Right now, your brain is being bombarded with approximately 11 million bits of information per second — sounds, light, temperature, muscle tension, background conversations, the hum of a fan. Yet you're only aware of about 40 to 50 of those bits.
What determines which 40 bits make it through? A small but extraordinarily powerful network of neurons in your brainstem called the Reticular Activating System — the RAS.
The RAS is your brain's gatekeeper. It doesn't just filter information passively; it filters based on what you believe, what you fear, what you've experienced, and what you've been trained — or traumatized — to expect. In other words, you don't experience reality. You experience a curated version of reality shaped by your history, your wounds, and your worldview.
You don't experience reality. You experience a curated version of it — filtered through your wounds, your beliefs, and your view of God.
The implications of this for Christian ministry — and for the people sitting in our pews and crisis centers — are staggering. Because scripture has been telling us this for millennia. And now neuroscience is catching up.
The Brain's Gatekeeper: How the RAS Works
The Reticular Activating System is a network located at the base of your brainstem. Think of it as the brain's relevance detector. It is always asking, consciously or not: What matters here? What is a threat? What confirms what I already believe?
Here's the thing that should stop you in your tracks: the RAS is trained by repetition and emotion. Experiences that are highly charged — especially traumatic or shame-laden ones — essentially write code into your RAS. And then, going forward, that code runs automatically, scanning every new experience for confirmation.
This is why someone who grew up with an angry or absent father will often unconsciously perceive God as angry or absent — no matter how many times they hear "God is love." Their RAS has been programmed to filter for evidence of abandonment. That's not a spiritual problem alone. That's neurology. And it requires more than a sermon to rewire.
Biblical Figures and Their Filtered Reality
When we read scripture, we often see this RAS phenomenon playing out in stunning clarity — people whose perception of themselves, of God, and of possibility had been shaped by their wounds, their culture, and their fear. And in each case, God didn't just command a perspective change. He intervened to rewire the filter.
Elijah: When the RAS Is Wired for Threat
After the greatest spiritual victory of his life on Mount Carmel, Elijah fled into the wilderness and collapsed under a broom tree, declaring, "I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too." (1 Kings 19:10)
His RAS had been hijacked by fear and exhaustion. His brain was scanning for threat — and finding it everywhere. He couldn't perceive God's provision. He couldn't register that he was not alone. His filter was broken.
"An angel touched him and said, 'Get up and eat.' He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water." — 1 Kings 19:5-6
Notice what God didn't do first: He didn't correct Elijah's theology. He didn't rebuke his fear. He addressed the biological reality — rest, food, water — before speaking into his spirit. God understands the body-brain-spirit connection better than any neuroscientist. He reset Elijah's RAS through physical care before calling him back into mission.
Twice the angel said, "The journey is too much for you." God met him in his depletion before He redirected his perception.
Gideon: An RAS Programmed for Smallness
When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and said, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior," Gideon's response reveals his filter perfectly: "If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?" (Judges 6:12-13)
Gideon's RAS had been shaped by years of Midianite oppression. He was hiding in a winepress, threshing wheat in secret. His brain had been trained to scan for danger, for failure, for God's absence. When God spoke identity over him — mighty warrior — Gideon literally could not receive it. His filter rejected it.
""Pardon me, my lord," Gideon replied, "but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family."" — Judges 6:15
God's response is instructive: He didn't argue with Gideon's self-assessment. He didn't pile on Bible verses. He gave Gideon progressive, concrete experiences that began to retrain his filter — a sign with the fleece, a divine encounter at night, permission to go eavesdrop on an enemy soldier's dream. God was methodically rewiring Gideon's RAS through repeated evidence of divine presence and capability.
This is what we do in trauma-informed ministry. We don't argue with a person's broken perception. We walk alongside them through experiences that slowly, patiently retrain what their brain expects to find.
The Disciples on the Road to Emmaus: Grief as a Filter
Two of Jesus' followers were walking to Emmaus after the crucifixion, their conversation full of grief and dashed hope. Jesus himself drew near and walked with them — and they could not recognize him. Their filter was set to loss.
"They were kept from recognizing him." — Luke 24:16
Their RAS, saturated with grief, was quite literally screening out the risen Christ walking beside them. They had the data — the empty tomb, the angels, the women's testimony — but their brain could not process it through the dominant emotional frequency of despair.
It was only when Jesus broke bread with them — a familiar, embodied, sensory act — that something shifted. "Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him." (Luke 24:31)
The RAS is often unlocked not by argument, but by embodied experience. The breaking of bread reset their perception. This has profound implications for how we design worship, prayer, and pastoral care.
Paul: When God Reboots the System
No biblical account illustrates the dramatic reprogramming of the RAS more vividly than the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus. Saul's entire perceptual system had been calibrated by religious zeal — his RAS was scanning for heresy, for threat to the law, for people to persecute.
"As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?'" — Acts 9:3-4
God didn't reason with Saul's theology. He interrupted it with a blinding light and a direct encounter. For three days Saul could not see, could not eat, could not drink. He was, in neurological terms, in a state of profound disorientation — his previous perceptual framework completely dismantled.
What emerged was a man with a fundamentally restructured filter. Paul's letters are filled with the language of perception and renewal: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2). He knew from personal, embodied experience that transformation requires more than information. It requires a rewiring.
"Renewing Your Mind" Is Not a Metaphor
Paul's command in Romans 12:2 has often been spiritualized into a vague call to "think better thoughts." But in light of what we now know about the RAS and neuroplasticity, this verse is a precise neuroscientific prescription.
"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will." — Romans 12:2
The Greek word for "transformed" here is metamorphoo — the same root as metamorphosis. It describes a structural change, not a surface-level adjustment. And the word for "renewing" — anakainosis — implies a making-new-again, a renovation of something that has been damaged or distorted.
This is exactly what happens when the RAS is reprogrammed. The filter is renovated. The brain begins to detect what it previously could not: grace, presence, safety, hope. This isn't wishful thinking — it's how God designed the brain to work.
Paul wasn't being poetic. He was being biological. The renewed mind is a rewired brain.
2 Corinthians 10:5 adds another layer: "We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." This is an active, intentional practice of intercepting and redirecting the brain's default scanning patterns. It's the ancient prescription for what we now call cognitive restructuring — replacing threat-based neural pathways with ones tuned to truth.
What This Means for Your Ministry and Healing
If you're a pastor, counselor, chaplain, or first responder, this matters deeply for how you help people:
1. People are not being difficult when they can't receive good news. Their filter has been calibrated by pain. Patience and repeated, safe, embodied experiences are more powerful than arguments.
2. Gratitude practices are not soft self-help. They are RAS recalibration exercises. Regular gratitude trains the brain's gatekeeper to scan for evidence of God's goodness — and to find it.
3. Worship, communion, prayer, and scripture — practiced consistently — are the primary spiritual tools God designed to renovate the filter over time.
4. Trauma survivors need a different approach. A hijacked RAS cannot be argued into peace. It needs patient, consistent, safe experience to be retrained. This is trauma-informed ministry in its truest form.
The people in your care are not broken. They are filtered. And God — who designed the brain, who met Elijah with bread and water, who walked beside the grieving disciples, who blinded Saul to rebuild his sight — knows exactly how to reset the system.
The journey to being No Longer Stuck begins when the filter begins to change.
And God has been in the business of renewing minds far longer than neuroscience has had words for it.
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Tony Portell is a pastor, FD Chaplain, FEMA & Red Cross crisis responder, and author of No Longer Stuck. He helps pastors, first responders, and trauma survivors find freedom through the integration of neuroscience and biblical wisdom.
nolongerstuck.org | tonyportell.com
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