Squatter camps, or informal settlements as they are called, are a common phenomenon in South Africa. There is no town/city that does not have an informal settlement. Most informal settlements in SA are legal. They are typically built on land that the government has made available for people to construct informal houses where they can live. There are also a high number of illegal squatters. These people build structures on land that does not belong to them and also that has not been made available by the government for such purpose. It is usually a challenging process to get such illegal squatters off your land.
Any informal settlement, legal or illegal, starts on an open piece of land. One day a family or two arrive with poles and a bunch of iron sheets and start erecting their structures. The next day, more people arrive, and after a few months, these areas can often grow to be a huge informal settlements.
I like to use informal settlements as a metaphor to explain what can happen in our brains. As you might know, a brain consists of a left and a right brain, like two neighbourhoods that are adjacent to each other. In the same way that our left- and right brains differ, we often find neighbourhoods next to each other that are radically different. Some people are left-braindominant, which means that the left side of their brain is stronger or more dominant than their right brain in certain aspects. And, of course, the other way round. Similarly, adjacent neighbourhoods might be stronger or more dominant than the other in certain aspects.
The second similarity I saw between informal settlements and our brains is how informal settlements come to be. As I mentioned, it usually starts with an open piece of land. In most neighbourhoods, one will find empty spaces on which nothing has been built, such as a park or open plots. According to www.brainfacts.org, there are more than 86 billion nerve cells in the brain. Let’s compare it to a piece of land and say there is 86 billion m² of land in our brain. With so much space, there must be vacant land. A common myth that many people believe is that humans use 10% of their brains. Regardless of the exact percentage (be it 10, 20, or 99%), there is most definitely “empty land” in your brains. And that made me think of illegal squatters, because if there’s available land, there’s always a chance that a few squatters could begin to build homes there at some point. The same applies to our brains. Have you and I perhaps already let a bunch of squatters build houses in our brains?
In Mark 7:14-23, Jesus said, Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them (NIV). Jesus talks about food that ends up in your stomach and leaves the body. Food that goes into your body cannot defile you because it does not come into contact with your heart. During the time of Jesus’ life on earth, the heart was seen as the source and centre of life. Put more simplistically, Jesus could have said that bad thoughts and bad things do not come from outside; it comes from inside, from your brain.
Let me explain what I mean. A few years ago, a man was caught in SA and charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to kill someone. This man’s son was treated by a doctor a few years before. For a reason I do not know, the son died despite the treatment. The father could not come to terms with his son’s death, and instead of filling his brain with good things to help him cope with the immense pain, he allowed a bunch of squatters to occupy his brain.
The first squatters who set up a home in his brain were Mr and Mrs Malice. They told him repeatedly that the doctor who treated his son was malicious and negligent, and that is why his son died. Mr and Mrs Malice convinced him that because he did this to your son, you must do something to him too. Maybe Mr and Mrs Malice made him consider suing the doctor or filing charges with the Medical Board – until the day Mr and Mrs Murder built their house next to that of Mr and Mrs Malice. Mr and Mrs Murder said, no! Suing him or filing charges with the Medical Board is not enough. He must walk the same path as your son. He ended your son’s life. His life must be terminated as well.
After hearing that, he thought, I can’t do that. I can’t kill someone. Then he met Mr and Mrs Fraud, who moved in recently, and they told him, it is easy. You can hire someone to do it. No one will know it’s you. These squatters occupied his brain in such a way that he could no longer distinguish between right and wrong. If an informal settlement is far from you, it does not affect you so much, but when these settlements start occupying land close to your home, it is a different ball game.
I’m sure you’re wondering right now – which squatters have already entered your brain? The first family to set up a home in all our brains is probably Mr and Mrs Gossiping. And the two of them constantly tell us stories about other people until we cannot distinguish between true and false. They help us retell the gossip stories without knowing if they are true. Mr and Mrs Fraud and Mr and Mrs Lies help us to add extra bite to the stories to make them more impressive.
Next to Mr and Mrs Malice, Mr and Mrs Fraud and Mr and Mrs Lies, Mr and Mrs Melancholy, and Mr and Mrs Depressed soon also moved in. They are experts at pushing you down, making everything around you look so bad that you begin to spiral into a deep, dark hole before you know it. You barely open your eyes when they receptively say things like load shedding again; everything is getting more expensive; look at what a mess our country is in, etc. They make us concentrate so much on the negative and ourselves that we no longer notice anything around us. We do not see the beautiful mountains, the sea, the flowers, or the people around us.
Galatians 5 mentions another bunch of squatters who would like to move into your brain if they do not already live there, squatters like Mr and Mrs Immorality, that says, press that button. No one can see what you are watching. Suppose you don’t believe Mr and Mrs Immorality, Mr and Mrs Debauchery come to the fore and say everyone does it, why not you and Mr and Mrs Adultery, saying you’re just looking? It’s not adultery if you watch pornography on your computer or phone.
And what about Mr and Mrs Drunkenness, who keeps telling you to take one more and another one? It must be a double because a single is a woman without a husband. You would be frightened if I had to tell you how many marriages and relationships have been ruined by Mr and Mrs Drunkenness.
You – and only you know what squatters you have allowed into your brain. Unlike in the everyday world, where you can’t always stop illegal squatters from squatting next to you, or you don’t have a choice in who moves in next to you, you can decide whom you allow moving into your brain.
We all know how difficult it is to get illegal squatters off someone’s land. The same applies to your brain. If illegal squatters have started to build their homes in your brain, it becomes increasingly difficult to get rid of them. Therefore, don’t let them in. Sell every piece of space in your brain or give it away for free. Fill your brain with so much good stuff that there is no room for squatters.
Let us take the man I told you about earlier as an example. Suppose he had made the space in his brain available to residents like Mr and Mrs Love, Mr and Mrs Joy and others such as Peace, Patience, Kindness, and Self-control, his situation might have gone entirely different.
The question we should ask ourselves today is, have I allowed squatters to occupy my brain in such a way that it steals my joy, ruins my relationships, and, most of all, ruins my relationship with God? You and I can choose. It’s our choice. Let us begin today by evicting the illegal squatters and filling every space in our brains with neighbours who can make our and other people’s lives worth living. (Dr. Piet van Zyl from Heart to Heart Online Counselling and Tie the Knot Marriage Officiant wrote this article)
