Last Friday night the illusionist Derren Brown finished the second of his latest two-part specials with a show called Fear and Faith. The week before he had been exploring the benefits of a new military-tested drug called: Rumyodin; which he claimed had been develop a noticeable reduction in levels of fear and anxiety.
A group of four applicants for the show were told they were to be the first members of the public to be tested on. Each member of the test group all suffered from forms of anxiety, ranging from a fear of heights (and bridges in particular), to fear of being out in public.
Early on in the show Derren let us into the secret that Rumyodin (an anagram of: 'your mind') was nothing more than a sugar tablet; and that this was an experiment into something called: The Placebo Effect, namely the power of 'your mind' to fool you into thinking that something is having a positive effect on you. In reality it is only the belief you have invested in the Placebo that is causing the changes you are experiencing: you will attribute signs of improvement to that Placebo, interpreting it as successful and thus multiplying its effect.
In the case of Derren's dummy drug Rumyodin; it worked, and seemingly to quite a startling effect, with the show ending at the concert of an actress who was previously terrified of singing in public.
The second episode saw Derren explore what he believes to the world's biggest example of the Placebo Effect: God. Could faith really work in the same way that a Placebo works? Do believers convince themselves of things that aren't real? Do Christians make connections between events that aren't there to fool themselves about God's activity and designs on their lives? Is it really just all in your mind?
There is no denying that Placebos exist, and can have a powerful and positive effect on people. But does faith in the Supernatural, the believing in Jesus, function in the same way?
Derren claimed he was going to explore this further, by attempting to give an unwitting volunteer, a self-professed atheist called Natalie, a 'genuine conversion experience' by purely psychological manipulation. She worked in a scientific field as a stem-cell specialist and said herself that she could not imagine ever becoming a believer. The show followed Derren's 'experiments' in the power of belief, and Natalie's journey.
Here are some of my observations as I watched the show:
1. The Power of personality
Fear and Faith was dressed up in the guise of a scientific look at the nature of belief; when in fact in was made for entertainment purposes. The so-called "experiments" were nothing of the sort, any genuine scientist would be aware of things like The Experimenter's bias (cue a quick Wiki-search) where subjects unconsciously desire to produce the answers, effects or results of the Experimenter.
Put simply, none of us are objective; we have an inbuilt tendency to want to please or impress particularly those seen in authority (such as those conducting scientific research, or popular TV personalities).
With the pressure of being on TV, and with Derren so well known for psychological illusion and manipulation by its applicants and audience, the potential for Experimenter's bias must surely be much higher even than in normal settings. The truth is that Derren Brown has himself become a type of Placebo - people have invested a lot of belief in the techniques he claims to have. And to quote a friendly neighbourhood superhero: with great 'power' (albeit placebo power) should come great responsibility...
2. Placebos don't disprove the effects of the genuine
Derren's attempts to give Natalie a 'genuine conversion experience' (spoiler alert!) did appear to have worked, depending on how you define conversion - which we'll come onto next. She was left alone in a large church following a fifteen minute conversation with Derren, and as she stood up and looked at the stained glass window she burst into tears, held her hands in a praying position and repeatedly uttered: 'I'm sorry...!', 'Thank you!', and 'Why couldn't I have had this all my life?'
But the ability to produce similar results through different means doesn't prove or disprove anything. In the case of Rumyodin Derren cannot claim that because his fake formula produced those effects - no other drug can, has or will ever exist that will have the ability to do that legitimately.
The same is true of faith - the ability to deliberately mislead and manipulate groups of followers for personal glory and gain (in the cases of cults for example), does not means that all religious leaders are doing that, consciously or not. Nor can false religion disprove the existence of God, any more than a fake Van Gogh painting sold at auction could disprove that the original masterpiece exists!
3. The definition of a 'Genuine Conversion Experience'?
Natalie's experience on the show was clearly a moving one. Before being fully debriefed (in an interview filmed in front of a studio audience), she described it as, 'all the love in the world had been thrown at me - always available, but pushed away.' She also said it was as though her 'spectrum of experience had been broadened - the high end of emotion extended... the technical way for defining that can only be: supernatural.'
