INTRO
Hello friends. Over the past few weeks, we've had the opportunity to sit down and talk with a few authors that have something worth sharing.
So, while we work on the next series for you, we're going to deviate, just a little bit, from our typical format, and pretty much just share those conversations.
This week and next, we'll talk with Dr. Ken Baugh, director of IDT Ministries and author of "Unhindered Abundance: Restoring our Souls in a Fragmented World." This will be a two-part episode because we ended up talking about God and Trauma and Cutting-edge Neuroscience and Ancient Spiritual Formation practices, and when it comes to the intersections of topics like that, you can imagine, there is a lot to talk about. So we did, and we just couldn't bring ourselves to cut any of the good stuff. So, we hope you enjoy, and beyond that, hope you are encouraged and edified, by what follows.
CONVERSATION
Wilson: All right. I am excited to have on the show today uh, my spiritual director; a person who's helped me a great deal in the last five years, Dr. Ken Baugh, who is also the author of a new book from— it’s well, I guess new, it’s, it's fresh off the presses but you've been writing and working on this, talking about this for a long time— from Nav Press, called “Unhindered Abundance,” which is a book about, that explores some of the exciting connection points between cutting edge findings in neuroscience and ancient practices in Christian formation.
Uh it's also one note that, in a world where like books don't sell—and so for publishers, they want to, if they can like guaranteed Harry Potter size sales before they'll give a contract— they gave this book a hardcover release for the first edition. Which is like, that, if you know anything about books right now, that's a big deal. So they must believe in this book, and it makes sense to me because I believe in this person.
So Ken, thanks for joining us. And I guess to really kick it off, I know that this isn't just some abstract thing that you're interested in.
It's not just a, “Hmm. I don't know. At some point I got fixated on neuroscience.” There's a, there's a story there. So what is it that really got you, um, chasing down and exploring the connections between neuroscience and Christian life?
Ken: Wow thanks, Wil. It's great being with you and Julius today to kind of share the story, and talk through some things that I hope will be helpful for your listeners. There is a huge story behind this, in fact, I would say the book is probably the culmination of 30+ years of ministry experience and 45 years of being a follower of Christ.
So a lot of what I've learned about myself over the years, what I've learned through the educational process, what I've learned in the trenches of local church ministry— of which I was a pastor for 25 years—kind of came together. And there were a couple of questions that were really driving the, uh, the thesis of the book.
And it was largely: how do you put together spiritual formation, spiritual disciplines, an understanding of salvation by grace, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the character and nature of God, sin—you know, it really, I was really pulling together a lot of theological pieces, as well as practical dynamics, because I'm a pastor, I'm not an academic—and trying to figure out how do we bring these together in a way that helps people understand what it looks like to actually grow in Christ and what my part is in that process as a believer and what God's part is.
Because I see, I see the growth process as a partnership. A limited partnership, sure. But still, a partnership. Because there are things that we are to do that are part of the growth process.
So the specific aspects of psychology and neuroscience came into play with this as I was really journeying through my own pain and trauma from childhood, and my story in regard to the rejection and abandonment that I experienced, not only as a result of my parents divorce when I was five, but through a lot of bullying that went on in my life through elementary and middle school which was severe. It really impacted my soul in a, in a devastating way that caused me to really hide a lot of who I really am.
And… one of the things that I've discovered in ministry is that, whatever weak points you have in your character, which, we all have them… But whatever weak points there are, it's like a wound that Satan kind of pushes on to derail you. And ultimately, that's what happened to me, sadly to say, that after 25 years as a pastor and as a senior pastor in a church here in Southern California for almost 11 years, I got fired.
Largely because of, as a result of burnout in my own life and my really hitting the wall both spiritually and emotionally, that the elders really felt like, “Yeah, it's time for you to go. You don't have the leadership skills to take the church to the next level.” So, it just so happened that during that particular experience, I was about halfway through writing my dissertation…
Which ironically was titled “Emotionally Healthy Discipleship.” So I kind of became a guinea pig of, you know, my own research and… for me, that story is woven throughout the entire book and that brings great integrity to the conversation because this isn't just theory for me. This is personal experience.
This is something that I am putting into practice in my own life as even today, as well as my wife, Susan, that she and I have been journeying together through a process of recovering from our own trauma—she's a survivor of sexual abuse— and so this is very personal for us. And really, I’m really hoping that it becomes a tool that helps others, not only in their own formation, but also in their own recovery.
