Erasing

I’m nearing the end of my tenure here upon the earth.  At the time of the writing of this feature, I am 61 years of age.  I think of life as a gas tank, with fuel compared to time.  The vehicle is the body.  The spirit that one yields to dictates the destination.  On average, we are born into the world with a full tank of time.  The average life span, using the American male as an example, is 74 years.  I personally have used up 82% of my time—this life’s fuel.  My fuel gauge sits between 1/8 and 1/4 of a tank.  These thoughts drive home the Gospel directive to be “Redeeming the time,...” (Ephesians 5:16).  Take a moment and do your own math.  Now, when you consider the stark reality that Jesus Christ could return at any moment to catch up the church (commonly known as the rapture), we should be preparing to meet our God.

My 39^th year in Christ will be fulfilled on November 8^th, 2009.  How glorious and exciting it has been to be called a son of the living God and how unspeakably beautiful it will be to be one of His children throughout all eternity!  How marvelous, how magnificent it is to be born-again—born a second time.  I once walked upon the earth as other men, filled with the foolishness of carnal living, like a brute beast satisfying that which was me and mine, until that day when God had mercy on my sorry soul.  That was the best day of my life, and every day since then, it’s only gotten better.  How can this be explained to the uninitiated?  It is only through the miracle of Christ Jesus.

Dear visitor, have you found this newness of life?  Have you been set free from the bondage of sin?  Are you born-again?  Would you like to have all your sin and shame erased from your record and your mind, as though it never occurred?  GodSaidManSaid has good news for you.  Today is the day of salvation.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT. 

GOD SAID, II Corinthians 5:17-19:

17  Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

18  And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;

19  To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

GOD SAID, Romans 5:1:

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

GOD SAID, Hebrews 8:12:

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

MAN SAID: God is not relevant.  Science will lead us.

Now THE RECORD.  Science and invention attempt to duplicate, and in many cases refute, God’s handiwork.  A very short list for your consideration could begin with the theory of the Big Bang, when the universe came into being from virtually nothing, versus the God of the Bible speaking all into existence out of that which is invisible.  Consider that man’s attempt to mimic the bird of flight produced air and even space travel, or jet propulsion and the jet-propelled creatures of the sea.  Man’s attempt to copy the power of the brain has spawned the computer, and adding the functionality of the body, robotics.  The errant theory of evolution attempts to supplant the creator Himself, but of course, to no avail.  Ecclesiastes 1:9-10:

9  The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

10  Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.     

Trying to understand memory, and then of course consciousness, is more than a daunting task, and outside of God is past finding out.  But, science is probing what it thinks is its boundaries.

New research highlighted in the July/August 2009 issue of Discover magazine addresses this complex issue.  The title of the feature is “Out of the Past.” 

How dazzling are the Scriptures.  Imagine: Thousands of years before scientific discovery began to understand some of the most complex mysteries of life, God’s Word declared it very succinctly.  How could it be?  How could mere have known the staggering secrets of life before life’s sciences had proclaimed it?  Welcome to GodSaidManSaid.  We’re so glad you’ve come.  May the face of the Lord shine upon you with light and truth.  This is feature #441 that proves the inerrant veracity of the holy Word of God.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, it grows by one. 

Men clamor for proof that God is but their blind eyes refuse to see.

The following paragraphs are from the Discover feature referred to above:

Memory formation requires an elaborate chemical choreography of more than a hundred proteins, but the upshot is that sensory information, coded as electrical pulses, zips through neural networks of the brain.  The impulses cause glutamate (one of the brain’s main neurotransmitters) to pop out of one nerve cell and travel across the synapse to activate the next by binding to its receptors, chemically active signaling stations on the cell surface.  Ultimately the electrical and chemical signals reach the centers of memory, the almond-size amygdala and the banana-shaped hippocampus, adjacent structures buried on either side of the brain.

Neuroscientists believe that memory forms when neurons in these key brain structures are simultaneously activated by glutamate and an electrical pulse, a result of everyday sensory experience.

