Preacher: Rev. Joel Beyer
Series: Seven Rules Every Christian Should Break
Keywords: rationalism
Summary:
Today we’re looking at this concept Rationalism, or the belief that contact with God can be found through the clarity of your observations or the consistency of your logic. Rationalism is the belief that you can find God with your mind. In other words, if any particular faith is true or good, then it must make rational, reasonable sense.
Detail:
If I say we live in a postmodern world, do you know what that means? I’m pretty sure this concept has been thrown around enough in the past 20 years that we mostly know what it means. Many have labelled this way of predominant thinking as the belief that “There are no absolute truths”, but really all it is a skepticism of once widely accepted truths. Whereas modernism claimed that the way to progress was to get the facts, to test everything, to use science to know anything and everything we can and with our minds bring about technology to solve hunger, sickness, fatigue and war. But then the unthinkable happened, and in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. Modernism had advanced far enough that its power was demonstrated in the abuses of a few corrupt men. And so slowly a cultural movement began that emphasized the validation of personal experience and pushed back against the cold, tired, and disheveled, optimism of modernism. Postmodernism, in reaction to modernism, is the belief that reality is only apparent, a variety of evolved social constructions, always subject to change. The true reality is that nothing can be actually tested and shared in any objective, non relative way. Even your daily conversation about how much you love pizza is a facade. What is pizza? Chicago style? New York Style? That weird thing they call pizza in Europe? Everything is limited to your own personal experience.
Nowhere was this shift in culture more evident, well apart from the free love hippies of the 60’s, than in the most popular film series in the history of the world: Star Wars. Capitalizing on Postmodernism’s pushback against the modern scientific world, Han Solo looked Luke Skywalker in the eye and said “May the force be with you”. It was more than just a catchy line, it was a turning point in Western civilization. Instead of relying on cold calculating force, weaponry and strategy, as their enemy did, Luke Skywalker leads a band of misfits to fight back and their new hope is that he learns how to wield the most un-modern of all possible weapons: RELIGION. It’s only after an aged warrior monk tutors him from beyond the grave to manipulate the magical energy field that holds all things together. “Use the force, Luke”. He fires two hyper-scientific proton torpedoes from his X-wing, but then he literally “prays” them into a ventilation shaft to trigger a chain reaction that destroyed the Death Star.
Mysticism was back! The power is in you to alter reality. If you just believe! In 2006 a book called The Secret came out, recommended by Oprah, which was really a self-help book, but it was founded on the premise that the universe is made up on an energy field each individual can control by exercising practiced will-power. 21 million Americans forked over $15 each in order to be taught the exact same religion a little green man named Yoda once taught Luke Skywalker in a swamp on Degobah. Your feelings make you powerful! Since Star Wars, Postmodernism has taken a hold, but that doesn’t mean that the reason driven - rationalism of modernism was done fighting yet. In fact, in 1993, Star Wars Episode 1 came out. I was just 8 at the time, but I remember flocking to the theaters with everyone else to see this franchise reignited. I even collected all the star wars soda cans that came out that year. But something happened in that first movie that no self-respecting Star Wars fan had ever heard of or dreamed of, yes Jar-Jar Binks was an annoying looney toon and the pod races seemed like glorified go carts, but the true blow to the Star Wars franchise were midi-Chlorians, or microscopic organisms that live inside Jedi Knights, acting as conduits by which the force can be used. But wait a minute. Wasn't the Force supposed to be an inexplicable mystical energy field that held all things together and was channeled through sheer strength of will, aided by religious devotion? Nope. Sorry to disappoint you. As it turns out Luke didn’t guide those torpedoes using super prayer juju. Instead, he merely inherited from his father a very unique and quite advanced bacterial infection.
So what this means is that we now live in a world where you can believe anything you want, and nobody can really know truth at all, so whatever is true for you is true for you, and whatever is true for me is true for me, but at the same time your truth also has to be rational! Anything, even the Force can and should be explained by science. In the postmodern age, even mysticism needs to be Rational.
We’re in a series called Broken, where we’re looking at some of the “Christian” rules that aren’t really that Christian at all that have caused many people’s faith in Christianity to be broken. So far we’ve talked about Mysticism, and last week we touched on Moralism. Today we’re looking at this concept Rationalism, or the belief that contact with God can be found through the clarity of your observations or the consistency of your logic. Rationalism is the belief that you can find God with your mind. In other words, if any particular faith is true or good, then it must make rational, reasonable sense.
On the one hand, this is a good thing! In fact, Reason is good! Reason is a God-given gift! Don't go out of here today with the idea, “Oh Pastor Joel said we shouldn’t be reasonable, rational, people." No! I'm not saying that! In fact God gives us reason! We have the ability to not just follow instincts, but to weigh pros and cons. Should I run five miles this morning? Or eat this donut? How about both! He gives us minds to solve problems and maintain relationships with one another. I honestly think the reason God put both man and women on this earth is because He thought it would be funny to see them spend millennia trying to figure each other out, like some cosmic mystical puzzle! He gives us a beautiful, complex world to explore and discover and utilize our creativity to make things better. And in many ways, it's been a blessing over the years. To see the way medicine has advanced even in the past 100 years is truly remarkable. Reason is good! But when it comes to our relationship with God, and things that we have and will always have limited understanding and knowledge of, such as how did this world come into being, human reason can only take us so far, and in fact, can hinder us in the search for real truth.
