Happy Leap Day

Soren Kierkegaard compared the faith of a Christian to a leap. In this, he was not saying that faith begins with a leap—that we enter Christianity by making a leap of faith. Rather, he was saying that all of faith is a leap. He spoke not only about leaping across a chasm to the other side, but also of the leaps performed by ballet dancers. For most of us, such a leap would be a clumsy jump; but for the trained dancer, the leap is graceful and appears effortless.

Kierkegaard’s point is that no one is persuaded to become a Christian through reason and logic. Logical arguments exist to prove the existence of God, but no one has ever been won to faith by a logical argument. These arguments reinforce the faith of believers, but unbelievers generally find ways to resist the power of the logical proofs. Some proofs should be resisted, such as Anselm’s ontological proof. (We first define God as the best of all possible beings: the wisest, the most powerful, the most beautiful, etc. We then state that it is better to exist than not to exist. That would certainly be true of a piece of chocolate cake. Since we already said that God is the best of all possible beings: hey, presto: we have proved the existence of God.) Other logical proofs, such as those regarding a First Cause and a First Mover, are more convincing. (I was just reading such a proof by John Locke last night. The first thought was produced by the first thinker. If the first thinker arose in time, then there was a time when no thought existed. Atheists are willing to accept that condition, but most people struggle to explain how the first thought could come into being within time.)

Kierkegaard was by no means the first to suggest that reason and logic can lead to faith. Martin Luther described reason and logic as the mother or grandmother of the devil. Human thinkers who rely upon reason and logic can never work their way to the truths of God. (Luther would have hated the approach of Rene Descartes.) Rather, we begin with God and his revelation, and we use reason and logic to interpret and understand and apply those truths that God has revealed. Whenever we trust our reason and logic over God’s Word, we put ourselves in the place of God. As a result, we reject the paradoxes which are not below reason and logic but are so far about them that they cannot comprehend the paradoxes of God’s truth.

There is a place, then, for reason and logic in the practice of apologetics. But they cannot be the foundation of apologetics. The foundation must remain the Bible. God’s Word creates faith and strengthens faith and sustains faith. Reason and logic have their place, but only when they serve God’s Word and do not seek to become its masters.

Modern Christianity, at least in North America, tends to diminish reason and logic, but not for the relationship involving God’s grace and his gift of faith. Rather, modern evangelism often resorts to emotional appeals to draw people into faith. Events are manufactured to inspire the flow of emotions that makes people responsive to an invitation. Then, at the peak moment of emotional fervor, the invitation is delivered. This sort of manipulation of the human mind and will is justified by its practitioners according to two false teachings: that faith is a conscious decision of the human mind or will; and that once a person acquires true faith, that faith can never be lost.

Both false teachings are easily corrected by God’s Word. “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s Law; indeed, it cannot” (Romans 8:7) “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked” (Ephesians 2:1). “If salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?” (Matthew 5:13). “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God” (Hebrews 3:12).

Every day each Christian leaps into the arms of a loving and merciful Father. Every day each Christian leaps by means of the cross of Christ into the kingdom of God. Every day the Holy Spirit carries each Christian from sin through repentance to redemption, from rebellion through grace to reconciliation with God. As we observe a leap day—not a once-in-a-lifetime day, but a regularly scheduled correction to the calendar—so we rejoice in the leap of faith that brings us to a right relationship with the God who loves us and who rescues us from all sin and evil. J.

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Seven Mysteries of the Christian Church–Introduction

…according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forward in Christ… (Ephesians 1:7-9).

God wants to be known and loved by the people he has created. Yet God is far beyond human understanding; he is essentially unknowable. The mind of even the most saintly Christian falls short of comprehending the full identity of the Lord. The best a Christian can do in this lifetime is to accept the things God says about himself and to love the God revealed in his messages, even when God’s own descriptions seem to defy the best thinking his people can achieve.

In his letters, the apostle Paul sometimes mentioned the “mysteries” that had been entrusted to him. In modern thought, a mystery is a novel or movie about a crime that has been committed. In a modern mystery, a detective examines clues and eventually determines the truth about the crime and the person who committed that crime. Such mysteries are solved through the use of reason and logic. The detective succeeds because of his or her ability to comprehend what is seen and what he or she has been told. When Paul used the word “mystery,” he was not talking about puzzles that can be solved. The apostle used the word “mystery” in its earlier sense, meaning something that cannot be known until it is revealed.

