Memorization for Christian Enlightenment

My goal was to “hide His word in my heart” but I think I’m “being transformed by a [rewiring] of my mind.” Have you experienced the same thing? It came as a surprise to me when I realized what was happening. I want to describe the process for you. Unfortunately, it takes many words to unfold something so circuitous as the workings of the mind, but I think you’ll find it worthwhile.

Let me start by summarizing, then I’ll give you a concrete example. First, I believe that memorizing Scripture mimics the best of what people try to achieve in meditation. It occupies the conscious mind so that more delicate impressions or intuitive responses can be noted, and biases can be overcome. It prepares some deep recess of your mind for what some would call enlightenment. Second, memorizing allows the mind to grasp things with a complexity of relationship that more closely resembles the complex neural networks of the mind. Point-by-point outlines of theological argument are necessary for scrutinizing small segments of our belief, but they do not capture the richness of a growing relationship with God. Real life is cyclical, redundant, and complex. And third, the very repetition of memorizing a challenging passage provides “attention density” the condition that brain researchers say is necessary for grasping new concepts and installing new habits.

As you strive to memorize words in their proper order, your desire for a quick outline is suspended, and your conscious mind can gently hold several half-formed thoughts at the same time—not forcing them to support your earlier biases—since it is focused on the task of memorizing rather than proving a point. Those half-formed thoughts (images, really), then, begin to knit together in a way more natural to the text. Here’s a real-life example of how it works.

I am memorizing Romans 8 which looked like a bad choice after I got into it. The chapter has several passages I love, so I thought memorizing the whole thing, keeping the whole context intact, would be a great idea. But then I hit some of Paul’s not-so-easy writing: “And if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”

“C’mon, Paul! Couldn’t you throw any more words and twists and turns into one sentence? This sentence should have been simple. Didn’t you mean to say, ‘If God’s Spirit lives in you, He will surely raise you from the dead, just as He did Jesus’?” This is where I would have left it if I were “studying” this passage. If I were struggling to understand it, I would have paraphrased it so that it made sense, and I would have moved on, collecting more building blocks for some theological idea.

However, memorizing works very differently. It partly anesthetizes your prefrontal cortex by giving you something else to focus on. Your conscious mind is always wanting to grasp and to understand. Sometimes it jumps too quickly to conclusions. Then it scurries on leaving many good things undetected. But in memorizing, the conscious mind focuses on the strategies of memorization, not on the quest for new theology. So for a time, new understandings can gently make their way into your mind like timid deer sniffing the wind as they enter a clearing.

One of the strategies of memorizing is backing up, rereading many times, and trying to see the passage more graphically. So I tried to see the phrases of Romans 8:11 in picture form. I imagined God holding out a scepter or something and Jesus rising from the dead. That’s the first phrase. But it needs to be modified. Take the Spirit of God and lodge it in a silhouette of myself. Now the image features a vaporous Spirit still raising Jesus, but this time it’s in me. Next I see the electric resurrection rays wafting out to all parts of my body, giving life. And yup, He’s still living in me.

This helped me remember the text in order, but more subtle things happened, as well. There are finer understandings hidden in the different phrases. “The Spirit of the one who raised Jesus…” compared to “the one who raised Christ…” As I am focusing on memorizing, my restless conscious mind is biting off little differences like this to chew on. After a little digestion I gain this: “The Spirit of God, and God are interchangeable. Paul does it in the same sentence. In fact, Paul doesn’t seem to care if it’s the spirit or God or Christ or Jesus. He uses them all interchangeably in some passages (like Romans 8:9).

So I don’t have to imagine some wispy Spirit; it is God Himself enlivening me, but He does this through His Spirit which means through the strong identification He has with me and I with Him. It’s the spiritual connection we share. (Too long a story to explain here.) So as I identify deeply with Him (“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness…”) the resulting and natural benefit in me is a renewal of life-giving attitudes and ways of being.

I toy with that thought in the back of my mind, not committing to it, because my focus is on memorizing, not on refining my theology. Yet there it is hanging delicately in the back of my mind as a translucent image. Here’s the very God soaking through my life with resurrection power demonstrated in history in the life of Jesus. And He is able to do that because I deeply adore Him and yearn to know Him better. That image just hangs delicately in the background like a sheet of tissue paper hanging on a clothesline in a gentle breeze.