I thought she looked utterly deflated and devastated as Derren revealed that it was he that been playing God with her mind and her emotions, and encouraged her not to attach anything religious to what he hoped she would take away as a powerful and positive emotional experience.
As powerful and profound as our feelings are, faith is not purely an emotional reaction. We thank God for our feelings, and that we can experience His love and power; but we certainly don't depend on experience alone.
Blatantly missing from Natalie's conversion was any understanding of God's nature, the cross, the forgiveness of sin, and our need to respond with everything within us to the call of Jesus to follow Him. She may have been duped into going from a standpoint of 'There probably is no God' to 'There probably is one now', but that vital and important step is only the first baby step into a lifetime of walking by faith and growing in maturity of belief.
4. Reasons for Belief
Having left Natalie dazed and confused by what she was now having to process, one of Derren's closing comments was that if believers were honest, they believe in God because it makes them happy. This sweeping generalisation is overly-simplistic at best and misleading at worst; something that the entire episode was particularly guilty of, having earlier reduced the huge and important area of the psychology of religion into a minute-long summary, complete with a cartoon designed for those who couldn't follow the jargon.
The truth is that, as a pastor, I sometimes spend time with people whose faith is not making them happy at that point in their lives; some are living with unanswered prayers in their lives, some are applying the teachings of Jesus to their situations and making some tough choices about what that means for them, others are considering callings that will lead them to sacrifice things they hold to be precious. From my experience, faith doesn't just survive these times - it thrives, as God proves Himself to be "an ever-present help" right in the midst of heartache, pain and fear.
Knowing Jesus brings the deepest sense of contentment and genuine rest for our souls, but to really know Jesus means exploring His claims, examining the cross and the resurrection, and ultimately making a decision about who He is by what you do with the rest of your life, and where you invest the whole of your trust. To claim it's because it gives people a nice, warm fuzzy feeling inside is simply inaccurate, and highly dismissive of years of scholarship and research.
5. The Need for Discernment
In the final analysis, we all know people can be deceived, and that none of us is immune to manipulation. All we can do as believers is recognise the loopholes in our understanding, to look into the blind-spots in our faith, and to prayerfully examine them before God and with others. This kind of honest questioning can lead to a deeper place of commitment, to a place where our faith is not borrowed from those who lead us to faith or who teach us, but truly ours because we have fought to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling..."
To borrow Derren's medical analogy once more; trained medical professionals will be aware of the dangers of The Placebo Effect. A Doctor who takes time to discern between a placebo and genuine improvement would not be called a liberal, callous or misleading practitioner, but a good, robust and caring one. The desire of every true child of God is for genuine encounter with the Real, Resurrected and Reigning Lord Jesus - both for themselves and for others.
In John's Gospel, facing an aggressive crowd Jesus says: "Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does." (John 10:37); don't believe the media-hype or hard-nosed critic, don't focus on the frothy excitement or the knee-jerk rejection, don't even believe me "unless I do the works of the Father..." In others words, come a take look and discern for yourselves and see if I demonstrate what only the Son of God would be capable of doing.
And what we do see in Jesus is an entirely unique message. The history of religion is like a broken record; There is a God, but to earn their favour or avoid their anger, they must be appeased or impressed.
Jesus did not come to start another religion but invite us to a relationship that is not based on what we can do, but based solely on what He has done for us at the cross. The unique claim of the New Testament, is that when we couldn't find God, He Himself came down to us - when we couldn't save ourselves, He Himself became the very sacrifice to pay the price! These ideas were so new in the history of human thought; so radical and so scandalous they began to turn the world upside down, and continue to do so all over the world.
Is our faith a placebo? The truth is simply this that left to our own devices, humanity could not have come up a God as good and as gracious as one we see in Jesus. Derren had to admit on a few occasions that we are all 'born with a hardwired inbuilt tendency to believe...'
I wonder why that is?
Jonathan Vaughan-Davies is the minister of Bethel Baptist Church, in Whitchurch, Cardiff.
He is the author and presenter of a DVD-based six-part introduction to the Christian faith called Question, designed to help seekers explore questions often asked early on in people's journey of faith and available through the Baptist Union of Great Britain website.
