Jesus heals a paralyticSlice of Infinity Snippets:
Sermon on the Mount
In many circles today, we are given the impression that we face a choice between thinking and faith. We are given the impression that somehow the postures of faith and reason are mutually exclusive. We live with words in our culture that seem to confirm a divide between fact and value. There is a real world of objective things, science, and hard realities; and there is the world of tastes, opinions, and personal values. The gulf, we are told, is real and to be held to at all times. This division is further reinforced by the notion of public and private worlds, whereby one set of values or criteria rules in one sphere and a different set rules in the other. And this is then often compounded in the church with the divide between sacred and secular. The language employed is one that clearly divides that which is deemed "of God"--preaching, praying, and evangelism--and that which is deemed of "the world"--business, politics, media, and so forth.
Within such a context, belief is seen as something mystical, existential, and defying rational boundaries or requirements. For the Christian in such a context, thinking, theology, and reasoning can be seen as unnecessary distractions to "simple" or "pure" faith.
Yet the biblical reflection of faith is quite the contrary. Throughout Scripture we are reminded of what it means to be made in the image of God, and what it means to live and function in a created order. God has given us various faculties that are the vehicles of our knowing and understanding. Reason, experience, and revelation are all legitimate means and provisions of God for us and to us.
In the words of the prophets and the cries of the psalmist we see many references to reason in relation to faith. The book of Job is an extended discussion on the "reasonableness" of Job's situation, and though reason does not discover a right answer and makes many blunders, it is not refuted in and of itself. The entire wisdom tradition enjoins the pursuit of knowledge and understanding as an expression of worshipping God. Nowhere do we get the impression of blind faith or esoteric leaps into ecstatic union.
Moreover, in the life of Jesus, the sound use of soul, heart, and mind is further exemplified. His teaching required careful listening and comparison, as in the Sermon on the Mount. He asked questions which were structured to require reasoning, such as in the healing of the paralytic. Even when asked by John about whether he was the Christ (Matthew 11:1-6), Jesus essentially tells John to think through his own conclusions, sending messengers back to report what they heard and saw. Christ's use of questions, parables, and dialogues shows boldly that reasoning is not ruled out of our spiritual life but is a central component of it.
Indeed, when reason and faith are set up as juxtaposing postures, much is lost. Authors R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley describe the current divisions among us with a warning: "The church is safe from vicious persecution at the hands of the secularist, as educated people finished with stake burning circuses and torture racks. No martyr’s blood is shed in the secular west. So long as the church knows her place and remains quietly at peace on her modern reservation, let the babes pray and sing and read their Bibles, continuing steadfastly in their intellectual retardation: the church’s extinction will not come by sword or pillory, but by the quiet death of irrelevance. But let the church step off the reservation, let her penetrate once more the culture of the day and the face of secularism will change from a benign smile to a savage snarl."
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