If I Only Had a Brain
Some different devotions this week based on The Wizard of Oz! Dorothy is lost in the land of Oz looking for a way home, and she comes across this scarecrow who tells her his story about how he doesn't have a brain. He wants to go with her to the wizard to find a brain. I had such a laugh when Dorothy says to the scarecrow, but how can you speak if you don't have a brain? And he says, “well, some people without brains do an awful lot of talking!” Perhaps that's true.
Christianity and the Life of the Mind
This made me think of how Christians are sometimes accused of being brainless, of putting aside their reason and their thinking capabilities, and just accepting everything by faith. But this is not Christianity at all. In fact, in a sense, Christianity has led the way over the centuries in terms of academia and science.
It's only in the last hundred and 50 years or so that there's been this strong atheist movement trying to discredit Christianity and essentially calling Christians idiots.
And perhaps there are some teachings in the Bible that can be seen as telling us not to think much. Jesus told us about accepting the kingdom of God like a child. And maybe for the academic that's hard!
But on the other hand, Paul said that once he thought like a child and reasoned like a child, but there came a time when he had to put his childish things away and become like a man. Similarly, the writer to the Hebrews says to his people, “you shouldn't just be on the basics just drinking milk the whole time, but you should be going on to the deeper teachings of the faith.”
Using Our God-Given Intelligence
We're not meant to just be dumb and just accept everything. We are meant to be thinking people. God created us with brains! I hope that we haven't, like the Scarecrow, found ourselves to be brainless.
But you see, at the end of the movie, the Scarecrow meets the wizard, and the wizard says, well, you've actually pretty much got the brains. You didn't realize it. And he had been exercising it the whole time.
Maybe we've got more brains than we think! Maybe it's time for you to start using your mind more effectively. Have you ever thought about that? Maybe God's calling you to study, to go deep into your Bible reading, to do a course, to attend some sort of a Bible study where you can go deeper.
Grow in Knowledge and Understanding
The brainless often do a lot of talking. But maybe God is calling us to a more reasonable faith, a more intellectual faith. It's not for everybody I know, but I think all of us are called to use our brains so that we're not just blindly following, but we know why we believe what we believe.
So, my friends, go deeper! Take the opportunity to go deeper, why don't you? And yes there will always be an element of faith, there will always be those things we don't quite understand. But grow in your knowledge. Learn as much as you can about Jesus and about the Word of God, and about your church's doctrines and theories.
You'll be richer for it, and who knows who you might be able to bless, because your knowledge leads them to God.
