There is a convenient store that I frequent quite often.
Going to this five-and-dime for the savory breakfast burritos, made by Loraine, soon turned into frequenting it for the lively conversation. Picking up that both Shiraz, the cashier, and Loraine had a razored accent, I had to ask what part of the world they were from. Both came to America from the Middle East around six years prior to our conversation.
Whether its right or wrong, I immediately wondered if they were Muslim. I didn’t take my usual route of asking a ton of questions up front and elected to defer that question for a later time (unless it just came up).
Two weeks ago, I got there about 20 minutes before my scheduled meeting at the office, and Shiraz and I picked up our morning ritual. As we continued to talk, he brought up that he is Muslim. I followed by asking him to shared some of his basic beliefs about Islam, and he did: 1. The belief that god is one (strict monotheism); 2. Mohammed is Allah’s prophet; 3. Jesus was merely a prophet.
None of this caught me off guard, since these are basic tenants of his religious beliefs. His understanding, based on the Quran, that Jesus is merely a prophet and not God contradicts with the Christian faith, and this calls for future conversations where we can discuss our opposing positions with respect to one another.
Have you ever been in this, or a similar, situation where the way you and another person understand something or understand a word are conflicting?
When we discuss topics or words, it helps sometimes to define the terms (i.e., the words). This helps in avoiding the common contradiction of terms fallacy. This is essentially thinking that you and the person you are talking with are talking about the same thing. For instance, when you discuss “sin” with an unbeliever he may think that you are talking about a psychological disposition to violating the common good, while you’re talking about a fallen spiritual disposition to stand opposed to a holy and righteous God. You see where this might cause an argument to go on forever because you both haven’t even agreed on the terms, so you’re arguing for a completely different idea?
In our culture the word faith has taken on a meaning not held by the writers of the Scriptures. It has been saddled with phrases like “blind leap of…”.
In reality the term as intended by the writers of the Bible would be more accurately rendered trust. Now, without going on a long-winded rabbit-trail here, let me just say that trust is earned. Wouldn’t you agree? God has given us an abundance of reasons to trust him via special revelation (the Bible), natural revelation (all of creation), and everything else that surrounds us. There is no place in this universe that God has not planted his flag and said, “mine!”
Many people like to think that faith and reason are opposed to one another, but that is a famously ignorant assertion. If you are to understand faith as defined above, you’ll notice that the opposite of faith is not reason, but distrust. So, when you hear that atheism employs reason and Christians employ blind leaps into the dark known as faith, understand that it is a false dichotomy.
It’s quite common to find Christians saying that reason takes you so far and then you must employ faith as though reason has a ceiling. This was an idea popularized within the church by Thomas Aquinas. Now, if you’re honest with yourself here it seems like something is missing. The fact that at some point we must abandon our reason feels counterintuitive. The reason it seems wrong in this case is because it is wrong.
Reason can be best understood, according to Dr. Paul Henebury, in the sense that “faith is not opposed to reason; but in fact it is served by reason” (Proverbs 1:7). John Frame defines reason as “the human ability or capacity for forming judgments and inferences.” It is a tool to be used to understand what God has revealed both in the Scriptures (special revelation) and in nature (natural or general revelation).
Listen to these words from theologian Jeremy Taylor, “He that speaketh against his own reason speaks against his own conscience, and therefore it is certain that no man serves God with a good conscience who serves him against his reason.”
Would you agree or disagree that reason is a servant of faith? Why or why not?