Perspective and Agency When Facing Trials

In last week’s reflection, I made the observation that music can have a physiological impact on us, influencing even the rate at which neurons activate based on the beat of the music. That synchronicity of an external stimulus, an auditory (and likely also tactical) sensation, with our internal operations could be understood in a largely mechanical way along the lines of the old saying, “You are what you eat.” But if “you are what your senses perceive,” then you can be reduced, at worst, to a highly sophisticated robot. If I am so shaped by my environment, do I have any agency?

More broadly, J. H. Bavinck discussed in his own day the relationship between nervous system stimuli from sense perception and the phenomenon of limiting or filtering out the vast majority of sensations that bombard us every second. This phenomenon, which he calls attentiveness, relates to the matter of what is at the center of our field of view, the focus of our attention, at any given moment. Of course, the other sensations and stimuli which are in our metaphorical field of view are not lost to us. Many of them are latently or unconsciously received and can be accessed with a shift in attentiveness. Thus, even if you aren’t actually paying attention to a sermon, it is still within your field of view, and the chances are good that you’d be able to reproduce the last few words of the sermon if you were asked to do so. So, “Attentiveness is an act.”[1]

However, does the essence of attentiveness lie in the nervous system? Is it an act in the sense of a response to stimuli? Would this imply that we are predominantly responsive or reactive? Would this mitigate the gravity of Israel’s grumbling in the wilderness? After all, they’re just being responsive to the stimuli of heat, thirst, hunger, etc. While Bavinck recognizes the mutual dependence between our somatic (bodily) and psychical existence, our attentiveness cannot be explained wholly in terms of responses to stimuli. As Bavinck says, that would be as backwards as explaining a soldier’s shooting from the perspective of the gun in his hand, or an astronomer’s observations from the perspective of his telescope. The reason is because most everyone agrees or at least wants to believe that “we are able to exercise our freedom.” Bavinck continues, “A book that very greatly excites us, we are able to close; we are able to avert our eyes from an impression which very strongly draws us to itself. Also, we feel that we are free in our attentiveness, [that we] are active over against the outside world. One only thinks of the moving word of Jesus: ‘If your eye offends you, pull it out and throw it from you.’ Therein freedom, the power of attentiveness, is preached most clearly.”[2]

This points us in the direction of exercising our agency, our freedom, to close our mouths when a half-muted grumble begins to well up inside of us on account of a trial—legitimate or otherwise. It means that we can choose to cast our cares before the throne of grace when we find ourselves in need of grace and help. It means we can choose to change our perspective on trials so that we might be inclined to see potential meaning, purpose, or maybe even profit from the trials which we will inevitably face in our Christian lives. Even in the realm of attentiveness, perspective makes a difference in how we process our perceptions, and it is rooted in the orientation of our whole life, either toward or away from God and his goodness. Bavinck writes, “Our life of perceptions is anchored in the whole of the life of our soul. When two men roam through a city, the one will have noticed all the dirt, sensuality, and decline, [while] the other the true beauty. There lies all the difference. Sin and purity begin with seeing and end with doing.”[3] 

We might augment Bavinck’s observation with the teaching of Exodus 16 that the tests which face us when we encounter trials are opportunities to not only hear but also do God’s word. In those moments when we both hear and do God’s word, we are strengthened in our faith and formed more and more into the renewed image of God in knowledge, holiness, and righteousness. When we fail the test, we are invited to humbly repent and find grace in God’s gift of his only Son. Either way, we are rightly formed once we have a good perspective on the trials we face.

[1] J. H. Bavinck, Inleiding in de Zielkunde, ed. A Kuypers, 2nd ed. (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1935), 65–66.

[2] Bavinck, Inleiding, 77.

[3] Bavinck, Inleiding, 77.