Wednesday’s thoughts
“Take Your Mind and Use It”
It isn’t usual to pick out part of the United Methodist Book of Discipline and quote it in some kind of church event but I think it is instructive as we reflect upon this issue of reason.
The United Methodist Church rewrites its rules every four years. There is a section entitled “The Doctrine of the Church”. There is a part of Doctrine that includes “reason”. This is what it says:
“Although we recognize that God’s revelation and our experiences of God’s grace continually surpass the scope of human language and reason, we also believe that any disciplined thrological work calls for careful use of reason.
By reason we read and interpret Scripture.
By reason we determine whether our Christian witness is clear.
By reason we ask questions of faith and seek to understand God’s action and will.
By reason we organize the understandings that compose our witness and render them internally coherent.
By reason we test the congruence of our witness to the biblical testimony and to the traditions that mediate that testimony to us.
By reason we relate our witness to the full range of human knowledge, experience, and service.
Since all truth is from God, efforts to discern the connections between revelation and reason, faith and science, grace and nature, are useful endeavors in developing credible and comunicable doctrine. We seek nothing less than a total view of reality that is decisively informed by the promises and imperatives of the Christian gospel, though we know well that such an attempt will always be marred by the limits and distortions of human knowledge.
Nevertheless, by our quest for reasoned understandings of Christian faith we seek to grasp, express, and live out the gospel in a way that will commend itself to thoughtful persons who are seeking to know and follow God’s ways.
In theological reflection. the resources of tradition, experience, and reason are integral to our study of Scripture without displacing Scripture’s primacy for faith and practice. These four sources–each guide our quest as United Methodists for a vital and appropriate Christian witness.”
Reason is a resource of faith. How do we employ it? When they call Jesus ‘Rabbi’ does that not imply Jesus was a teacher? Does that not indicate he was a proponent of reason? What was his method of teaching?
If you have thoughts on this subject write me at charlesschuster@fcfumc.net. If you are willing to allow others to read your response click on the ‘comments’ box.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Charles Schuster
To say that religion can be mindless without applying that word to many aspects of our lives almost seems prejudicial. Certainly we can look at our editorial pages in the newspaper and postulate that mindlessness transcends religion into politics, education, and even into the logically sacrosanct area of science.
What is reasonable? More importantly, what is reason? We’re hindered by semantics. Is reason synonymous with comprehension or logic? Is reason based solely on verifiable fact, or is logical argument also involved?
I’d propose that reason, either in religion, or any other thought process is the mental acuity to see beyond the limitations of finite experiences and knowledge. It’s born of humility that acknowledges we don’t know it all and that our experience is not universal. It sees beyond what we think we know to what might be. Reason is not afraid to re-examine our axioms and logical constructs. Reason allows us to tear down what we think we know and to rebuild it to something better. It then drives us to do this over and over.
Reason is radical. Reason is liberating, but to use reason we must not be afraid to see where it takes us.
I believe Jesus’ teachings were full of radical reason. What we knew by law, tradition, and experience was to love our neighbor. His radical reasoning takes us beyond that box and says rethink who your neighbor is. Jesus said you must be born again. Nicodemus found that illogical and incomprehensible. Radical reasoning took this statement beyond our concept of physical birth to demand that we constantly look at and rebuild our lives. Not to be born once, or reborn once more, but to be born again and again and yet again.
Are you obligated to carry a load for a mile? Carry it a second. Radical reasoning takes you past obligation and offers that second mile as a chance to develop a new relationship. Love your neighbors? Go beyond that box and love your enemies. Radical reasoning will force you to ask why they’re your enemies, and why enmity is in any way beneficial. Then you might find that those enemies were really neighbors after all.
So are the stories of Jesus and belief in God reasonable? I really think so. Even if sometimes they don’t make much sense.
And when it makes too much sense, it might be time to look at it yet again.