You do not know my name until I tell you my name. You might, with careful and deliberate research, be able to find my name. Or, if you were with me, you might over time be able to guess my name. The easiest way for you to know my name, though, is for me to tell you my name, or for me to have it printed on the cover of a book. My name is a mystery that can be revealed, but the nature of the true God is an even greater mystery, something that can be known only when God chooses to reveal it to people.

Ancient Greek scientists and mathematicians were among the first people in the world to try to understand the world through reason and logic rather than through revealed messages of religion. These wise Greeks were determined to know how the world works, and they expected the world to make sense. One of their assumptions was that all numbers are related, and that every number that exists can be expressed as a ratio, or fraction, made of two other numbers. Any number that could not be expressed in that way was, in their opinion, “irrational.” As they studied the world around them, though, they found numbers that are irrational. If you divide the distance around a circle (the circumference) by the distance across the circle (the diameter), the result is irrational, a number that cannot be described as a ratio of two other numbers. If you divide the diagonal distance across a square by the length of any of the square’s sides, the result is another irrational number. Greek geometers had to accept the existence of numbers that their reason and logic labeled irrational.

Modern science has detected many things about the world around us that seem illogical and unreasonable. Light is a paradox: it acts like a stream of particles, but also like waves of energy. Most of the particles of which matter is made defy logical understanding. An electrical engineer can create a device powered by a circuit of moving electrons, but a nuclear physicist cannot identify just one electron or tell you where that electron is and how fast it is moving. The rules that govern objects large enough for us to see and hold do not apply to the tiny pieces of which those objects consist. Euclid’s laws of geometry and Newton’s laws of physics only match the world we observe; underneath the observed world lies a world that is very different, a world of paradox and mystery.

If the created world is full of paradox and mystery, then it comes as no surprise that the Creator is also a Being of paradox and mystery. The god who fits into human comprehension and understanding would be a poor and weak god, hardly deserving of human worship and praise. The nature of God is not beneath human reason and logic; the nature of God is far above human reason and logic. When his mysteries have been revealed, people can begin to use reason and logic to describe and discuss those mysteries. If God had not told us about himself, no philosopher or scientist could ever have invented him.

This is not to say that a Christian must abandon reason and logic to talk about God or to believe in him. Reason and logic are part of God’s creation just as the senses of sight and hearing and touch are created by God.  Christians are not called to believe the mysteries because they are absurd. Christians are called to believe the mysteries because they are true. In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll reports this conversation between Alice and the White Queen:

“Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months, and a day.”

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.

“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again; draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said; one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Christians do not practice believing impossible things as the White Queen did. Christians accept the mysteries of the faith because they trust God. Their trusting relationship with God causes them and enables them to believe the paradoxes that the world calls irrational and unreasonable, because Christians know that God is bigger than our minds and bigger than the world which he created.

How do Christians know which mysteries to believe? God authorized certain messengers to tell his people what to believe. He sent Moses and the prophets to speak his messages and to put them into writing; then Jesus authorized the apostles to speak and to write about him. The authority of the prophets and the apostles comes from Jesus himself, so in the end Jesus has revealed the mysteries of the faith and has told his people what to believe.

In the early years of the Church, meetings were called to discuss these mysteries and to find ways to describe and discuss them in reasonable and logical ways. The creeds and confessions of the Christian Church are not meant to add anything to the Bible or to replace the Bible. Their purpose is to summarize the Bible so Christians can discuss the mysteries contained in the Bible. Creeds and confessions are used by Christians to teach others the Christian faith. They are used by Christians to speak to one another about what they believe. They are used by Christians to speak to God, saying aloud to him that we believe what God has told us about himself.

