Did I Forget to Tell You… God Gave Us a Brain For a Reason?

Yes, it is true. Our brains are God-given gifts.

And it really pleases God when we use them.
“Christian” should not equal “gullible”.
From what I see, I – and other pastors—must have forgotten to make this clear.

It is a great sadness to me when Christians forget to engage their God-given brains. Forgetting our God-given brains leads us to decisions that hurt us personally and hurt our witness.  Over and over again, as Christians fall for any-and-every kind of outrageous pitch, we look like empty-headed fools.  

I have loved my time as a pastor.  I have served in small communities, towns (small and mid-sized), metropolitan and suburban areas.  I cut my ministry teeth in the small town setting where talking about others was often the only recreation in the community.  And, as I often said publicly, we were so advanced on the “news”, we not only knew what had happened.  We heard things that had had not happened :)

I love for people to share with me.  I quickly realized I needed to have a standard approach to “news”.  People would come in and said, “Did you know____________?”  And my first response would be:  “Is that true?”  They would say, “I heard it.”  “Yes,” I would reply, “I know you heard it.  I am not asking if you heard it.  I am asking if it is true?”

God as my witness, I have repeated this response-conversation hundreds of times.  I knew it was deflating for people to come to me with “the latest” only to need to re-think and do a little more digging.  It was my public guestimate that at least 75% of what I was told was interesting. But it was not true.

And falsehoods, even innocently passed along, can be very, very damaging.

    One day, someone I loved said to me, “Why do you do that?”
    “What?”  I said.
    “Double-checking – and making us double-check—that something is true?”

I could have given lots of answers.  Like the Golden Rule, for example.  But I said, “You don’t really want a pastor who falls for any kind of lie, do you?  The next time, that lie could be about you.”

But here we are, decades later with social media piling on the speculation and innuendo and slanted information more intensely than any small town gossip cycle (and that is saying a LOT).  And, instead of using our brains more (out of necessity so we are not being constant fools), it appears to me that we use our brains LESS.  And that, when people bring the truth to our attention, instead of saying, “Thank you”, people get defensive, mad and more committed to their falsehoods. It is tragic.

So in case I forgot to tell you, God gave us our brains as a gift and it pleases Him when we use them.  He gave us everything we need to protect us from stupidity (yes, that is the word I intend).  Maybe you could begin to appreciate God’s precious gift by asking questions:  “Is this true?” before believing it, damaging your opinions of others or passing it along.

God gave us a brain and is pleased when we use it.