We live in a strange bewildering time in which those Christians who are most zealous to know and follow the Word of God tend to be those who create the most toxic church cultures. This should not be!

This may be because the mindset of those who create toxic churches is driven by a lack of right hemisphere brain activity and a lack of cross hemispheric integration.

This creates a neurological setup for the person in which truths can only comprehended when they are ripped from their contextual surroundings and made into universal black and white dichotomies.

Truths which are contextually dependent, dynamic, nuanced, and adaptive tend to go unperceived by such individuals. This has a HUGE effect on how they understand and apply Biblical texts. And it happens completely subconsciously for them. They arent aware they are doing it.

Such individuals are in the strange situation of being tremendously driven to uncover Biblical truth, while at the same time being neurologically predusposed to interpreting scripture in a manner that masks the very truth they are so driven to uncover.

Because the neurological inhibitions which make preachers erroniously biased and rigid in their Biblical interpretations are also those which hinder empathy, compassion, and altruism, Christian leaders who are the most abusive are often SEEM the most “Biblical”

This doesn’t mean fidelity to scripture motivates abuse. On the contrary, the Biblical exegesis of such preachers is often very poor, but masquerades as Biblically sound, expository, verse by verse preaching.

Simply put: many preachers well known for being faithful to the Biblical text are engaging in subtly flawed exegesis in support of a toxic agenda they don’t even know they have.

Here is an example. https://twitter.com/howtobuildatent/status/1192839192092512257?s=21 https://twitter.com/howtobuildatent/status/1192839192092512257

This is part of the mechanism in which abuse breeds abuse. Right brain hemisphere inhibition is a frequent coping mechanism experienced by children who are emotionally neglected. Those who preach this way likely did not have the most loving and emotionally available parents.