Julius: Well, even just hearing a little bit of your story and knowing a bit about your background now, um… I mean, I I'm really looking forward to kind of hearing more about, like, your perspective on um, the connection between emotional pain, and trauma, and our spiritual growth—or even spiritual conflict—and the ways that those things can, um, hinder our, our spirituality.
So first of all, kind of working from this very holistic, um understanding of the human person—based on your story and kind of your interest in neuroscience—what has that taught you about how, like… what emotional pain and trauma have to do with spiritual conflict?
And I guess when we, when we talk about spiritual conflict here, can you kind of expand on, like, what spiritual conflict we need to kind of be aware of and like what, what exactly that means?
Ken: Yeah. That's yeah. Great questions. Julius, we’ll be here the rest of the day.
Wilson: [Laughs] We're all about the long story,
Ken: Right. And I, that's what I love about what you guys do.
Wilson: Short story long.
[Laughs]
Ken: [Sighs] Where should I start? Well, first of all, I would say, I mean, that's a… There's a lot of elements to your question. So let me just start kind of poking away at it. Okay.
Trauma in and of itself is something that I think is becoming more normalized in the psychological community. I think we're realizing that there is more trauma that people are experiencing than we ever realized before. Because… most trauma you would associate with something like an assault, a rape, uh you know, combat, where you have post-traumatic stress disorders, you know. Really extreme hardcore stuff. And you can refer to those as Type-B trauma, right?
The bad things that happen in life that we have no control over. But there's another kind of trauma called Type-A trauma, which largely is when we don't get the things that we need. As children. As infants. And when there's neglect, when there's abandonment, when there's rejection, when there is emotional unavailability by our primary caregivers, if there was abuse going on in the home— maybe there was domestic violence in the home—all of these things create trauma.
Trauma is anything that happens when we feel overwhelmed and there's not a loving presence there to help us through it. And so the younger we are when we experience trauma, the more, the more damaging it actually is because we don't have the cognitive resources to really process through it.
And so what happens is, when we, whenever we feel overwhelmed, what creates the traumas being alone in that feeling overwhelmed. And so God has created in us this ability called the— some call it a “trauma coping mechanism”— where part of us kind of splits off. I'm not saying that we become a multiple personality. But there is a part of us that holds the trauma. And another part of us that holds, let's say the good in life. So let me just give you an example of that.
If, if you're being verbally abused by your dad, there is part of you that needs your dad as a child. You need, and you long for that relationship, you long for that connection. And there's times when your dad is loving and warm and gentle and fun to be with. But then there's the side of him that just erupts in, in a rage and just terrifies you.
And so now the dad who was safe becomes the dad who is dangerous. And for a child to hold those two competing realities in place— they don't have the ability to hold that in one bucket. It has to split, split into two buckets. So one bucket holds the trauma, and the other bucket holds the “everything is fine.” And those two buckets don't intersect with each other. So the pain bucket, if you will hides itself from the “everything's all right” part of you.
So that's a simplistic way of kind of explaining some of the reality. But what happens is in the, in the pain side of it, as a child, if your father erupts at you, you don't have the ability to say, “Well, gosh, maybe dad had a bad day at the office. Maybe that's why he's going off on me.”
Instead, you internalize that as “Gosh, I must have, I must be a bad little boy. I must have done something wrong. I must…” you know. “There's something wrong with me,” or “Maybe I'm not worthy of love.” And so you get all these shame messages that start to kick in that is what creates the conflict that I have this loving dad who becomes a monster and that creates a conflict, and I don't know how to resolve that. And so it's overwhelming.
Now, as you get older and become an adult, you can work through that stuff, right. And you can deal with it. But what tends to happen is that trauma gets locked into some closet in the deep places of our heart and just stays dormant until something triggers it, and then it comes raging to the surface. It's like trying to hold a beach ball under water. You can do it for so long, but eventually you let go and it explodes to the surface.
Ken: All of us have a different capacity to deal with trauma. I was working in an inpatient hospital shortly after seminary. And one of the things that I discovered with people calling in to, uh, explore if they need a treatment or not, was that there was a certain age that if somebody called in and gave me a certain criteria of what they were experiencing, I could almost pinpoint it exactly as to the age that they were… that they were. Because we only have so much capacity to hold that ball under water.
