Reason to Believe

Hey, Cobblestone,

     Feelings are faster than reason. Let’s agree on this much right out of the gate. If you’re betting on a two-horse race in which one is named “Emotions Run High” and the other “Wait – Let Me Think,” go all-in on the first pony. If speed is the only consideration, feelings can’t be beat. But is speed the only consideration all the time? Well, we won’t know for sure unless we think it through. Welcome to reason. Pull up a chair; we’ll be here for the next several minutes.

     Our mission this week in the “Three R’s Series” is to begin redeeming reason. First, then, let’s put it to the standard test – Receive, Reject, or Redeem – but not in that order. You’ve seen my unwavering commitment to redemption, so there’s no use pretending I’m not going there again – it’s only a matter of a couple paragraphs. The other two can be treated as a package, equally wrong for opposite reasons, meaning this: Decisions made on reason alone, to the exclusion of feeling, are cold and heartless – feeling-less decisions are often made on the pretense of pursuing excellence. Conversely, decisions made on feelings alone, to the exclusion of reason, show a disdain for reality – reason-less decisions are often made on the pretense of being purer. In this present Age of Extremes, “total” is the guiding word. Pick your total and don’t budge. Budging is losing. Have you stopped lately to consider poor reason – how lonely it must be?

     God made us to be creatures who reason. If I were confined to one single word of Scripture to offer as proof, the one I would choose is from our Bible reading plan last week: Because (Psalm 116:1). We are creatures of because – something happened first, and other stuff has happened since; there’s a body of evidence, somewhere, and we are called to draw on it. Since I’m not actually confined to a single word, here are the first two full verses of Psalm 116:

I love the Lord, because he has heard
    my voice and my pleas for mercy.
Because he inclined his ear to me,
    therefore I will call on him as long as I live.

    Two because’s and a therefore – evidence and the response thereto. Why do I love the Lord? Because. Why will I call on him as long as I live? Because. Do I feel love for the Lord? Absolutely, except when I don’t. Do I feel his love for me? Absolutely, except when I don’t.

     The redemption of reason involves setting reason and feelings in proper relation. Before we lose track of the Three R’s paradigm, the redemption of reason does not involve vaulting reason to a place of totality; neither does it involve kicking feelings down the basement stairs. For reason to do what it’s built to do, feelings have to be understood for what they are: an invitation to begin reasoning, the starter’s pistol for the powers of deliberation. Reason asks, “Where is the body of evidence, and what does it consist of?” Feelings shout, “Go find it! And get a move on, will ya!” Feelings exist for a reason. Get it?

     If you had asked me thirty years ago which of the opposite errors pertaining to reason were being made more often, I would’ve chosen Receive – reason was being vaulted to a place of totality. In more recent times, I would say there’s been a change, though not a complete turnaround. Best I can tell, to the extent that it affects the acquisition of large amounts of power or money or influence over people, reason is cited as the single criterion in decision-making. Excellence, even the pretense of it, is hard to argue against. At the same time, at ground level, feelings – if for nothing other than their sheer speed – are being given a green light, often without thought. “I just feel like” is the sentence-starter most likely to shut down reason. If you asked me now which error is causing the most harm, I would say the second one, simply because most of life happens at ground level. Decisions made on feelings alone go bad in a big hurry. Is there, then, a way to set feelings and reason in proper relation?

     I try to make a habit of not arguing with CS Lewis, so maybe what I’m going to say next can be viewed as an extension of one of his thoughts – maybe what Lewis would’ve written if he had lived another week or two beyond my third birthday. In Mere Christianity, he describes a battle between faith and reason on one side, emotion and imagination on the other: “…unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off,’ you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.” True, that. But as God created us in his image, emotions were part of the package. They must have a proper use. What happens if feelings are plugged into their intended role?

     Back in the 1980’s and ‘90’s, I was quite the Indy 500 fan. For fifteen straight years I went to the Speedway (Capital S, mind you) for the first day of qualifying for the big race. During that period, I saw a changing of the guard: the superstars of the Sixties and Seventies were gradually being replaced by their juniors. “Gradually” was the weird part; with the huge amounts of energy and publicity (and money) being poured into the younger drivers, there should have been a total switchover in the space of two or three racing seasons. But the old guys – Johnny and AJ and Big Al and Gordie and Emmo – just kept putting cars on the grid for the big show… and winning. In a conversation between racing commentators, I heard a younger one express his puzzlement over the phenomenon. By way of explanation, an older commentator described how the older drivers had what he called “conditioned reflexes.” Sure, the youngsters had quicker reaction times, but having made the wrong move enough times to know how much it hurts, the old guys now tended to make the right move first. To investigate your feelings, rather than green-light them without further thought, is to work them into becoming those conditioned reflexes. CS Lewis would have said it much better, and not resorted to racing analogies. But I hope you get the idea.

     Nowhere in Scripture have I seen God telling us, his people, to abandon reason. Neither does the Holy Spirit guide us into a headlong, uninformed faith. Jesus tells us to consider (Matthew 6:27) the Father’s faithfulness in provision. And here’s one of my favorites, the startling invitation in Isaiah 1:18 – “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD…”  We are reasoning creatures reasoning with our Creator – surely too grand an invitation to pass up!

     Feelings have their place. Reason has its place as well, in every conceivable scenario. To deny either of them its place is to be stuck in immaturity. In my reasoned estimation, reason is the one in greater need of redemption. The maturing believer will employ them both in an orchestrated approach to walking out the life of faith, to doing well and doing good, here in the land of the living.

 

 Grace and Peace (and great heaps of because’s),

 

John