BLOG POST
I recently came across an interview with Dr. Angela Deulen, a professor of psychology[i] who described how the practice of doing hard things may be related to emotional regulation. Part of that seems intuitive: the more we exercise self-control in one area (doing hard things), the greater our ability will be to exercise it in other areas (emotional regulation). Can Scripture shed any light on this?
If it were that simple, Christianity would be reduced to a moralistic religion. Do hard things and that will improve your ability to control your anger, jealousy, addictions, etc. Christianity would then be not much more than a good self-improvement plan.
It is of course not that simple. The human psyche is a multi-faceted diamond, and its beauty shines differently from various angles as the grace of God shines on it. One of those aspects is indeed that which Professor Deulen explains in her interview. There is an aspect in which what she says is very true. Nowhere is this clearer, perhaps, as when St. Paul describes the need for Christians to invest in self-control by comparing this to an athlete’s need for that aptitude:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
The neuroscience behind it, as Deulen explains, is as follows: In the brain, the prefrontal cortex is associated with empathy, altruism, and wisdom, whereas the limbic system is associated with emotional reactivity, fight or flight reactions, and so on. Some of the connections between those two areas go through what is called the anterior cingulate cortex. It is a waypoint between the two, and helps to calm down the limbic system and decide which way the person will go, towards altruism and wisdom or towards fight or flight.
She explains that recent research shows that when we do hard things, it strengthens the areas around the anterior cingulate cortex. Theoretically, then, she can say that doing hard things would shift the balance of power away from the limbic system’s reactivity towards the prefrontal cortex’s wisdom and self-control.
Remember, however, that this is a multi-faceted diamond. Here is a second facet. It turns out that prayer and meditation also seem to have a positive impact on the anterior cingulate cortex as Newberg and Waldman explain in their book How God Changes Your Brain.[ii]
This insight from neuroscience also finds a correlate in another of Paul’s epistles, 2 Corinthians 3:18 “ And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
A third facet of this diamond is that this same waypoint is also involved in the creation of secure attachment. The more a child’s attachment to significant adults is secure, the more the anterior cingulate cortex will be able to put the brakes on the fear signals produced by the amygdala. In my book[iii], Anxiety Transformed I explore the importance of developing a secure attachment to God as a way of lowering the overall baseline of anxiety. It is the third “A” in my "Three A’s of Anxiety” free e-workbook available on my website.
There is a temptation, however, when we reduce spiritual formation to brain activity, to undervalue the powerful role grace plays in our formation. This would be disastrous in my opinion. I doubt we’ll ever find a neural correlate for transforming grace, but I believe it is at the center of our transformation.
Baroness Susan Greenfield, Professor of Physiology at Oxford, captures it well in a lecture in 2012 where she began by saying:
I should perhaps say from the outset, what we are not going to be able to do is work out how the water is turned into wine. How does the water of boring old brain cells and sludgy stuff translate into the wine of phenomenological subjective experience.[iv]
[i] The Soul Sense Podcast and Dr. Angela Deulen, April 1, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqBDeWCEiWg&t=1584s
[ii] Andrew Newberg and Mark R. Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain (New York: Ballantine Books, 2010), 17.
[iii] X. Nader Sahyouni, Anxiety Transformed (Skokie: Crossing Place Media, 2022) 125.
[iv] Lecture given at University of Melbourne in 2012 on the “Neuroscience of Consciounsness” as quoted by Sharon Dirckx in Am I Just My Brain? (The Good Book Company with the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, 2019) 46.