David Brisbin's Blog

When I’d tell people the title of my book, The Fifth Way, first question was: what are the first four? That made perfect sense, because you can’t understand the fifth way of Jesus until you understand how the first four operate in our lives.

There are several systems that try to explain human behavior in terms of personality types, unconscious ways we process experience and approach challenges in life: Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Kiersey…the four ways operate similarly.

In Jesus time, four se...

Have you noticed that people fight? Silly wabbit. Of course. Ever stopped to wonder why?

Fear. Always fear. Even if it doesn’t feel like afraid-ness, unconscious, overriding concern for personal survival drives us fearward in a zero-sum world where there’s only so much oil in the ground, where the resources absolutely necessary for survival are finite. It’s basic envy and jealousy: fear of not getting what someone else has, fear of not keeping what we already do.

Fights are made of this. No fear...

The founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, was one of the most driven men of our time. His desire for more, his dissatisfaction with the status quo, created a lifelong willingness to strike out in radically new directions. Raised in the Lutheran church, by his teens he became disillusioned, dissatisfied with Christianity-as-practiced and non-answers to his existential questions. He embraced Zen Buddhism, spending three years in India, returning with shaved head and traditional Indian garb, which translat...

Book of Genesis tells us that God gave Adam permission to name all the animals in the Garden. It’s not a casual detail. For the ancient Hebrews, authority to name something like a child or an animal, was a symbol of dominion over that something. That’s the point. Control. To this day, Jews do not speak the name of God. But the rest of us continue to name everything in sight, including God…and the theology we build around God.

God told Moses from the burning bush that his name was hayah asher hay...

As we look farther into the observable universe, dig deeper into subatomic particles, science is coming full circle back to what contemplatives and mystics have always known.

One aspect of quantum physics is especially revealing. Called superposition, it’s the mathematical concept that subatomic particles exist in a kind of cloud of probability—a continuous wave—where all states and properties are possible at the same time. But the moment an observer interacts with them, superposition collapses ...

Watching a friend of twenty years wind her way through cancer treatment and now hospice care has been a master’s course in radical, serial acceptance. Just yesterday, to abruptly realize that the cause of her new pain was now moot—that no one was looking for causes anymore, only the management of pain—was another level of reality to absorb. I saw it in her eyes, but just for a moment. Then an implied shrug, and the conversation continued.

It’s that ability to recover from the shocks of life that...

After running a 7.5-million-year program, a fictional super computer says the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is…wait for it…42. For the forty-six years since that novel was published, fans have been speculating as to the meaning of 42. Looking so hard for certainty, we miss the point. The author said publicly that the number was completely random, chosen for its insignificance. Making the point that any rational answer to the meaning of life is itself meaningless.

My...

If you want to protect and consolidate any institution, church, or state, the most effective one-two punch is to stigmatize doubt and proclaim dogma—belief accepted just because authority says so…which stigmatizes common sense. Then with enough power, you outlaw doubt and common sense altogether. Just about every religion and every political institution has done it. If we’re paying attention, it’s happening all around us. Orwell enshrined it in his novel 1984, though he was just mirroring totali...

When an event has the immense impact Charlie Kirk’s assassination is having on us collectively if not personally, we need to stop and take a look around and inside. I was shocked at the news of his assassination, but even more at the worldwide response—hadn’t realized the depth of his following. The political response was predictable, though, supporters and detractors alike making him a symbol for their respective positions. It was sad to see the real man, the complicated, imperfect human we all...

Nothing like a nice existential crisis to dig up questions of identity.

Who am I? Of course. But beyond that, who’s asking? And beyond that, what does it mean that I can even ask such a question? To be aware that I don’t know who I am, that I can conceive of myself in such a state?

The only word we have is consciousness. What is consciousness? What does it mean to be conscious? Dictionary answers: to be awake and aware of our exterior surroundings and inward psychological and spiritual states. I...