People change when the good of changing looks bigger to them than the cost of it. Being told they should is not what does it. Scripture says so. The research on the brain says the same thing. The idea explains a great deal about the ancient world, about the gospel, and about why the church's shape makes so much difference.
How the brain weighs a change
Your brain gives every option a value, and you choose whatever it values most at the time. Those values are learned. In the 1990s Wolfram Schultz found that dopamine cells fire when something turns out better than expected and dip when it turns out worse. That gap is how the brain rewrites the value of things. The evidence for this is solid. So people's sense of what's worth doing changes most when experience surprises them, and much less when an argument corners them.
Against that, losses weigh about twice as much as gains, as Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed. And fear makes it worse. Under threat, the brain's alarm system takes over, the part that weighs long-term good gets weaker, and people fall back on old habits. The evidence for this is strong.
So change needs four things: a gain big enough to outweigh the loss, enough safety that fear isn't in charge, the new way paying off better than expected, and repetition until it sticks.
The gods who took
Most people in the ancient world lived under gods who took. Molech wanted children, and Israel's law had to forbid it in plain words (Leviticus 18:21). When the king of Moab was losing a war, he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall (2 Kings 3:27). The prophets of Baal cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them (1 Kings 18:28).
A god like that is never satisfied, and the people under him live in fear, which keeps the alarm on and the thinking mind turned down. People in that state protect themselves and repeat what they've always done. They don't grow.
The God who gives
Israel's God said he wasn't like that. I will take no bullock out of thy house... If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof (Psalm 50:9, 12). Micah asked the frightened question, shall I give my firstborn for my transgression?, and heard the answer: what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:7-8). On the mountain, Abraham's one word about what would happen was God will provide himself a lamb (Genesis 22:8).
Jesus showed it in full. For God so loved the world, that he gave (John 3:16). He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32). God giveth to all life, and breath, and all things, and he isn't served by our hands as though he needed any thing (Acts 17:25). The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life (John 10:10).
A person who comes to believe God is a giver can stop bracing. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear (1 John 4:18). A settled mind can weigh a new way of life and grow. Timothy Jennings, a Christian psychiatrist, argues in The God-Shaped Brain that a harsh picture of God keeps the alarm on, and a loving one frees the mind to change. The brain-scan studies he leans on are small, so treat that part as a hint. The stress research underneath it is strong.
Hope in people, too
Besides hope in God, people need hope in other people. That kind is in short supply. In the early 1970s close to half of Americans said most people can be trusted. In recent surveys it's about a third or less.
So think about someone who expects to be used and dropped, walking into a church that works the way the New Testament describes. He finds people who know his name and show up when his car breaks down, people who tell him the truth and don't leave when he tells them his. That's better than he expected, and better than expected is exactly what rewrites the brain's sense of value.
John puts the two hopes in one verse: No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us (1 John 4:12). Nobody sees God directly, but anyone who watches a people love one another finds out what God is like.
What it answers in us
Those two hopes meet needs built into every person.
- Belonging. Researchers count it a basic need. A taking god keeps you while you're useful. The giving God setteth the solitary in families (Psalm 68:6).
- Security. People need to feel safe before they can risk anything. I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee (Hebrews 13:5).
- Being known. Shame says they'd leave if they knew you. O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me (Psalm 139:1), and there is therefore now no condemnation (Romans 8:1).
- Worth. Worth you have to earn rises and crashes. Ye are of more value than many sparrows (Matthew 10:31).
- Purpose. People with a reason to live tend to live longer. We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works (Ephesians 2:10).
- Hope. People can bear almost anything if they can see a way forward. He is the God of hope (Romans 15:13).
A taking god leaves every one of those empty and lets fear fill the space. A giving God fills them, and a loving church makes his answer something you can see and touch.
The treasure in the field
Jesus described change exactly this way. The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field (Matthew 13:44). Nobody told him to sell. He saw something worth more, and he let go of everything else for joy.
God changes people by showing them something worth more than what they're holding, and by loving them while they let go. That's also why a church that looks like a taker does so much damage. Paul warned, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you (Romans 2:24). When people see a church with its hand out and its leaders living well, they decide God must be a taker too.
When they see a church that gives, they start to hope again, in God and in people. Hope is what makes them want to change.