"God Doesn't Have A Brain"

I know. When you read that, your knee-jerk reaction was that God was being blasphemed or demeaned. When I read that statement recently, it was a speed bump in my reading that cause me to hit my head on the roof. As I stopped to metaphorically rub my head, in a rush it came to me that the statement, "God doesn't have a brain" explains so much. The author didn't elaborate, but the truth and ramifications of it flooded me. It isn't blasphemous: To say God doesn't have a brain is no different than saying God doesn't have lungs or a gall bladder or an appendix. A brain is an organ of a natural body. The brain is gray matter. Matter is just that. It is a part of the material universe. God is not matter. God is spirit. A spirit, Scripture notes, doesn't have flesh and bone, nor, we could add, gray matter. No, God doesn't have a brain, but He does have a mind. First, this impressed me with the truth that the mind and the brain must be two different things. Man created in the image of God has a mind. Man, as a mammal with a natural body, has a brain. Man has a mind and a brain. A brain is a physical organ in the head that controls the body. A mind is the self-conscious thinking, feeling, and choosing part of a person that makes him a person. Second, this is what distinguishes man from animal. Both have a brain, but an animal has no mind. Third, the import and implications of this--the brain and mind being two different things--are huge. An animal basically does what its brain is wired to do. A human has a mind that can inform and affect the brain. The mind can change the workings of the brain. Frighteningly, recent scientific studies have show that viewing of pornography actually changes the circuitry of the brain. It rewires the brain--and not for the good. The brain didn't choose pornography. The mind did. The person did. Choosing pornography, the mind caused the brain to be rewired, reprogrammed. The changed circuitry of the brain establishes a habit, a bad habit, in the viewer's life. The neural activity, the chemistry of serotonin and other hormones didn't cause the choice. The choice of the mind caused the neural activity, the chemistry, to literally change the brain. The changed brain then controls that person accordingly. That is the bad news. The good news is that if the mind's making wrong choices can rewire the brain to create a bad circuitry in the brain that leads to bad behavior, then the mind's making right choices can rewire the brain to create a good circuitry that leads to good behavior. Put another way: Pornography rewires the brain. But, so does prayer. When we are born-again, we are forgiven. Our sins are gone. But, the habits of sin, the motions of sin, the bad circuits of sin our still a part of our brain. God, sanctifies our mind. He changes the way we think, the way we feel, the way we choose. A sanctified mind rewires the brain. Our unholy habits become holy habits. No, God doesn't have a brain. He has a mind. And, the Apostle said, "Let this mind be in you." That mind will rewire the brain.