Imperishable Inheritance

“If we sub­mit every­thing to rea­son, our reli­gion will have no mys­te­ri­ous and super­nat­ural ele­ment. If we offend the prin­ci­ples of rea­son, our reli­gion will be absurd and ridicu­lous. All our rea­son­ing reduces itself to yield­ing to feel­ing. But fancy is like, though con­trary to, feel­ing, so that we can­not dis­tin­guish between con­traries. One per­son says that my feel­ing is fancy, another that his fancy is feel­ing. We should have a rule. Rea­son offers itself; but it is pli­able in every sense; and thus there is no rule.” (273–4)

This is one of my favorite excerpts from Blaise Pascal’s Pensees. I find myself all to often fram­ing my spir­i­tu­al­ity in terms of rea­son and ratio­nal thought. When I first found this quote I real­ized how short-sighted that per­spec­tive is, but I also real­ized that a spir­i­tu­al­ity focused on inter­nal feel­ings is also incor­rect. There must be a bal­ance between ratio­nal­ity and feel­ing in our rela­tion­ship with God.

He makes a good point that if we focus, much to our detri­ment, on only a ratio­nal approach to our faith then it will be void of a mys­te­ri­ous and super­nat­ural ele­ment that is so impor­tant in our faith. God is pre­sented in his word as hav­ing knowl­edge that far sur­passes our own (Psa 139), and Paul says in a dox­ol­ogy: “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wis­dom and knowl­edge of God! How unsearch­able are His judg­ments and unfath­omable His ways!” (Rom 11:33). Clearly, God can­not be con­strained to our ratio­nal processes.

On the other hand we must not sub­scribe our reli­gion to a life with­out thought and ratio­nal con­tem­pla­tion. We are made in the image of God with the intent pur­pose of hav­ing a rela­tion­ship and under­stand­ing of the liv­ing God. The very fact that we are made with the com­mu­ni­ca­ble attrib­utes of God such as love, hav­ing a will, and even rea­son­ing itself so that we might under­stand who God is. The very rev­e­la­tion of Jesus in his­tory is a tes­ta­ment to the fact that God wants us to under­stand who he is. God said to Isa­iah, “‘Come now, and let us rea­son together,’ Says the LORD, ‘Though your sins are as scar­let, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crim­son, They will be like wool’” (Isa 1:18), and the Chris­tians in Berea used their rea­son to exam­ine the Scrip­tures to see if what Paul was preach­ing was true (Acts 17:11).

Blaise clearly says that we must have an absolute source of truth or else we will be rel­e­gated to an amal­ga­ma­tion of thoughts and feel­ings with­out know­ing what is true. God has not left us alone in this regard! Let us exam­ine the Scrip­tures with per­sis­tence to know the liv­ing God, but let us not reduce God to our own fab­ri­ca­tions and con­sign him to exist in our own per­cep­tion of who he is.