah 48:10, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering. And so if you can see yourself as going through the furnace and it's going to make you better in some way,
>> then then your hippocampus will start listening and it'll start making itself more robust. You'll become more emotionally resilient, more able to handle hardship. You'll begin to trust that you can navigate through things and get towards a hope landing at some point. And so if you need professional help to work through that stuff, it's just like when I call a cardiologist. I'm not abdicating my responsibility. I'm not giving up the care of that patient. I'm not quitting being their doctor. I'm using some help that I don't have the training and expertise to provide for my patient. And so be willing to get help if you need it, but ultimately you're responsible. Nobody can change your mind for you.
>> Exactly. Well, I suspect you've probably seen some examples in your practice where patients, faith, and positive mindset uh had a a big impact on what happened. Uh, I remember once a young man, he was a basketball player, uh, he had a glioblastoma.
>> And I I operated on him and we expected them to have the same course that everybody with a glioblastoma has. But he kept coming back year after year. He was doing fine. And [snorts] everybody was saying, "What's going on with this kid?" And then, you know, he got engaged to be married. Had very positive outlook on things. And then his fiance dumped him.
>> He got so depressed he was dead in three weeks.
>> Wow. So I really think that uh, you know, the the way that you think can affect your immune system can affect all the systems of your body and having a positive outlook makes all the difference in the world.
>> Absolutely. Now, what are some of the personal disciplines that you have for taking care of your mind and growing your relationship with God?
>> I think the most important one is is understanding that that the experience you have of life to a very large degree depends on your expectations and the things that you set your brain to filter for. So we know for example that the reticular activating system of our brains shows us a world that that basically reveals what we've told our brain to filter for and look for. So reality turns out to be mostly what we're searching for. So in order to leverage that to our benefit, I start with a morning quiet time every day and and very diligently get up at whatever time I need to get up to make sure that I have an hour to myself to read the word of God to put some good thoughts in my heart and in my mind to do some worship music and get myself in a prayerful posture knowing that that's going to help me activate my hippocampus and and activate my emotional resilience and all of that. And then I start thinking ahead to the day that I'm going to have in places where I know I might come under pressure in some different ways because your brain, this is interesting, but your brain actually doesn't know the difference between something that's really happening like your tiger example earlier or something that you're just imagining.
>> So your brain will build a response to whatever it is that you're pondering from the perspective from which you're pondering it. And so if you go ahead in your day rather than just going through your day and getting surprised by whatever happens and letting your amygdala decide what's going to happen in response, you can kind of plan your day out and think, okay, when I'm in this meeting with this person, I tend to get triggered and I get mad and I say something I shouldn't say and I get fired or I get called to HR or whatever. Or when I'm in the OR and I'm under stress, I yell at my nurse or whatever. If you think down that path of what your day is going to look like, you can tell your brain, okay, when I'm in this environment and they say this thing, I'm going to respond instead with kindness or I'm going to choose this thing or that thing. And your brain then when you're actually under that stress will run the play that you have pre sort of pre-programmed it to run more automatically. And so I spend that morning quiet time trying to prepare myself for the stresses and encounters that I'm going to have so that I end up being a positive blessing for other people instead of a reactive sort of destructive force. And for me that really helps.
>> That's exactly right. You know, I sort of pre-plan a lot of times when I know I'm going to see nasty people uh to just say to myself, "That used to be a cute little baby. I wonder what happened to them." [laughter] It gives you a different perspective all of a sudden. But uh, you could probably spend hours uh talking about it, but how has your view of God deepened and changed through Iraq and through your years as a neurosurgeon?
>> No. Yeah. So, starting in Iraq, I um I saw the worst things that people can do to each other. I mean, I saw people. We had a we had a translator who was helping us, an Iraqi guy who was helping us um talk to the prisoners and talk to people who we couldn't communicate with and and somebody found out that he was helping us and they threw a firebomb into his house um burned up his family and his little baby was horribly burned, ultimately died. We did skin grafts on her and change her bandages every day and and it was just this horrible thing that sort of hate. And I saw like like all the things that make normal people say where is God in a situation like that, right?