And eventually it's going to explode to the surface and manifest itself in all kinds of different ways, whether it's depression, anxiety, addiction, phobias…uh, you know, or other things that are even more severe. Including, you know, bipolar disorders, disassociative disorders, even schizophrenia and stuff. Some of that can be not all of it, but some of it can, that can be traced back to trauma.
So, going back to the dad illustration: If I have this perspective of my dad as scary and unsafe because of those bursts of rage, I’m going to project that onto God in some form or fashion. So that's going to create a spiritual conflict.
I define a spiritual conflict as anything that distorts our perspective of the true character and nature of God. So, you can imagine then, if I am afraid that God's going to go off on me like my dad, then I'm going to be walking on eggshells in my relationship with God. I'm going to always be waiting for the other shoe to fall.
I'm not going to be able to live in the reality of what it means to be a beloved son— of, of what it means to be dearly loved. When God talks about “I’m a good shepherd,” you know, I'm, I'm going to have a disconnect with some of these metaphors in scripture that define and characterize who God is because of my experiences.
And so those are some pieces in how this plays itself out. And again, I want to… if nothing else I want to normalize for your listeners that trauma is real. And I would, I would suggest that every one of us has certain Type-A traumas where we didn't get what we needed, and it doesn't mean that your parents were bad people… they were doing the best they could.
We don't have to throw our parents or primary caregivers, whether it was a grandparent or whatever, we don't have to throw them under the bus in order to work through the pain so that we can live in freedom from that. But we do have to identify what it was that was going on and that needs to be validated.
And so that's, that's part of the process of healing, which we can get to at some point.
Julius: Wow.
Ken: So the healing process is… is not that complicated. And the most important aspect of the healing process is to be with somebody who is going to give you safe feedback. I define safe feedback in my book as a person that will respond to your trauma with empathy, compassion, grace, love, understanding— that they will validate your experience.
And, that relationship is, is so important. Type-A trauma is almost always the result of some kind of breach in relationship, and so, you can't heal relational wounds cognitively. Relational wounds can only be healed relationally. Now, that doesn't mean there's not an aspect of cognition to it—there is. But you've got to have that relationship.
And Wil, that's really what brought you and I together— what almost five years ago? So you were kind of at that intersection where you needed somebody in your life— maybe you didn't think you did— but you needed somebody in your life that could be that person and give that safe feedback, right?
Wilson: Yeah, that was… so the way Ken and I met, I was at a point where certain events, a string of—hah that's the other thing, I don't think even saying… there were definitely events… but it was more like, what about three years was uninterrupted brought me to a point where it, it, it had surfaced some of the effects of both, the Type-A and Type-B trauma, that I had experienced in childhood that just for a long time, I had, you know. I had been able to manage and hold a lot of.
But then [I] just got so worn down and burnt out to where I was at a place where I could no longer hold the beach ball, at all. And was experiencing a whole lot of anxiety, and a whole lot of sadness, and um. I had an incredible wife that was, was there with me but also just felt like, um. Like I needed some, some help.
And she had mentioned, you know, she asked my permission and I said, “Yeah, you, you have permission to kind of talk about where I am with some of our friends.” And through a mutual friend, said, “Well, I've got this, I've got this friend. He's a, he's a solid guy named Ken that will he heard some of your story. And he would like to get lunch with you.”
And my response was like “All right, we'll see.”[Laughs] Because, just where I was at that point, I thought, all right, this is one of two things: This is some hack that just thinks I just need some platitudes and it's going to give me some… right? And I'm going to know that five seconds in. And if that's what's going on, I'm gonna have an entertaining lunch. And he's buying, so what harm could there be? [Laughs]
And, and so we showed up and I, I tested you. And it was pretty obvious pretty quickly that this wasn't a hack. In fact, I remember exactly what… I mean, we'd been talking about two hours and I remember exactly what you said to me that I thought, “This guy might… this might be for real.”
And so yeah. Um. And, and being that kind of presence and not— and it wasn't just the, you know, the right answers, the, oh… You know, well.
When, when you've, when you're dealing with trauma, you know really quickly if the person across the table knows, or if they just know the right things to say. And there were, there were a few things that, that let me know that, you know. And, and there was a, a confidence and a graciousness and a life that made healing seem really really possible and attainable.
And so. And that's what Dr. Baugh has been for me for, you know, a good number of years now. So there, that’s… Now I’m going to toss it back over to you, Ken, because. After, after I got to that point where I decided— you know and this is,if you've been in this kind of spot, listener, you'll understand this too.
