If I Only had a Brain...

Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain... only straw.

Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?

Scarecrow: I don't know... But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking... don't they?

Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.

Wizard of Oz: Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma.

Yesterday we celebrated the resurrection of our Savior.  What a marvelous day it was.  Having been raised in church, I have heard the account of the resurrection many, many times.  The story doesn’t offend my intellect because I believe it.  I believed it blindly at first, as any child would.  I believe it now because of physical and spiritual evidence.  I often forget that the very idea of the resurrection goes completely against the grain of rationality and intelligence…i.e., the brain.

I regularly wonder if a message that I deliver about resurrection theology has made a lasting impact on the heart of a yet unbeliever/non-follower of Jesus.  I’m so glad it isn’t my responsibility to keep that score because it would probably drive me mad.  All I know is that without the Spirit of God revealing the truth of these “crazy” things to our hearts, those things will remain as foolishness.

1 Corinthians 2:14-16 tells us that without the Spirit within us, we can’t accept those kinds of things.  I find that exciting, because the natural conclusion is that a good way to know whether God’s spirit is in me is if I discern those foolish things of God to be true.

I’m all for intellect and logic…but not at the expense of truth.  I’m not going to argue and I’m not a debater.  I’ll leave that up to the Josh McDowells and the C.S. Lewises of our age.  My great proof of the resurrection and other equally foolish things is that God’s Spirit lives within me and reveals those things to me.  I’m the only one who needs to be convinced of this.  More importantly though, I have a transformed heart and it has changed me into something other than what I was.