The unbeliever takes Rationalism and starts with the premise that since you can’t observe and test God, that God doesn't exist. That we can shake off the chains of this world and free our minds from mental slavery by thinking our way out of it. And so they’ll begin to point to coming silver bullets that we as humans have been waiting for. They will tell stories of how one day man will merge with computer and overcome the grave altogether. They will hypothesize about the discovery of the “multiverse” where we will one day discover that the thing we call “God” is just another creature like us sitting at his desk working for someone he calls “the Man”. Postmodern rationalists will even believe that there really is an energy holding all things together that you can manipulate by focusing the thoughts of your mind, like a Jedi. The religion of Rationalism, without God, is anything but reasonable at all. They’ll believe anything as long as God didn’t say it. And it takes real faith to follow down that trail.
But the believer can also allow this Rationalism to sink into The Christian faith as well. And it happens when we listen to the same lie, that our ancient first father and mother did. The lie that we can know more than God! That all truth is relative to your experience. That postmodern truth that is not so postmodern at all. That there is no such thing as real truth. And so we, too believe the lie of Rationalism and in many ways it leads us to DISTRUST God’s Word. You might remember this little exchange:
Genesis 3:1-5 — Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You[a] shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
We have a clear Word from God too! It’s a collection of books called the Bible in which God inspired real people to write down His will throughout the ages. In it, He has imparted all the wisdom and knowledge we need, answering the biggest questions of life such as why are we here and how can we be saved from sin and death? He sent His Son this earth as a man, who was also God Himself, to speak to us in human words about these truths. Satan made Adam and Eve distrust God’s clear word to them by saying it didn’t rationally make sense. You know better! God wants to hide true knowledge from you. And He does the same to us. We hear this lie all the time and it usually sounds something like this: Can you really know what God’s will is? Yeah, we have the Bible, but wasn't that written a really long time ago? That’s just your interpretation…There might be some of God’s Word in there, but obviously there are some mistakes too…Don’t be foolish! Find YOUR truth in Scripture. And so instead of humbly placing ourselves under God’s will and seeking HIS truth, the only truth, in the Scriptures where He’s promised that truth and life are, we impose our own will and reason and formed interpretations based on what is reasonable instead of what is true.
That is why we have so many divisions today in Christianity. Christians have split on issues for thousands of years because many have taken the truths of Scripture, or God’s clear spoken word to us and abused it by superimposing their reason on top of it. We can say, yes, well its impossible to read and study any source without using reason and that is true, but where should our reason start? Should it start with our own corruptible worldly reason? Should we start with what the Pope says, or with our understanding of the laws of nature, and human philosophy? Many times we’re tempted to because it “makes sense”. But the answer that Paul gives is that Christian reason begins with Christ and Him crucified on the cross!
1 Corinthians 1:18 — For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
To the world, the cross does NOT make sense. A perfect God, creator of the universe, willingly allowing himself to be murdered? Where’s the reason in that? Where’s the power in that? Where’s the ability to overcome life’s problems with that? How do we advance as a people with that? It’s not rational! But it is this glorious Gospel, so far removed from the wisdom of this world, that God decided to redeem this world. Not through effort, or will, or force, or strength, but through humility and weakness and LOVE.
1 Corinthians 1:21-24 — For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Without Christ Jesus, crucified, it would just be up to our own reason and interpretation to know God. But Christ reveals all of Scripture. He is the interpretation of the Scriptures, and Him alone! Jesus is the law-fulfilling, grace imparting REVELATION of who God is FOR US! He showed that the law of God is perfect, and we are expected to be perfect! Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. But in doing so, He also showed us that none of us can be perfect. It is impossible. He condemned the Pharisees as hypocrites because they followed the letter of the law, but inwardly they were arrogant and murderous. But He also revealed the unending mercy and love of God toward sinners by dying in our place. And when He destroyed death by coming back to life, as He said he would, we can trust His words ever more when He promises that all who believe and trust in Him will never die, but will have eternal life.
Not to mention the fact that the Bible is the most literarily trustworthy historical document in the world, we can trust the words of Scripture because a God who comes to this world to speak to us in Human language to impart the Wisdom of God through His own Son Jesus taking on human flesh cares about those Words he shares. And so we study them, and we memorize them, and we use them to stay strong in our faith, even when this world tries to convince us that God has abandoned us. We cling to the words of Jesus because they are the power of God and the Wisdom of God. And our reason stems from that profound truth.
Post-modernism is here in a big way. But so is Rationalism. And as we wade through the changing tide of what culture believes is reasonable and rational and true, may we rejoice in the fact that, kind of like praying into a ventilation shaft, the cross of Christ doesn’t make sense according to the world, but it works! And to those who believe it is the power and the wisdom of God!
God doesn’t want you to discover him through science or history, or reason or experiment, or logic and philosophy although those can be tools to understand the world he created. God wants you to know that He has already found YOU in Jesus. And Jesus speaks. Real words. Words that He left behind as His testimony. Words that are written. Words that are true. Amen.
*Series based on the book Broken: 7 ''Christian'' Rules That Every Christian Ought to Break as Often as Possible by Jonathan Fisk