Once you get to that point where you, you choose, “I am going to trust,” right? They've, they've shown they're trustworthy. They've exemplified that you still have to risk it. And you still have to make the decision to actually trust the person. Once I decided I was going to trust and started talking through a lot of the anxiety and the things that I could see, the pieces of the hairball that I was able to name, and telling the stories that, you know, you only tell the people that you can really trust telling those stories— You started uh.
You know. My main preoccupation was my emotion. I feel, I feel like overwhelming anxiety and I feel sad and that, and that's about it. I can't even get mad anymore. And that was one of the things, like, that was, like, crippling. Because that was, for a long time, that was how I'd get stuff done. I’d just get mad about it.
And then I'd channel the anger into accomplishing things. But I can't even get mad anymore. I'm just, I'm just, I feel defeated. Right? Just the sadness and anxiety just felt so defeated talking to you about those emotions. You started to talk to me about my behavior and my thinking. So. That, that helped me see some of the connection there. But, but why was that?
Why, where I was, when I was asking about my emotions, why did you start with behavior and thinking?
Ken: Because emotion is always tied to some kind of thought. The two are… they work together. It's like evangelism and discipleship. You can't separate them— they work together and reinforce the other. So I knew that underneath the, the emotions that you were feeling, there was distorted thinking that was going on.
And as we kinda peeled that onion off, we, we discovered those things, and it took a lot of time to do that. Here's what's interesting: we actually know what we need in order to heal. But we don't know who we can actually do that with. That’s why trust is such a big part of the process.
Because the trusting relationship is to get that other person to the point where they will actually become aware of what the contributing issues are. And then they trust you to share those with you. And so when you're overwhelmed by something…
If there's something too heavy to lift, what do you do? You go ask somebody to help you lift it. And you can, the two of you together, the three of you can lift it together. Something that you couldn't lift on your own.
And the same is true emotionally, is that when we have such big emotions where we are actually feeling shut down, because they're so intense— we need some others to come alongside of us, who we trust to help bear those.
I think that's what Paul's talking about when he says we’re to bear one another's burdens.
So there's an aspect of containment that is really important in this relational process. And, and it's not that Amy wasn't a safe person for you. It's not that you didn't have other people in your life that you could trust. For whatever reason, the invitation, and the relationship, and the people that you trusted to even have lunch with me to begin with— which, that's not a small thing either— God just kind of put all that together in such a way that, over time, we built up the kind of relationship where…
Where now we'll when we meet together, it's very mutual. Whereas before it was less, it was less mutual. Right. And so I think that's like any relationship as it grows over time when I'm weak, you're strong. When you're weak, I'm strong. And that's how we get to help each other.
I think the other aspect of this that was important was the grieving process. Grieving is essential to emotional healing. And grieving is not something that we can do alone. If you grieve alone, you'll always grieve— John Townsend taught me that years ago. And yet it takes a lot of trust to talk to somebody about the things that you are the most sad about. Because our tendency is to step into fix-it mode. And the very first thing that has to happen in the healing process is validation. You have to be able to share your story, I have to be able to validate it, and as I'm empathizing through that validation process, it creates a connection. And, and, you were spot on, Wil. You can, you can smell fake empathy from a hundred miles away.
And if there, if it's there— you're done. And so, and a lot of the times, the way you demonstrate true empathy is, is interjecting your pain and story in appropriate ways and times into the conversation. Because that puts you both on the same ground that, “We're both wounded. We're just. I, I might be just a couple steps ahead of you, but there'll be a day when you're probably a couple of steps ahead of me.” And so it's just kind of this give and take, which becomes part of that relationship.
Wilson: Yeah, I remember I, you talked about jumping to fix it mode and I just wanted to fix it. And you kept saying “You need to mourn.” And that mourning had to be enacted. It's not you… When you’re just holding it inside, that that sadness just festers. But you've got to, you've got to behave… you've got to let it out, together, and like appropriately by yourself too.
I remember you, you drew a diagram for me once that, it was, it was a series of gears. And in this one, the emotions were down in the center and the, the thinking and behavior were up at the top. And you said, “Wil, you want to get here. Your emotions are spinning this way and you want to stop that. So you want to reach in and grab the gear here and just change the way you feel, but you can’t.”
