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I’m staring at a histology slide of a pituitary gland, magnified times 40. The larger crimson-stained cells of the adenohypophysis are responsible for the synthesis, or production, of associated hormones, while the neurohypophysis is comprised of cells that receive and store hormones. I’m sketching each zone of a cross-section now, shading each area appropriately to differentiate groupings of cells, then labeling each one.
“My entire body is an amalgamation of systems that run concurrently, communicating with one another exclusively by means of my endocrine system…” I muse to myself. Now I’m using an eraser to lighten the boundaries between lobules in the thymus. I’m using deep purple to indicate cortical regions. I’m shading macrophages with my pinky finger, and then delineating their infinitesimally small nuclei. “Macrophages… the little garbage disposals of the microscopic world.” It occurs to me that all of these cells work together, forming clusters that make up the tissues and organs that regulate everything about me.
Yes, I mean everything.
Let’s suppose that I were to be suddenly afflicted with a steady decline of the regulatory apparatus that is my endocrine system. Not only would I soon die, but on the way to that certain end, I’d experience the loss of everything that makes me who I am, everything that makes my experiences what they are to me.
In my study of human anatomy and physiology, I’ve come across many striking examples of God’s remarkable handiwork. It’s impossible not to; the signs are too many to even begin to count. I could sit for hours and examine only the smallest units that comprise our bodies at various magnifications and not tire of what I’m seeing. Yet, that of course doesn’t even begin to touch the intricacies of how these cells work together, how the tissues they form are stitched together into organs, how organs are perfectly aligned to work in unison as whole systems, how systems interact seamlessly to support an entire body, and how the entire body in turn is still yet affected by tiny individual cells— for better or worse.
So, of course, it would be no surprise that my deep-dive into the regulatory mechanisms of endocrine system were readily compared to the inner workings of human beings.
However, I quickly realized that it’s not just comparison at play, here. In fact, the perfectly-designed endocrine system is literally that by which our life experience is regulated. By way of hormones—which affect everything from growth, to emotions, to animalistic needs such as sex, food, and water, to stress levels— our body’s regulatory system illustrates for us that the euphoria we live to experience is exclusively manufactured.
Let me repeat that.
Euphoria, happiness, joy, however you’d like to call it, is purely manufactured… except for that which we find with our Creator, and with Him alone. That which we find with Him is pure and genuine and not reliant upon any external mechanism for stimulation. There is no point at which we build up a tolerance to it. Other than that—in all human endeavors, including relationships—the euphoria we so often chase is nothing more than the chemical give and take involved in the endocrine system.
Now, that isn’t to downplay the importance of our emotional experiences. We do need to foster the processes through which we experience emotional fulfillment in our day-to-day dealings with others and the world at large, but we must stay abreast of the fact that this fulfillment is something by which we maintain necessary function in the world, and that is should not ever be the ultimate object of our efforts. Our emotions are useful, but they are just that—useful. They are like any tool that we must learn to use properly and in its most appropriate context. Here’s a quick and simple example: Love helps seal bonds between family members, and in that context, it is extremely useful. However, it can and has led to the waging of costly battles, when it certainly was not necessary. We should never become confused by the fickleness of our figurative hearts, because this is just the product of our possessing a functional human body. We will feel things that we could very well convince ourselves are real— think about that feeling of falling in love, or your first heartbreak.
It felt real, did it not?
In fact, it felt as if your heart was wrought asunder by the tumult of it all. But really, at the core of it, all of that tumult, all of that cinematic guts and glory… it’s really all just manufactured by your masterfully-crafted body. You’re chasing within others something that you could learn to harness to an extent yourself with proper diet, exercise, meditation, and the like.
However, even that is nothing compared to what you can experience while losing yourself in the worship of God. There is no hormone, nor any drug, that can do anything but simulate a fraction of that experience for a brief moment in time. It’s beyond that feeling of goosebumps, beyond an amphetamine-like rush. And it doesn’t ever wear off. As long as you seek it with God, and nowhere else, you’ll never feel weary of chasing, and yet at the same time you’ll feel quenched in a way that can’t possibly be put into feeble words.
Now, isn’t that a high actually worth chasing?