Inner Voices

^42:1 As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. ² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. ~ Psalm 42:1-2

As most of you know, I listen to different podcasts. Of course, I have my favorite reformed and Christian-based podcasts such as Harry Reeder’s “Fresh Bread” and “Today In Perspective,” WORLD News’ “The World and Everything In It,” and R. Scott Clarke’s “The Heidelcast,” to name only a few. However, I also listen to podcasts with different perspectives than mine that include both Christian and secular views. For example, I like TED talks and Mike Rowe’s “The Way I Heard It.”

I am telling you about my podcast listening habits because this week, I attended one of my favorite secular ones called “Hidden Brain” with Shankar Vedantam. It is a pithy podcast that explores psychological and social issues and how the brain processes matters. In other words, Vedantam and his guests explore how the brain or mind works when presented with various stimuli. And on this week’s episode, Vedantam and his guest Dr. Ethan Kross, Professor of Psychology and Management/Organizations at the University of Michigan, dove into the topic of what inner voices do to a person.[1]  

The episode began with how debilitating our “inner voice” can be. Our inner voice is that notion inside the mind that helps us reflect and introspect. It is the part of the mind that helps us remember what item we forgot in the cereal section of the grocery store, “milk, eggs, coffee — what is the last thing?…what is it?…. Oh, that’s right, Frootloops™.” The voice also tells us things like, “You are stupid. You are no good. Nobody will ever love you.” Another angle the inner voice attacks us is by saying stuff like, “Why does my spouse act that way? I guess I am a failure because that is what my parents have told me my whole life. Ms. Krampmystyle, the science teacher, must be right about me — the apple didn’t fall far from the tree…I’m just like my mother.”

Listening to Vedantam and Kross, I could not help but think about how our introspection is a part of our imago Dei – how we are made in God’s image. No other animals in His Creation can reflect. Most live by instinct, like a deer raising its head, ears, and tail at a strange sound and then darting off when frightened, or a beaver’s desire to cut down trees to build a dam. Other animals can live by sensory energy/magnetism, such as a honeybee’s skill to explore and return to the hive or a salmon’s ability to use microscopic magnetoreceptors embedded in their tissue to navigate via Earth’s magnetic field. But humans think, reflect, and talk to themselves.

Now, as mentioned above, our introspection can be harmful. Why? Our fallen nature affects us. Our depraved minds often tell us things that are not true. We lie to ourselves when we say, “I am not pretty.” First, it is the breaking of the ninth commandment. Second is the spiritual warfare of the flesh and Spirit (Gal. 5:16-18). Please do not misapply what I am saying. Although negative introspection is sinful, it is not the same as the understanding we are sinners. Recognizing, “I have sinned against the LORD,” as David did with Nathan (2 Sam. 12:13), is NOT the same thing as inferring “I will NEVER be good enough.”

What our inner voice does allow is how to work out the negativity in our hearts and minds. The ability to talk to ourselves properly ignites appropriate sanctification to be more like Christ. Note again what I am NOT implying. Our inner voice is not a means toward self-love. Our culture will tell us that is the case. We hear things like, “You have to love yourself first before you can love others.” That is balderdash. That is human-centered selfish talk. What one must do is to talk to oneself with biblical words (Phil. 4:8).

In the “Hidden Brain” episode, Kross provided tools to overcome negative introspection. He called it “psychological distancing,” which included levels of “distance self-talk” based upon talking to oneself in the first, second, and third person. I will not get into the intricacies of each level, only to mention that with each “person,” one talks to oneself at a greater distance and at reduced intensity. He also offered a colleague’s tool called “temporal distancing,” where one takes “mental time-travel” and thinks about one’s feelings in the future.

At this point, you may think what Kross suggests is weird, and from a worldly standpoint, it is. However, as I listened, it hit me that what Kross described, like most secular ideologies, is a wrong application of a biblical principle. Here, Vedantam and Kross miss the mark—the talk is self-focused on one’s feelings. The self-distancing is about how one can find oneself hope. But what does the writer of Hebrews tell us? “When inner voices condemn, Christ speaks a better word” (Heb. 12:24, c.f., 18-23 for context).

The Psalms give us beautiful, biblical examples of how to apply what Vedantam and Kross were discussing. Psalms 42, 43, and 103 are prime examples. Reason with me just a moment on how David addresses his inner voice in Psalm 42. Notice he begins with the voices of others in his head, “they say to me all day long….” (vs. 3). Then notice in verse five the self-question and answer, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation, and my God.” Throughout the Psalm, we hear David doing this over and over while ending with the same conclusion in verse eleven, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation, and my God.”

David understood that others were in his head. He then allowed those words to push him to get into his own head. But he did not get himself out of his head. What did he do? He focused on God. “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God…. Hope in God for I shall again praise Him my salvation and my God…. the Lord commands His steadfast love…. Hope in God for I shall again praise Him my salvation and my God.” These are the things David tells himself. David repents his heart from a self-focused inner voice to a God-focused inner voice. The believer does not place one’s hope in the “process” of distancing oneself farther away from oneself. No, the believer places one’s hope in Christ alone by drawing nearer to Him.

One final thought I will expand upon in next week’s post is about Vedantam and Kross’s discussion of prayer. Rightly, they stated that prayer is good when the inner voice attacks. Wrongly, they focused on the ritual of prayer because it is the ritual that is under one’s control. The ritual provokes the mind to not think about the bad stuff the inner voice is telling you. Notice the self-focus again. You are in power of the ritual. You are in control of the prayer. However, when we hear David crying out to God in Psalm 42, where does he understand the authority to be? That’s right; the control is in the Sovereign God. He says, “As I pour out my soul…. [as I]] lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise…. I remember You…a prayer to the God of my life.” Again, even in his prayer, David’s hope was not in the ritual itself. The ritual was not the object of his hope. The hope was in God and God alone.

Know that I believe haunting voices might contribute to how you understand yourself. I believe they are real, dangerously real. But I want you to know that as a child of God, you have another inner voice that says something different than the one that accuses you. It is the voice of Christ that tells you, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest in your souls” (Matt. 11:28-30).

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[1] Shankar Vedantam and Ethan Kross, “You 2.0: Befriending Your Inner Voice,” on Hidden Brain Podcast. Accessed on August 03, 2022, at 11:00 AM. https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/you-2-0-befriending-your-inner-voice/.