28 April 2024
28 April 2024
Why is Christianity far from LOGIC ?
Someone has asked the question: Why is Christianity far from logic? Is Christianity anunreasonable, illogical faith? Well, my answer actually is both yes and no, but the answer might surprise you a little bit. So, you might want to listen to the end of the answer.
Let’s first start with how Christianity is actually very reasonable indeed. Now, it is true that there have been, and there are today, and there always will be some Christians who are not very reasonable at all, and they’re not very logical at all.
But that’s not because of what they believe. That’s just who they are, and that’s their character, and that’s what they’re like. But there have always been another kind of “Christian”.
A Christian who is very intelligent, very rational, and very logical indeed. And these include some brilliant minds. Some like the early Christians who were philosophers, like Saint Justin martyr, St. Clement of Alexandria, Oregon of Alexandria, St. Augusta. You know, people, not only Christians, but even non-Christians still study their work today because it is so intellectually rich; and in Europe, in the Middle Ages, it was Christians like, Greigo Mendel and Georges Lemaitre who more or less invented modern science.
Both of those men were actually Catholic priests. They were both priests and scientists at the same time. Historians have actually agreed pretty largely -once again, even non-Christian historians agree about this- that it was the belief that there is a wise and loving creator that gave people like Robin Boyle and Isaac Newton and all those like them, the confidence to look for regular laws in the universe.
You see, if you don’t have that idea of a God who made the world and put his wisdom into it, then all you have is something like the pre-Christian, the pagan idea of a world that is just chaos. And if the world is just chaos, then there are no laws. Things just happen because the gods decide they feel like it, or they don’t feel like it.
But only when you believe that a God who loves organization and order created the world in that way, then you can start to look for laws that describe that order. And that’s actually what happened in history. Uh, and often most of those medieval and early modern people who were inventing modern science saw what they were doing as almost a kind of worship, as almost a kind of praise of the God who created this world, Christianity is also rational and logical in another way. And that is that it actually works. It practically works. For example, Christianity teaches values such as charity and forgiveness and mercy and the equal value of all human beings.
And when we actually have a community that follows these kinds of values, everybody’s life gets better. And so, it actually makes sense. Although some of those teachings seem to be odd, like why should we care for the weak in society? Shouldn’t we just let the weak look after themselves? And if they can’t, they can’t, they’ll die and they’ll stop being a drain on everybody else.That’s logical, isn’t it?
But in fact, we know that none of us really wants to live in that kind of a society, because maybe today I’m the strong, tomorrow I might be the weak. it makes so much more sense that we live in a society where we all care for those who are weak; so that all of us are looked after and all of us are able to live a good life.
Now that’s what happens if people follow the teachings of Christ, properly and faithfully. And of course, people who are called Christians have done horrible things in history. There’s no denying that that’s happened, but that’s not really what we’re asking today. We’re asking about whether the teaching of Christianity is logical, whether it makes sense.
And I think that that’s a very good reason to think that it does. So that’s so much for how Christianity is logical and is reasonable. But there is another way in which it’s kind of not logical. There’s an important way in which Christianity is not so much far from logic. It’s not so much the opposite of logic, but it actually raises our minds up beyond above logic. Because human
logic is very limited, and our ways of thinking -although human thought is very rich and beautiful in so many different ways- and yet it’s still limited. And we know that we are limited in our knowledge, still. Even in so many ways. Even in the 21st century. Even in science, there are so many things that we still know that we don’t know,85% of what makes up the universe is stuff that we don’t know what it is.
We just don’t know. if you’ve ever looked into quantum physics, there are so many strange things that just seem utterly illogical. They just don’t make any sense at all to us, but they seem to be the truth about reality.
The problem is not in the nature of the world. The problem is in the limitation of our human minds. And so, Christianity teaches us this humility. Wouldn’t it be strange if we couldn’t even understand our own physical universe properly and fully, and yet we could fully understand God, that would seem to be a very strange thing?
And I have to say to you that: Any God that I could completely understand, I don’t think I would worship him. I don’t think I would think of him as God. He wouldn’t be God. He would just be one other thing in this universe. So, Orthodox Christianity in particular emphasizes this idea that God is beyond our understanding.
He is beyond our logic, that we cannot put him into our tiny little minds. We simply can’t if we could, he would no longer be God. And in that sense, Christianity takes us well beyond or above logic. It’s not that God is illogical. God is not the opposite of logic. God is the creator of logic and he is not bound by logic.
So, when we follow God, when we come to know God, we are entering into a realm of mystery
So, to summarize: Christianity is a very logical faith because it does make sense in so many ways. And when we follow it faithfully and properly, it not only encourages us to be logical -because the world has a logic and an order to it-, but it also gives us a very logical and reasonable way to live our lives and organize our communities, so that we all can live a good life.
But Christianity doesn’t just stop there. It also takes us well beyond logic and that’s where we begin to into contact with the mystery of God, that divine reality that is above any human mind and any human logic. So, one way I want to leave you with, to think about this is that we often want to put God into a little bucket or into a little box, the box of our brains, but that’s not how we find God. And that’s not how we even find truth about even the world that we live in.
Truth is not like something you can put in a box. Truth is more like a huge ocean. And the best that we can hope for is that we would learn to swim in that ocean. And that may be even one day we would find a boat or a ship that would help us to sail in that ocean, so we could explore it. And that ocean has no end. It’s unlimited.
The truth of God is unlimited. And as Christians, we believe that the church gives us that boat that we can ride in that will help us to go further and further into the ocean of divine truth.
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