Ash Wednesday (February 22, 2023) — a Fitting Day for a Copernican Revolution of the Mind.

On the night Jesus was arrested he stepped forward to approach an angry mob of religious leaders who were accompanied by a detachment of soldiers. He subsequently gave them a Copernican Revolution designed to challenge their beliefs about him. As you may recall, it was on a previous occasion they had stated to him that as a mortal man, he could not be God despite the many miracles and signs he had performed before them. Later the night of his arrest, after confirming that it was he whom they sought, Jesus responded with “I AM he”. The Gospel writer John goes on to tell us that they all then “fell to the ground”. For them, this was a pivotal moment in their mental battle between conscious and subconscious thinking. Their encounter with the Great I Am had been so profound and shocking that their subconscious limbic brains could not have denied it. Having come to recognize his true identity the fight, flight, or freeze part of their mind took over their thinking and behaving. And, in split seconds it changed their intended response to him. ?For a brief moment, they could have recognized what their limbic brain had witnessed and reversed their beliefs about him. Was he God in the flesh or mortal man? What they experienced forms the essence of Ash Wednesday.

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It is a day to challenge your beliefs about yourself and the world. Will you allow your limbic brain to control your thinking and continue to call unhealthy things “good” while calling healthy things “bad”? Or will you take back control? ?Before seizing him, Jesus asked the crowd a poignant question, “Am I leading a rebellion?”. Yes, he was. And, continues to do so. The rebellion he leads is not against other people. It lies in the mind where he wants to challenge limbic assumptions that the brain offers which often seem logical and correct but are completely false. On a practical level, this same thing is what happened to Copernicus.

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During his day, Copernicus was the only man to recognize a heliocentric understanding of the universe that espoused a conclusion that the constellations revolved around the sun and not the earth. The prevailing belief of his day was that the universe was geocentric. Like Jesus, Copernicus was subjected to an inquisition trial and ridiculed by the religious leaders of his day. Fellow astronomer Galileo was forced to recant his scientific views. Who was found to be correct — the masses or a single man of understanding who was willing to speak out?

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In the spirit of Ash Wednesday may you take every thought captive and make each one obedient to the truths of Christ.