NOTE (1/12/18): We’re all learning and growing.  Some of the stuff I’ve written in these old posts may no longer be exactly what I believe or think, or at least may not be articulated the way I’d do it nowadays.  I preserve them in an attempt it to be transparent about my journey, and in the hopes that readers may still glean some insight from the core ideas found here.  Thanks for journeying with me!

A recent survey at my school showed that 66% of students here don’t attend “religious services”. From what I gather, the general attitude of people towards religion is that it was a thing our forefathers believed in simply because they were not informed – and now that we have knowledge, religion has become a thing of the past except to those who have, uh, not been informed, either because they fear their leaders or fear change or whatever (You can read my thoughts on “religion” here).
To add to it, Hebrews 3:12 says “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God”. Verses like these seem to have morphed into meaning “Don’t ask whether God exists. Just blindly believe, or else you will be punished.”

I would like to propose that this is completely wrong. I would also like to propose that God pretty much thinks the exact opposite. Pharisees “blindly believed”, and Jesus wasn’t too fond of them (Matthew 23 anyone?).

Guess what? I think that you’re allowed to think. In fact, you’re supposed to. I am with Galileo. He said this: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, has intended us to forgo their use.”

“Alright,” you say. “I am going to try to intellectually try to make sense of God.” Good. But hold your horses. As you’re doing your thinking, understand these two things that they won’t tell you in Mosaics class:

1. Your mind is not bigger than God’s and therefore you can’t understand everything that He does. As Francis Chan said, “Not being able to understand God fully is frustrating, but it is ridiculous for us to think we have a right to limit God to something we are capable of comprehending.”

2. Facts aren’t always research papers or surveys or books. They are just things that resonate with you. Just cuz someone’s a professor or doctor or whatever just means the world stamped their seal of approval on them. Doesn’t mean that God does, or that “lesser” people might not have more insight. Even Freud, who was NOT of the monotheistic type, said: “Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.” Or take a play that I heard of, where someone had a line that said “Research shows that people who pray aren’t any happier than those who don’t” – I say, maybe in general that’s true, but I dare you to show up when my house prays on a Saturday night. Seeing people getting healed and set free makes us pretty happy, regardless of what “research shows.”

This concept of relationship over facts isn’t just something in the Bible. I mean, look at any human relationship – who bases a relationship entirely on factual evidence about the other person? Aren’t you missing the whole, um, relational aspect? Check out the Principles vs. Relationship section in this article for more on this. But heck, I even found this concept smack in the middle of a play I read last week called Proof. I’ll give you the gist of it here: So there’s this guy, Hal, and he has just returned to this girl, Catherine, to tell her that he now believes her when she says that she is the author of a new mathematical proof that will change the world, because he has now checked it out with his friends, compared her writing to the writing on the proof, and done a bunch of research. But here is Catherine’s fascinating response to his newfound “faith”:

CATHERINE: You think you’ve figured something out? You run over here so pleased with yourself because you changed your mind. Now you’re certain. You’re so…sloppy. You don’t know anything. The book, the math, the dates, the writing, all that stuff you decided with your buddies, it’s just evidence. It doesn’t finish the job. It doesn’t prove anything.

HAL: Okay, what would?

CATHERINE: NOTHING. You should have trusted me.

Are you following? The point is this: God’s not afraid of you trying to figure out if He’s real. He’d much rather have someone who actually knows what He’s like rather than have a cowering slave trying to avoid the lash. Let’s be like the Bereans and eagerly examine things for truth (Acts 17:11). BUT let’s also remember to not limit God to what we can comprehend with our minds. This isn’t ignoring the intellect, it’s simply putting it in its rightful place – in submission to our spirits, which will allow us to go much farther than the confines of our mind ever could.