As I read and repeat other passages in Romans 8 (like verse 10), they, unbidden, have an effect on this delicate image. They either disintegrate it, or they reinforce it. I read “But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin…” Is that a helpful image? It pops into my mind that Christ moves in and “Zap!” He kills your body. Okay, is this what people mean about “dying to self”? It’s another delicate image. How many of these can I hang on the line at one time without confirming or rejecting them? Apparently quite a few. Remember in memorizing we are not straining to collect and compare ideas, we are only struggling to commit words to memory.

Well, this image doesn’t even survive to the end of the sentence, because the sentence continues, “yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Ah ha! Here’s an important bonus lesson (and memorizing leads to many bonuses.) Paul sometimes leaves out clarifying transitions, or his translators do. The thought is “But if Christ lives in you, [though] your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” So the delicate image dissolves and a new tentative one forms: Christ enters and your spirit becomes more alive as it practices righteousness, even though life (eternal) has not yet come to your body which is still suffering the deadening consequences of your (or your ancestors’) past sins. This seems to reinforce the first delicate image, but doesn’t this “alive because of righteousness” somehow bring in personal works as part of your salvation? The text doesn’t say “because of His righteousness,” or “because of your righteousness” so whose righteousness is it? Whose work is this?

With your judging mind still patient because of its focus on memorizing, you don’t wrestle with that question, you just keep committing the words to memory. And soon you come upon Romans 8:13, “For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if you live according to the Spirit, you will live.” Wait! That is not what it says. That’s a false parallel your mind created to make memorizing easier. As you struggle to be true to each word, you see that it really says, “… but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” Now the meaning of “righteousness” becomes clearer. Who gets the credit is not even the point. The fact is that you have to put misdeeds to death. 

Ouch! I am pretty defensive of those things I do that others would criticize. They’re “me being me.” Well, don’t worry about others here; God is the standard. And I don’t put to death any things judged by others (or even by myself) to be misdeeds, rather I cease doing those things pointed out by the Spirit. I have noticed in my life that when the Spirit makes something clear to me, the knowledge seems to come with power to act on it. Paul continues the verse by strengthening the delicate image that is still hanging. He immediately follows in Romans 8:14 with, “… because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”

Time for a commercial break: Do you see what’s happening? In memorizing you are freed from the word order of the passage. Since you keep repeating various segments and since multiple images are hanging lightly in the back of your mind, it’s as though all thoughts and all sequences are okay at one time. It’s like letting all the puzzle pieces float on the same surface, free to move into place as the “big picture” becomes clearer. And when a pattern does emerge, then the various images (possible pieces of the puzzle) suddenly fly together and you are blown away with the new logic of the piece. It seems to be an organic, or non-linear logic that “just fits.” All the various parts assemble into a “knowing” that may be hard to outline or explain to a friend. Yet you feel it in your bones. It makes deep, consistent sense, and in time you can outline it. This “feeling the truth of it deep in your bones” is likely what some people call “enlightenment.” It is deep and rich. You can revisit it over and over. You can examine it with the power tools of logic, and it hangs together. It is durable.

Conclusion: None of the insights I am gaining in Romans 8 may seem that important to you. Your area of needed growth may lie in a different direction. The Spirit of God knows your spiritual fingerprint and will highlight the Scriptures most restorative for you. But I hope you get the point: Memorizing helps your rational mind “chill out” long enough for the more picture-oriented, intuitive part of your mind to grasp a truer whole. Your biases are suspended as the Holy Spirit impresses you with a truer grasp of what He meant when He inspired the Bible writer. Your logical mind can go back later and begin the pick-and-shovel work of the new whole image, piece by piece. You can spend time working the rich impression into logic-bound language, but you’ll never totally convey the complexity and depth of the picture you now see. I believe this is how the Spirit leads our thinking. The process of memorizing helps the rational mind and the “affective self” cooperate rather than compete. It allows His Spirit and your spirit to breathe in harmony.