This week I attended a local government meeting where an angry
constituent told his elected officials, “If
you don’t vote ‘no’ for being a pass-through organization for grant funding,
then you don’t love your country.” I was embarrassed for the constituent on
a couple of different fronts. 1) He is a fellow believer and 2) he sounded
remarkably similar to many email chain letters that say, ‘If you don’t forward this email then you don’t love God’. It’s
amazing how far off base we can get when we are left to our own reasoning and
wisdom. Jesus said, “Greater love has no
one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13 NIV)
3 comments:
I don't think I have ever gotten that far in reading a chain letter. I have some friends who never write anything personal but find time to forward those things.
Grace and peace
Gail;
-----Another amazing thing about being so far off base in our own reasoning and wisdom is how much company is found there in people having not done their own reasoning to become wise. One of my great perplexities is how Western thought passed through the mutual call to reason known as the Age of Reason without actually having reasoned very well. It is an undeniable fact that the individual has little capacity for knowing information compared to all of the information available for knowing. It’s like a great buffet. Vastly more is spread before you, everything crying out for your indulgence, but you’re compelled to fill only two plates (ha!) because your stomach will pack only so full. It is also an undeniable fact that the number of people at the buffet is the multiplier of the plates determining how much information does actually get consumed by the human culture. Then as the diner’s begin digesting the information they’ve consumed, they talk and converse and pass around each other’s reasoning. The overwhelming proportion of an individual’s accepted concepts are the conclusions of other people. And most of it has been passed around and re-digested many times over. You weren’t sent outside to fly a kite in a thunderstorm when you studied electricity. You didn’t sit under an apple tree to study gravity. Your entire schooling was done from textbooks, not lab research. We reflect too little upon that fact of life.
-----If that were not how God intended our existence, we would not have language. If He had not intended to make use of that fact, He would not have inspired the Bible. But if He had not intended for us to do our own reasoning to find wisdom, He would not have given us minds, placed His Spirit within us, and called us to individual relationships with Him. Surely Jesus was referring to personal reason when He said those who have eyes to see will see and ears to hear will hear. We know He was not talking about physical eyes and ears. What else could He have meant?
-----Now we realize our plates are not as nearly filled with goodies directly from the buffet as they are with the regurgitations of others. That should make of us picky eaters! But realizing what we can know is limited to our two plates in the first place, what hope does the individual have for thoroughly vetting what’s on his plate? How can what is on the plate measure its own conclusions when it can not contain everything knowable. If one can not search out the entire universe of knowledge in order to vet this limited sample of it, then how do you know your reasoning really is wise?
(continued...)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
(...continued)
-----I was faced with this question thirty-three years ago when I took up battle with my manic-depression. I knew Jesus was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And I knew why. And how. And I knew that my grasp upon Him would only get more white-knuckled the worse things got, and that He would be that last thing I held against any and all turning loose. But I also knew my manic-depression was caused by “poor knowing”, and that I know Him only through knowing. So how could I know that my knowing regarding Him wasn’t also as critically distorted as the same “poor knowing” that had caused my manic-depression? No doubt those who will say, “But Lord! Lord...” also thought they had the Holy Spirit’s direction. So the fact that those who hold tightly to Christ do have the Holy Spirit didn’t guarantee that my knowing about even that was not distorted, too. I couldn’t sort through the universe of knowledge looking for confirmations about my thinking. I didn’t have time. No one does. But I knew God is love.
-----That is why I could see patterns in things. Patterns in everything. Conceptual patterns that everyone knows at least intuitively. If I had been smarter, I would have accepted those patterns intuitively and had a better life. Peas are vegetables, vegetables are food. Eat peas. Pattern is that simple. Bears eat lambs. Lamb dies; bear lives. Everything eats something. Something dies, everything lives. Christ died, we live. Life happens only through death. Pattern is that significant. Out of love God created this universe with pattern so that it would have these kinds of data points. And He made these data points so that man could reason without the necessity of knowing everything there is to know. Therefore, by this graciousness, He relieved us of the despair of not being able to know everything in order to know something so that we could certainly know Jesus and God through Christ. So our reasoning to the state of humility brings us to His greatest data point - The Bible, which is confirmed in all the other data points of the universe and history. We humble our reasoning to it for the sorting out of which data points are more significant than others and for how they fit together.
-----Those who come to the Word for the direction of their reasoning do have the Spirit for the guidance of that reasoning. But it is still their reasoning in that they must do it. But it is God’s reasoning in that they do assemble data points into His concepts in accordance to His Word, rather than in their own accord. In other words, information plus memory plus logic equals intelligence. Nietzsche, Sartre, and Darwin were immensely intelligent, but their reasoning was guided by their own purposes. Therefore it was arrogant; it was essentially theirs, not God’s; it was foolish. RC Sproul, Oswald Chambers, and Billy Graham were immensely intelligent, but their reasoning was guided by God’s purposes communicated through His Word activated by His Spirit. Therefore it was humble; it was essentially God’s, not theirs; it was wise. Intelligence plus arrogance equals foolishness. Intelligence plus humility equals wisdom. The former is our reasoning, ultimately, and even though it is we who must reason, the latter is God’s. So I am in full agreement with the sense of your truism, knowing those who reason not at all will keep company with those who reason by their own accord.
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