Creeds and confessions are used to describe the truth, and they also were written to identify errors. Some of the creeds even say that whoever does not believe the statements they contain is not truly a follower of Jesus Christ. As recently as one hundred years ago, a group of Christian preachers in the United States made a list of “fundamental” truths that they said are believed by every Christian. They went on to say that anyone who did not believe one of those fundamental teachings was not really a Christian. The author of this book has no authority to declare what is truth and what is error. The author of this book has no authority to judge any person and his or her relationship with Jesus Christ. This book is written to describe the mysteries that Christians have believed and taught over the centuries. Therefore, if any reader feels that the words in this book are judging or condemning his or her faith, rest assured that this book has not been written for that purpose. Christians can disagree with one another without rejecting or condemning each other.

This book is written to describe the mysteries about God as they are revealed in the writings of the prophets and apostles chosen by God and as they have historically been understood and restated by Christians. It is written with the hope that God’s people will rediscover the awesome wonder that comes from realizing that God is far more grand and glorious than our minds can comprehend. Christian faith is no intellectual exercise to define God with words and sentences. Christian faith is a relationship with God which touches every part of the Christian life: mind, heart, and spirit. That which we do not understand we still rejoice to believe, accepting the mysteries of the Christian faith as part of the beauty of the relationship we have with the Lord.

I am Spock

In a previous post, I mentioned how my best friend in high school always wanted to be Captain Kirk and wanted me to be Mr. Spock. Of all the Star Trek characters, Spock is most like me—or at least like me as I see myself. I would like to believe that I’m the smart one in the group, the one to whom everyone turns for answers. I would like to believe that I’m capable of solving just about any problem, given enough time and enough information. I would like to believe that I am free from the burden of emotions, able to make wise decisions without being pushed and pulled by inconvenient feelings.

Spock speaks often of logic. If I could travel through time to the 1960s to suggest one change in the Star Trek scripts, I would ask them to mention reason in place of logic. Logic is the set of rules by which reason operates. Reason is the practice to which Spock and the rest of the Vulcans are dedicated. Loving the rules instead of the process makes no sense—preferring logic to reason would be like preferring reading a book of the rules of baseball to watching a baseball game.

Vulcans are not the only beings in the galaxy who prefer reason and logic to emotion. Twenty-five centuries ago the Buddha taught in India that suffering can be escaped by a person who learns to cease desire. The Stoics of the Greek and Roman civilization also proposed a life guided by sober thought and not by emotion. They coined the word “apathy,” but they said apathy is good. They said it is better to go through life unmoved by emotion, because then people can make wise decisions.

It may seem strange for a Christian to speak of approval about Buddhists and Stoics. The Christian is commanded to love: to love God whole-heartedly and to love every neighbor. I countered that love is not a feeling. Love is caring more for the other than for the self. Feelings can confuse love, especially when the world around us treats love as only a feeling. Feelings confused for love can lead to great temptations and great sins. Feelings confused as love can destroy a relationship that was meant to last until death.

Over the years, I have tried to help other people get around their feelings. When they are frightened for no good reason, or when they think they are worthless and life is meaningless, I say to them, “I know you feel that way, and I know that it is a powerful feeling. I also know that it is untrue. You are valuable. You have no reason to be afraid. Do your best to set aside how you feel and to do the right thing.” After all, virtue is always measured by doing the right thing in spite of feelings. Courage is not a lack of fear; courage is doing the right thing in spite of fear. Honor is not a lack of temptations; honor is doing the right thing in spite of temptations.

I gave this advice to others because I thought it worked for me. I thought that, like Spock, I made good and wise decisions by ignoring my feelings and trusting reason and logic to guide me. I thought I could continue to ignore my feelings and would continue to make good and wise decisions. Finally, after several stressful events, I confessed my real inner feelings to the family doctor. Instead of lying, as I had done year after year, assuring him that I felt just fine, I described for him how I really feel about myself and about my life. He listened to me. He prescribed some medications. He referred me to a counselor. He did the very job that I had been paying him to do, but that I had kept him from doing by hiding information from him.

The diagnosis is depression and anxiety. The outlook is good. Feelings I have ignored for most of my life are feelings I can now acknowledge and confront. I don’t expect the future to be easy. Even Spock had to struggle with feelings and allow them to be real from time to time. But I find myself on the highway to health, instead of on the road I was traveling before. For that, I am grateful.

J.