Reason, not the enemy of faith.

Reason is the enemy of faith. It’s a quote I saw tonight, from a person who is very logical. I disagree with it.

It’s interesting, if you will, but people try to reason faith away with logic. It’s interesting, a non-Christian, and even Christians (myself included,) try to fit God into our view of the world, into our little boxed in view of how we “think” things work. Do you know how many Christians I’ve heard that from? “But you can’t do that.” “Well, I guess God’s decided not to work this time.”

Excuse me, for a moment, while I fall back on one of my favorite Christian authors, C.S. Lewis. In the second book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe, the White Witch has decided to take Aslan’s life in exchange for Edmund's. Her and her minions danced around the stone table with glee, excited that they were killing the only enemy that had a chance of defeating their rule. Later, the stone table broke, Aslan was back, he broke her magic & brought more armies to the great battle where her wand was broken and she was finally killed, with a look of fear and shock and confusion on her face. I believe this was not unlike Satan’s shock & fear when he found out that death could not hold our Lord. He thought he’d won. It was not within his scope of understanding, that the earthly realm and the things that happen within it, were bound within a stronger law, that the laws of God for all eternity. Like the witch not understanding that she was not seeing the laws that were in place before Narnia was created.

It’s almost as if we compared everything to an egg, and our universe and existence, where we lived was in the yolk. Yet we never saw the shell or the masters hand holding egg, yolk, shell and all in His hand. Until God cracks the egg & takes us out of the yolk, where we live, and we see His face and eternity, do we realize that, yes, there were rules that we had to live by in the yolk, but they were only a shadow to the rules outside the yolk.

That’s what faith is. It’s an eternity rule. It’s a gift from God. It comes from listening to or hearing God’s Word. And according to Hebrews 11, it’s like flour to bread, it’s the substance of things hoped for. It’s also evidence of things not seen. Can any of us see, taste or touch our salvation? No. But we know we have it.

I wonder. If we had been there in Jesus day, when He walked the earth. And we tried to use reason to convince the blind man that could see, or the leper that was clean & whole, or the lame man that could walk, or the centurion whose daughter was healed, or Lazarus who was brought back from the dead, that Jesus wasn’t really the Son of God and that everything was a fluke; I think they would’ve laughed or smiled at us, quietly, maybe sadly & then ran off to continue spreading the news to people who would listen. We would then take our aloof, logical selves and sit down with the Pharisees & Sadducees, and discuss reasonable ways to explain away the miracles & the faith.

Maybe the simplest thing to say is, that faith is trusting God.

I said all of this to say, No, Friday morning didn’t turn out the way we hoped. But if it had, who would’ve gotten the glory? Fannie Mae, a law firm, or God? So, what’s changed between Thursday & Friday? Is God off the throne? No. Has His ability to care for His children changed? No.

So, continue to trust with us & continue to pray with us. God is faithful. We are still trusting Him. Even when we don’t know what the next 30 days will bring.