Ever wonder about what amazing minds and brain power Adam and Eve must have had, especially prior to their disobedience in the Garden when sin entered the world, and as a result the beginning of aging and ultimate physical death? Remember, mankind alone was made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26,27) with the ability to communicate with and to love and worship God. Adam and Eve and their offspring were given the responsibility of filling the earth and subduing it and ruling over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and over every living things that moves on the earth (Gen. 1:28). Adam was also given the job of naming all the animals that God had created (Gen. 2:19,20). Prior to Adam and Eve’s disobedience, they had a perfect relationship with God, with each other, with themselves and with their environment. Their thoughts about God, each other and the world God had created were totally right and pure. That all changed when they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. Their relationships with God, each other, themselves, and their environment were all broken and their thought processes became distorted by their newly acquired sinful nature.
Over the several thousand years since the Fall in the Garden, man’s old nature continues to plague each person who is born. In the Psalm which records David’s sin of adultery and murder, he wrote : “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Psa. 51:5), indicating that life begins at conception and from that moment on we have to deal with a sinful nature that is in rebellion against God, and with distorted thinking about Him, ourselves and the world around us. The Apostle Paul, in describing the response of man to God wrote: “For though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools” (Ro. 1:21,22). Today we have many who are considered to be highly intelligent but who have such distorted thinking about God, others, themselves and our environment. And many of them are in positions of leadership making decisions which affect the direction of our country in its moral and spiritual spiral downward. Our world looks much like the one described in Gen. 6:5 when “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Only Noah “found favor in the eyes of the LORD” (Gen. 6: 8) and he and his family was spared in the ark when God sent the judgment of the Flood which destroyed all other life on earth.
It didn’t take long, however, for sin to again take its toll, for man continued to be born with that sinful Adamic nature (Ro. 5:12,19). Today we see all around us the evidence of man’s evil and wickedness and wrong thinking. And not only has sin affected our moral compass but it has very much limited the capacity of our usage of the human brain which God so amazingly engineered. Medical science admits how little we really know about the human brain and believes we utilize only a small portion of its real capabilities (the result of the Fall). A recent television series, Limitless, explored the unlocking of the human mind through medication with a miracle pill named NZT-48 which supposedly allowed the brain to work at superhuman efficiency, giving the user perfect recall and leaps of intuitive insight.
In reality, there are no magical “smart pills,” but there is a way to restore our right thinking about God, others, ourselves and our environment. The brain is much like the hard drive of a computer. A computer has memory capacity and a central processor that can access memory and process information. But a computer won’t work properly unless it also has the right software. The information stored in its memory banks must be accurate. The computer’s programming must be consistent with its design and free of viruses or other malware that can slow its performance or cause it to crash. God designed our minds to operate with a biblical worldview. They cannot and will not function consistently and reliably with any other worldview. We are supposed to base our thinking and our ways upon God’s thoughts and God’s ways as revealed in God’s Word. While we can’t ever reach God’s level of thinking (Isa. 55:9). we can, by God’s grace, learn to reason correctly—in a way that is consistent with His nature.
That begins by admitting our sinful, lost condition, and trusting Christ, His sacrificial death on our behalf and His burial and resurrection as the only means of being made right with God. When we do that, we are “born again” (Jn. 3:3) and the Holy Spirit comes to live in us, and through the Spirit, Christ also comes to live in us and we thus have a new, divine nature abiding within us (II Pet. 1:4) which give us the ability to renew our minds through spending time in God’s Word and obeying what we read (Ro. 12:2). While the natural man’s mind cannot comprehend spiritual things (in fact, they are foolishness to him), the spiritual man (one indwelled by the Holy Spirit and Christ), “appraises all things,” and in fact, has “the mind of Christ” (I Cor. 2:14-16).
Right thinking begins by thinking right about God, and that happens only when we come to know Him through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, as our Lord and Savior. The only solution to the mess we see in our country and the world is for people to come to know Jesus so that they can have their minds and thought processes renewed, as they become new creations in Christ (II Cor. 5:17).
Forever His,
Pastor Dave
Wisdom of The Week 