>> And and so I began to to ponder like what's the what's the answer to that suffering question? And what I saw is like like if you're going to give God the blame for all the hard things, then you have to be willing at least to give him credit for the good things.
>> Yes.
>> Cuz it's if if there's just meaningless suffering and you don't and you don't you're going to say, "I don't believe in God because of suffering." then where does good come from? Like if you're going to blame suffering on him, good has to come from him too. And with if he's not there, then how can there be any basis for good? And so I started thinking about it in that sort of philosophical way. And then started seeing that the only reason we were able to survive in an environment like that was because we had an operating system. We meaning the ones of us who knew God. I had an operating system that allowed me to interact with people who threw firebombs at other people and still care for them. Like it was common for us that the bomb would go off, roadside bomb would go off and the medics would bring everybody that got hurt, including the terrorist who set off the bomb, right?
>> And multiple times we had to triage like, okay, this American's got a, you know, subdural hematoma in his brain, but this Iraqi terrorist has an epidural hematoma. He's going to die faster. We got to operate on him first, even if this other guy's going to get sicker. And so we had to start practicing loving your enemies in a really clear way. And so over time, I started seeing that when I did that, it wasn't that I was having to knuckle down and force myself to care for these people. I started seeing them through through God's eyes of this is a broken person who's operating under a worldview that's false and he's hurting for it and he's hurting other people because of it. And if I love him and care for him, maybe he'll get the message that maybe Americans aren't what we thought they were, but maybe they're not so evil after all. Maybe they maybe there's something different about them. And so I came home from Iraq with this sense that God is with us and if he's not, that's when everything is falling apart. And so it really helped me sort of hold on to something that that that mattered.
>> And I imagine that probably extended over to some of the neurosurgical cases where things did not go the way you expected as well.
>> Yeah. In terms of your view of God and his
>> he obviously knows the end from the beginning and he knows what's best.
>> And uh, you know, I've I've had situations where I just couldn't understand why something happened
>> until later.
>> Yeah. When I realized that what I learned from that particular situation which was hopeless to begin with turned out to be very beneficial for somebody else.
>> Yeah.
>> By knowing what happened in that situation. So you know God gives us a brain that really learns and uh if we put things in perspective can uh, you know, take us to very special places particularly when we realize that it's him and not us that's doing things.
>> So hard so hard for people particularly in the field that we were in uh to be humble. You have any advice for them? [laughter] Well, I I've always told young surgeons and medical students. I said, "God will humble arrogant surgeons."
>> And so, I've I've noticed that over the years, like like if you don't keep a sense of humility about you, something's going to happen at some point that's going to humble you. And so, I had I had this uh u sort of operating system worldview in my career that I needed to stay humble because if I didn't, I was going to be one of those surgeons that got humbled. And so I would just advise people like like remember you didn't create this nervous system. You can't make a new neuron. Like you can work on them, but you can't fix it if you break it. So there's really no role for arrogance here. Like you're you're in a holy
>> field that you didn't make and you can't replace. So you're learning how to operate in it. But you better stay humble because this thing will will humble you in a hurry if you get get out of hand.
>> No question about it. Now, you know, amid trauma and suffering and all the things that people go through um and the grief, how do you know if you've truly healed and you're moving in the right direction or are you just sort of trying to look good for other people?
>> Oh, that's a good question. Um, I think healing is an ongoing process. Um, I don't know that, especially if you're you're a bereaved parent or you've lost a spouse or something really horrific has happened. I don't know that there's a time when you ever get to say, "I'm completely healed." It's a it's an ongoing process, right? But for me, it I think the mark of it is when you can start to see that two things can be true at the same time. That that you can be broken and sad, but you can also be hopeful and still have something that feels like happiness at the same time. You know, and that goes back to that thing in John 10:10 where Jesus said, "The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I've come that you might have life and have it abundantly." He doesn't say, "But I came to stop all that stealing and killing and destroying and instead give you this." Like he he doesn't say, "I'm replacing that stuff." He's in the midst of it. And so for us, it it happened that our first granddaughter, Scarlet, was born on the day we buried our son, Mitch.