And that’s, personality wise,I tend to most, most quickly and deeply associated with the feelings. Right? If I feel sad, then I am sad. And if I am sad, then there's something about me that's wrong, that's, that's broken that's right, right.
And you're like, and so Wil you just want to get there and fix that, change that, but you've got to start here, but what you, the gear, you can start turning is the thinking and the acting. And if you will act the things that you know are true, and if you'll consistently tell your, you know, replace the story with, with that, the tape that keeps going in your head with a truer story, that's like grind… that's like grabbing those gears and it will be a grinding, right.
You'll be acting in a way that's in conflict, cause, cause you're trying to take your thinking or your acting gear and turn it in the way in the opposite direction of where you're feeling gear is trying to take them, but that's how you eventually get to those emotions. Eventually it'll stop, and the whole mechanism will start turning the other way, because of the way you're thinking your feeling and your acting is interrelated.
Ken: Yeah. What… I'm sorry, go ahead, Julius.
Julius: Oh, no, sure. I guess I, I really appreciate I think you said earlier about how we can't heal relational wounds cognitively, but they have to be healed relationally. And I think that's been such an important thing to um, to remember in framing kind of, like, what we're talking about here. Because I think there's, there's a way to mishear that gears analogy in such a way of like,
“Oh, if I just turn the thought and the behavior gear, that I can, like… If I just think better then, like, I can change the stories that's behind the emotion, if I act into it.”
And while I think that there's a part of it, I think you really touched on a key piece that you both— that your relationship embodies this— is that, it's also the… we can't turn these gears alone.
Maybe as a part of the metaphor and that like relationality is a part of it and it's not like, just a matter of like how hard we try to change our thoughts or our emotions. So I’m… yeah. Am I, am I hearing that correctly? And that there's like that, that the thoughts—and I'm still thinking about the gears analogy— but like, if, if the thoughts and behaviors are like interlocked with the, like, with the feeling wheel, um, that relationship with other people is just as integral to the healing process and in changing those stories and, and therefore kind of like changing our affect?
Ken: Okay. So there's Yeah. So that you guys are hitting on a couple of things that are really important. We need to talk about how the different hemispheres of the brain process. So you have a left brain and a right brain process. So I want to come back to that. But I want to just give us, give your listeners an example that I think will illustrate what we're talking about.
You can know all of the Bible verses about God's love for you, and still not feel loved. You can know all the truth, you can believe it, but you still struggle to feel it. The reason is: the feeling side of that has to come through the context of relationship.
So this, this is where the, this is the intersection of the divine and the human come together. Growth is always a process that requires relationship with the divine, with God, and relationship with other people who give you safe feedback or safe people. That's how God created it. There is no “Me and God alone, we got this. So I don't need people.”
There is none of that, because God didn't create your heart to thrive in relationship with him alone. He created it to thrive in a community of relationships, that includes the Triune God, but it also includes other human beings— other people. So that's why relationships, human relationships, are a key part of this process, where the trust comes in and all the stuff that we just talked about.
The, the, the gears… The gear analogy was what emerged through a lot of my research. So, let's just back up just a second. God created us. And again, I'm going to be a little bit simplistic here, so… You know. Cut me a little bit of slack.
God created us as a material and an immaterial self. Okay? So the material self would be like to our body, the different systems in our bodies, right? Our skeletal system, our respiratory system, et cetera… And an immaterial self, which is referred to in different ways: inner being spirit, heart, or mind in scripture.
The soul, I would see differently— now there's others that would, would see it differently than I see it, which is, which is fine. I'm probably wrong. But I see the soul as kind of the bucket that holds both the material and the immaterial self. The, the word and metaphor in scripture, both Old and New Testament used primarily to describe this inner being, is the heart.
Jesus talked about the heart all the time. Solomon in Proverbs 4:23 says, “Guard your heart for, from it is the wellspring of life.” And we can go through and find lots and lots of verses, I've got, I've got a whole litany of them in my book.
The heart is central. Of the heart, there's three primary dynamics— and again, this is reflected in your study of script, my study of scripture. The first is our thoughts. The second is emotion and the third is our will or the decision place of making decisions.
Those three gears influence each other. So my feelings do affect my thinking. My will does affect my feelings and my thinking. But, my thinking also affects my emotions— my feelings— as well as my will. All of these work together to ultimately drive behavior. So essentially there is no behavior that is not… that does not begin in the heart.
