I have given up reason in order to see with the eyes of faith, for only through faith does the world make sense. Reason reaches its limit with what it can see and hold and measure, but it cannot see what is yet to come. Faith, it says, is the substance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen. These things are not accessible in the natural realm of reason or the senses.
Reason stands at the precipice of mystery and can only look into its abyss with wonder and awe. It cannot measure the unseen, nor count the power of resurrection. It is beyond the mind of man.
Ecclesiastes says “God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” In other words, man can ponder the infinity of time and space, but does not have the ability to comprehend it. Not by natural reason can one understand eternal things or things unseen.
Reason scoffs at faith because it does not understand it. It mocks what it cannot know as if what it does not know cannot be. Who are you, oh finite creature and small of mind, to think that because you cannot fit eternity in your small hand, that things beyond you cannot exist? Were you there when the foundations of the earth and the universe were created? In your blip of existence on this earth, do you think you can see all and know all? You are but dust and to dust, you shall return. What hubris to think we can know there is no God when we cannot even understand why this universe holds together? Could it be that it is held together by Love? Quarks, muons, and bosons are expressions of love holding things together?
It is impossible with Reason alone, but with the eyes of faith, we can see the beginning from the end; for we have the mind of Christ.
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 2:14–16, ESV)
It says we have been given the mind of Christ. What is that? For those who are in faith, in whom the Holy Spirit resides, it is to see truth through a reborn spirit and a spiritual communion with the divine. In the mind of Christ, God speaks to the human soul, and it is heard not with the ears but by the spirit within us. Reason and logic can be an impediment to this communication because they confine understanding to the material world; to that which can be measured by natural means through the physical senses. What has not been seen or experienced with the physical senses cannot be true; or if hoped for, cannot be believed unless encountered.
But the eyes of faith see beforehand what is yet to be, believes, and calls it into being.
By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. (Hebrews 11:3)
We are to walk (or live) by faith, and not by sight, which only the man who has the Spirit of the Living God within him can do. Only by yielding to God’s wisdom and His understanding can we surrender our own and then walk in the presence of Living God. His ways are above our ways and his thoughts above our own. Only in faith and by faith can we be free of the constraints of our self-centered thoughts and deeds. Then our limited minds can be transcended by a heavenly invasion of divine thoughts spoken into our spirits.
Lest someone think that by liberation from reason, we can engage in lawless imagination and create our own truth, it cannot be. For the mind not subjected to Jesus Christ and the Word of God written in Scripture, cannot have the mind of God. Many occult and lawless cults are so led astray, creating their own “revelations” that have nothing to do with the immovable truth set in stone by the Law of God. They are led astray by the imaginations of their own minds. They have not transcended, they have descended into darkness.
To abandon reason as our chief cornerstone of truth is to subject reason to its proper position: to become a servant of faith and not the master of it. For in searching the riches of Scriptures and meditating on the mind of God, the sweet reasonableness of faith is revealed in a relationship of love for God and of God for us. Yes it makes sense, through the eyes of faith and there is a reason in it, but it is not subject to reason; any more than love is subject to reason.
The heart has reasons that the mind cannot comprehend, and chief among those is Love. Love fulfills the heart and the soul in a way that reason cannot. Reason can stand at the edge of love and point to it, but cannot grasp it or reduce it to a mathematical formula. For anyone who loves, has been in love, or longs for love, reason is not and cannot be your master. Reason must sit before the mystery of love and be in awe. Who would not abandon reason for the sake of true love that does no harm? Yet it says: “God is Love.” To be loved by God is to be taken far above these earthly bounds to the glory of a heavenly intimacy that calms all fears, heals all wounds, and restores all hope. Faith and love working together make one truly whole.
Only when we give up trying to confine God to our rational understanding and leap the leap of faith to trust in Love can we find our place of peace and contentment. Reason alone is a faulty guide, like a broken crutch that sends us in circles as we lean upon it. But reason as a servant of faith can lead us straight into the deeper things of God.
I have been burdened with a restless mind always seeking answers and desiring proof but never settled. I have found myself wanting in so many ways. Trying to understand God with my mind has caused me so much doubt and confusion. “How can these things be?” My broken crutch would send me in endless circles. Thinking could point me to the mystery of healings and miracles and faith, but it would not let me cross over. Bound by reason, the thoughts of my natural mind, were prison bars that would not let me trust the God of all creation. Yet slowly yielding my right to be right and my mind to be my master, I have opened the door for God to come in to my house and be all that He wants to be in me. I am just beginning to yield my mind with its limitations to the open-ended possibilities of all that God wants to do. O Lord, let my thoughts be taken captive by you, King of the Universe.
Come, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, and Father: take captive my thoughts and mind and yield them to your will and your way, for the sake of your glory and beauty. Amen.