>> And so we were we had plane tickets. We were supposed to be in Texas with our daughter having her first baby. Instead, we were in Alabama burying our son and she was not there with her brother at his funeral.
>> And and so we had this crazy day, Ben, where it was the most horrible thing, but we were getting text messages with pictures of our new granddaughter. And it was this this light and dark kind of mixed in at the same time. And so God was just showing us, hey, two things are true at the same time. Like like [clears throat] it's not all dark. There's still some light out there. Like so I think as you heal, as you press in, when you when you start to be able to see,
>> hey, there's still some good things here. It's not all dark. That that's when you start having hope, you start holding on and start moving forward again. And and I think the process of healing is just this progressive widening of your vision to see that that there's a lot of things that are still true in the world that are good.
>> Wow. Well, I gotta say, Lee, um, your contribution in this arena may be even greater than your contribution in the operating room. This is
>> fantastic and useful information for everybody. But, uh, in closing, what advice would you give to people who are out there listening and, you know, they're going through some difficult situations? What hope would you leave them with?
>> I would say that I I feel you and feel seen. I mean, Dr. Carson and I have both seen our share of tragedy. And so, feel seen and heard, but also know that I'm I'm 13 years on the back side of of the worst news any parent can ever get, almost 13 years since we lost Mitch. And I can tell you with with with no hyperbole that everything God says about what he will do in response to your pain is true. Everything the things that you don't want to hear the day of the funeral, like Romans 8:28, somebody came up to me and said, "God's going to work this for good, Lee. He's going to work it out for good."
>> And I wanted to punch him. Like that that's not the right time to say that to somebody. But I can tell you here 13 years later, like I'm having a conversation with probably the most famous neurosurgeon in the world, Dr. Carson, who's operated at the highest levels of government and done great things that I can only imagine being able to do. And we're having this conversation because God used my tragedy as a way to show me that I could that I could help other people in a way that I couldn't help them as a neurosurgeon.
>> And and a lot more people than I could ever help as a neurosurgeon because when you've lost your child, you need somebody. There there are people who don't have the ability to articulate what they're feeling and they need somebody to have written it. There there are people who don't know how to to look into the future a little bit and see that those two things are going to become true at the same time and they need somebody to have recorded this podcast about that. And so like I can see that God is working some things out for good for my good because of what I've been through. And so I'm just telling you like like hold on and know that if God says he's going to be close to the brokenhearted or God says that he will turn your suffering into hope, if God says that he can work this out for good, it's going to turn out to be true. It's just not going to feel that way all the time. And remember that most of your feelings are not facts. They're just chemical events in your brain and it's going to turn out to be true. So, the the hope I would leave you with is that I'm living proof that you can go through the hardest things that people can go through and you can still have a life that has some meaning and purpose and even happiness again. It's just going to be different than you thought it would be.
>> Amen. Well, Dr. Lee Warren, I'll tell you, I want to thank you so much for joining us today with such encouraging words, a great conversation, and I always appreciate the opportunity to connect with somebody who shares so many of my own passions. [laughter] Um, you know, to our listeners, I want to encourage you to think deeply about what you pay attention to. You know, life forces us to take a lot of steps, make decisions. The question is, will you step forward or will you step backward? Start today as Dr. Warren would say by doing self-brain surgery. And a culprit to a healthy mind is too much social media and comparison. A good place to start renewing your mind might be to spend less time with social media and more time with God's word and being grateful and focus on what you have rather than what you don't have. Focus on how you can bless others through your life. And whatever you need to do this week to give God more control of your mind, just do it. [laughter] You know, don't spend all time machinating about whether I should do it or not. Just do it. And remember what Romans 8:37 says. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Take God's hand. Walk boldly and confidently as a representative of our Lord and Savior. Help spread the important message by sharing this podcast with your friends and acquaintances and go back and listen to it yourself when you need some renewing. This is this is one of the most important podcasts we've ever done and make sure that you let people know that they can see it on YouTube. All they have to do is Common Sense with Dr. Ben Carson or wherever you get your podcast, rate us, review us, tell people about us because we want common sense to be common again. That's our goal. So until next time, be well and treasure the cornerstones, faith, liberty, community, and life. See you next time.