Todd Sacktor, a professor of physiology, pharmacology, and neurology at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, has found a blunter but more powerful technique that can eradicate whole categories of memory.

When Sacktor deactivated PKMzeta with a compound called zeta-inhibitory peptide (ZIP), he got a spectacular response: total amnesia for one type of memory.  Rats that had learned a day or a month before to avoid part of a platform that was rigged with electric shock forgot everything they knew about the location generating the jolt.  “You inhibit the PKMzeta and those glutamate receptors float away very, very fast,” he says.  “As a result, the memory is lost—very, very fast.”

Certain types of memory are encoded in different brain areas, and depending on where Sacktor injects the inhibitor in his animals, he can zap away different categories of memory.  In the hippocampus, he erases memory for spatial locations like the platform; in the amygdala, fear memories; in the insular cortex, memories of nauseating taste.  Very rarely, Sacktor says, neurosurgeons remove nerve clusters to help disturbed psychiatric patients who do not respond to any other treatment.  His research may eventually provide a way to erase memory without causing damage.

ZIP is nowhere near ready for human use.  First, the compound would have to be made activity-dependent in order to target specific memories.  You would also have to find a way to get it to the right spot in the brain without using a needle.  People are clamoring to be test subjects anyway.  When Sacktor’s study first came out in 2006, people, especially rape survivors, tracked him down, imploring him to eradicate their painful memories.  “They were suffering,” he says.  “They couldn’t work or have relationships.  Some of them wanted everything erased.”  They didn’t care that it would also vaporize all they had ever known.

None of these researchers are looking to create brain-zapped, amoral zombies—or even amnesiacs.  They are just trying to take control of the messy, fragile biological process of remembering and rewriting and give it a nudge in the right direction.  [End of quote]

Two sentences from the article reads, “For a hundred years, people thought memory was wired into the brain.  Instead, we find it can be rewired.”  GodSaidManSaid has addressed the concept of brain-rewiring before.  This is a very real Biblical/biological process known as the renewing of the mind.  Romans 12:2:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Yes, the brain can be rewired.

Science is now attempting to erase select memories so that an individual would no longer have recollection, and consequently the negative awareness or ownership, of that memory caused by a particular event.  If science succeeds, personal memories such as brutal acts, accidents, or the guilt and shame one experiences can one day be erased as though they never happened.  It reminds one of the old bulk eraser the radio industry once used to erase audio from recording tapes in order to use them again.  Science might want to consider an electronic solution.

As you should suspect from the tenor of this article, God has a superior solution.  When an individual repents of his sins and surrenders his life to Jesus Christ, he becomes born-again, and very literally begins a brand-new, eternal life.  He is given a new name.  He has a new Father, a new reason for living, etc.  II Corinthians 5:17:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

The born-again process progresses day by day.  Ephesians 4:22-24:

22  That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

23  And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

24  And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

God erases the guilt, the shame, and the ill effects of bad memories, but not the understanding that the past deed or situation was hurtful and should not be repeated.  The helpful, educational information is retained, but not the ill effects.  The beautiful Bible principle of justification applies here.  Romans 5:1:

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

Romans 3:23-26:

23  For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

24  Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

25  Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

26  To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

The definition of justify in this context is to release from guilt or sin.  A born-again is a new person and the ill effects are erased.

Not only is a believer’s memory erased but the crucial memory of God in like fashion is erased.  Jeremiah 31:34:

And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Hebrews 8:12:

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

Hebrews 10:16-17:

16  This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;

17  And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

Thousands of years before man and his science began to understand the mystery, God declares it in His Word.  Science wants to erase bad memories, but God has a better way.

GOD SAID, II Corinthians 5:17-19:

17  Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

18  And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;

19  To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

GOD SAID, Romans 5:1:

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

GOD SAID, Hebrews 8:12:

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

MAN SAID: God is not relevant.  Science will lead us.

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

McGowan, K., “Out of the Past,” Discover magazine, July/August 2009, pp30-37

 

• Go Further With Christ
• Email To a Friend
• Comments or Questions?