Now, there is an aspect of this that is non-conscious. And so, that takes us into the right and left hemispheres of the brain. But before I get to that, let me talk about these gears for a second.
Of those three gears thought emotion and will, the only gear that we have direct control over, long-term, is our thinking. God has given us the free will to choose what we will think about.
Now. You can't control your emotions directly. You can't just say, “Be happy,” and be genuinely happy. Or “Be terribly sad and depressed,” and make yourself terribly sad and depressed.
Wilson: Well… I might be able to pull that one off.
Ken: Well, yeah, you are gifted at that Wil, I will say. [Laughs]
Our will, you can control a little bit, right? But willpower is unsustainable over the long haul— so just think of the last new year's resolution you made. How long did that last?
But our thinking. Is what we can control. Essentially, you control your emotions indirectly by what you choose to think about. And you control your will, largely indirectly, by what you choose to think about. So, that's why I believe, of those three gears in the heart, pride of place in scripture goes to our thoughts. So that's why you're going to see so many verses, for example, Romans 12:2, “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
1 Corinthians 10:5, “We take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.”
Philippians 4:8. “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, noble, right. Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely.Whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.”
Ephesians 4:21. “Be made new in the attitude of your minds.”
Colossians 3:2. “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
And I could go on and on. The point is: what we choose to think about really matters. Now, our growth in Christ is an aspect of what we choose to think about. This is where the neuroscience comes in.
Julius: Mhmm.
Ken: Neuroscience tells us that what we choose to think about over and over and over again, creates gray matter, creates neurons, that make that thought our default.
Julius: Hmm.
Ken: So… which is one reason why I think Jesus told us not to worry.
What is worry? Worry is just thinking negative thoughts or catastrophic thoughts or worst-case scenario thoughts over and over and over and over again. And when we do that, that becomes our default, and whatever we focus our attention on we move toward. So this is all just basic neuroscience.
And yet, when you look, when you hold those findings up against what the scriptures emphasize in the way of our thinking, then it's like, “Oh man, I can see the connection here.”
So, part of my diving into neuroscience is because I kept coming back to scripture and just seeing this emphasis on what we think about, and then I wanted— cause this, this is the way I'm wired— I wanted to know, “What's going on with our thinking, and why is this such a big deal?”
That's when these findings from neuroscience really became helpful. Which takes us to an interesting study in regard to spiritual disciplines— especially meditation and memorization of scripture.
You can literally rewire your brain, by memorizing scripture and meditating on scripture.
MEDITATION
The Bible is a big, intimidating book. But with Google and Bible apps, it's incredibly easy to find a verse you're looking for.
So let's say you're having a conversation that veers into a topic you'd like some help thinking through. And you vaguely remember, "There's some verse that says something about that ..."
If you choose to include Scripture in your thinking and conversation, you're not going to have any real trouble finding some verses connected to that topic in some way.
But, what you think about is one thing. How you think is another.
And simply knowing there is some information out there somewhere that I could access is not the same thing as having it in you.
What Ken, in this conversation, is beginning to help us appreciate, on the levels of Spirituality and Character and Neuroscience, is when Scripture gets in you, it's not just something you think about, it begins to shape how you think.
But memorizing Scripture can be an intimidating thing to begin, because there is simply so much of it. Where should you start?
And the truth is, are many good places ... But I realize that, while it's true, saying that doesn't really help someone who is willing but would appreciate a little guidance in setting out.
So, I'd like to introduce you to some verses that Scripture and the Christian Tradition themselves say are passages that can be incredibly helping in shaping how you think about the larger world you live in, and how you understand and use Scripture itself.
One of the best ways to get something deep inside a person is to wed it to music. So the earliest church, did just that with what they wanted young Christians to internalize as the foundational piece of the Gospel. The following two passages are actually hymns, used in worship from the earliest days of the faith, that St. Paul incorporated into some of his letters.
The first is Phil 2:5-11 ...
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Next is the Christ hymn from Col 1:15-20 ...
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers--all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
And finally, when Jesus himself was asked what was the greatest and most central part of the Law that communicated something of God's heart for humanity, Jesus pulled a prayer from Deuteronomy that the Jewish tradition had already placed at the core their prayer and interpretation:
'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
That last one is named the Shema Prayer. So we are partial to it, but not for no reason. There is little that we would consider a greater honor than to help you get that prayer into a spot where it could help shape who you are.
END.