You may have noticed I was quiet this past week over here. While I am certainly busy, my absence was intentional. After my last post, I decided to take my own convictions to heart and focus more on preparing my heart for Easter. I took the time that I would have poured into this space, preparing posts and such, and turned my attention elsewhere. On Wednesday, I took my lunch break and attended the last of the three Holy Week services during the week. And since then, my mind has been all over the place, mulling over a multitude of changes happening right now, the depth of my own journey with Christ, and the weight of expectations placed on my life by both myself and others.
As we say goodbye to one pastor, and welcome another, the juxtaposition of the two couldn’t be more jarring to me. Change is hard, especially when it’s one you’ve been dreading to occur one day. And especially when it’s one that challenges your own views on roles within the church, radical feminism, and brings you to a place where you must confront your own opinions and actions and the potential discrepancies between the two.
While methodological views are one thing, and a thing mind you that matters, seldom do I find myself in the church faced with questioning my very core beliefs. Rather, these inner debates are more to do with denominational preference. And even when those inner questions are voiced in opposition to the group in bible studies (I mean, I could go on for days on Judas, but rest assured I’ll spare you here those questions) but still I’ve never left those conversations with my faith challenged – just my knowledge.
Now enter behavior analysis. Specifically radical behaviorism. As you well know if you’ve been around a while, I am a BCBA, so this encompasses my professional life. But as with anything, the professional often bleeds over into the personal. This semester, we’ve been focusing on the canonical writings of B.F. Skinner, and progressively through the course we’ve begun to focus on radical behaviorism more in-depth as it pertains to the mind, behavior, and our view of the world. Culminating with our lecture and class discussion the night of Good Friday focused on religion, God, and the prevailing viewpoint in the field that both are not only incomprehensible, but invalid and completely disputed within a radical behaviorist worldview. For those of you wondering, here’s a brief overview in terms of definition:
Radical Behaviorism is the school of thought pioneered by B. F. Skinner that argues that behavior, rather than mental states, should be the focus of study in psychology. Skinner’s science of behavior emphasizes the importance of reinforcement and the relationships between observable stimuli and responses.
What this definition doesn’t expound on, however, is that in pretty much every course I’ve taken within behavior analysis that has touched on philosophy and theory has not only focused on this overarching view, but in more than one way has expressed that faith is pointless. That beliefs are not real. And that these mentalistic terms are merely internal surrogates I have created to make myself feel better about life rather than explaining behavior by the contingencies that clearly control them.
And every time, I find myself at this place where I must confront my own opinions and actions and the potential discrepancies between the two. You see, BCBAs who love Jesus are almost as rare as a unicorn it seems. Behavior Analysis & faith don’t tend to go hand in hand. Which is perhaps one of the reasons I am continually drawn deeper within this field. Almost 7 years ago now when this conversation first occurred, it could have shattered me, but instead this now continual question of “is there a place for behavior analysis & faith?” seems to draw me to a place where a resounding yes refills my cup.
For me, saying you have a radical behaviorist worldview, boiling everything down to simple contingencies of behavior in relation to schedules of reinforcement is much like stating a biblicism worldview. Akin to the simplistic attitude that begins with, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” prevails. Both tend to miss the deeper point. The world…people, behavior, faith…is much too complex for us to claim such black and white generalities. Even Skinner himself states that “By it’s very nature operant behavior encourages the invention of mental processes said to initiate action.” (Skinner, 1977).
For it is through Jesus Christ that Christians should interpret and interact with the rest of the world. Not based on scientific findings. Not solely through physiology, or psychology, or any other scientific field. And not in some flattened-out view of the Bible that treats every passage exactly the same. It is in the context of Christ’s incarnation, His teachings, life, death, and resurrection – that we are to view this world we occupy. For it is in Christ’s abiding presence in the Eucharist, in our love for one another and in least of these, that we process everything – from love, to behavior, and faith and even scripture itself.
