Flavors of Reason

Western reasoning gets in the way of everything, even in ways we don’t realize.
We can be smart enough to recognize when something needs only concrete logic. If you drop a rock on your foot, it will hurt; if you touch fire, it will hurt. That’s physical science; we get that.
We can be smart enough to recognize when something requires abstract logic. That’s the whole point of analysis, where we examine the world around us and try to recognize patterns. We see how certain types of phenomena work according to the same principles. We learn the details of one instance and can discover how it applies to other instances that are not exactly the same, but seem related. After awhile, we refine our understanding of the underlying principles until we can reliably predict what will happen when we do this or that by abstracting the principles from reality.
We can learn those things from others by deductive logic. If we find someone is a reliable source of information on reality, we listen when they assert basic principles and apply them in other cases. We build an understanding much more quickly because we don’t have to discover the basic principles for ourselves. Someone is able to explain convincingly and on our level, and we build from their work.
We can also learn when things we’d like to say require encoding. We learn to use symbols for words and sounds, and we transmit our knowledge much more efficiently. So we abstract our communications and people can deduce the meaning by a common standard of symbolic communication. Computers, anyone? We reach out to reduce the entire pool or human knowledge into symbols any computer can pass down a wire to another. We now have the luxury of instant access to more knowledge than any of us can possibly process, much less use.
But this is not the same as symbolic logic. Symbolic logic is a very ancient form of reasoning; it assumes there is an active force in this world which is not part of this world. It posits humans could, in theory, have a faculty for dealing with this outside force, but it would have to be a faculty above logic and reasoning, per se, because anything powerful enough to intrude on this universe must be more powerful than anything inside it. And we further deduce it would be awfully hard to discuss it with anyone if we don’t possess the means of communication to tap into that other person’s super-intellectual faculty. If we could, it would surely be something we couldn’t simply write in symbols. It would require symbols inside the symbols, a symbolic logic that is simply too much for human communication itself, because it’s too much for the intellect, which is the foundation of communication. Symbolic logic is not exactly rational in nature.
The whole question of dealing with forces greater than the universe itself demands something above our conscious human level. I can’t prove it because it’s outside the range of proof, in the sense that you could surely find an alternative explanation for things I claim reveal something from that greater force. If the existence of that higher level is not self-evident, there is nothing I can do to help you with it. If you find it self-evident, then there is grounds for trying to communicate something about our individual experiences with that self-evidence.
If that outside force gets involved in the process by communicating in some way, it changes the whole picture. That is, we assume this higher force is able to accurately assess what we need in order to cooperate. However much that demands from us, we are compelled to try. A critical element of that is gaining use of symbols. By our own human level reasoning, we realize the best we can hope for is communication that is not descriptive of things which are above description, but are indicative of what we can do with those things. If there isn’t anything we can do with it, we dismiss it. Most folks end it right there, of course, which is what we call agnosticism. For some of us, there is a compelling call to accept the notion we can do something with it. We can’t own it with our minds, but our minds can be instructed on some level. That’s where the symbols come into the picture; the symbols are indicators.
The symbols don’t obey the rules of lesser levels of reasoning. They are bigger, and seem out of focus, sort of fuzzy. They are granted from that higher force, so we are compelled to use them, but we can’t possibly control them. Our only hope is to deduce their meaning by how they act in any given context. That effort awakens a slender link between our higher faculties and our minds. Something in us responds to a question of the mind: Now what? It carries that question up to the higher faculty, which then answers back with some imperative. The mind struggles to make sense of whatever pattern it can discern. The process is never completed, so we remain open to fresh applications of the symbols all the way to the day we die. We don’t lose confidence, because we discover that higher faculty is more reliable than the rest of our entire human nature.
The Old Testament uses a lot parabolic or symbolic language. It is designed to call upon our higher faculty to engage the situation and learn how to apply the imperatives of that higher force. Jesus used parables that way. It was designed to keep out those who lacked the higher faculty because people who run around insisting on relying entirely on the lesser human capabilities were unable to act according to the imperatives. It wasn’t exactly a question of having that higher faculty, but using it. In essence, if you don’t exercise and build that link between the higher faculty and the mind, and learn to trust that higher faculty, you have no business pretending you can do God’s business reliably. You’ll keep trying to force Him into your intellectual constraints, and you will be wrong when it counts the most.
Humans without that higher faculty can move a lot closer, but it’s been centuries since any corpus of learning has been sought by humans trying to learn about it, at least on a wide scale. In fact, I submit to you that religious pagans have been working harder on it than just about anyone, certainly more consistently than the Church. The Church seems intent on denying the real deal and demanding we keep everything within the constraints of human intellect and a very human frame of reference. Virtually everything churches have done for the past few centuries is entirely under the power of human control, and views with great suspicion anything that smells like it comes from outside it. Thus, when someone gets a taste of that higher faculty, there is no background of teaching to guide it. That results in a lot of wacky stuff. It’s not God’s fault; He’s doing what He promised to do. The wacky stuff is our fault for not keeping alive the knowledge offered in the Old Testament.
Everything God did to establish a proper frame of reference has been thrown in the trash, and the first to trash it was Judah. When Christians began to reclaim the heritage, the Jews fought tooth and nail to take it away from them. In one sense, they succeeded, in that the infrastructure for that broad understanding leaked away from the churches rather early.
It didn’t go away completely, but it was buried in the sands of time. I’m struggling to recover some of it, and I have no way to gauge how well I’m doing. There are others involved and we share the labor but I don’t yet see a way to share the fellowship of the struggle. Too many of those contributing aren’t interested in actually using it. It makes their discoveries a little suspect, but it’s all we have. It’s quite possible the community of those willing to work together on this will remain small. I don’t pretend to know God’s plans on this matter. I know only what He demands of me.
Part of that demand is offering a prophetic warning to Christians. I have to trust the higher force — God — to work out all the things I can’t handle, which is an awful lot.
Let me leave you with this: If you aren’t otherworldly, you are too worldly. There is no stark clean line of departure between what the flesh can accomplish and what the Spirit does. It can only be perceived from that higher faculty. You can accomplish a lot of good in the flesh, but for some small portion of all that, you’ll miss the point and God doesn’t get the glory — people are not given a glimpse of that higher realm. You cannot understand the Cross with your minds alone. No amount of theologizing will produce the right answer. It still requires you and God together in communion on that higher plane where He exists, using that higher faculty to bring the Cross to life inside your soul. Then you are in a position to put into practice what you cannot possibly explain.
We tilt our awareness toward a readiness for any part of our human processes to be interrupted by the Divine. We don’t have to understand much about it, only understand that there is a demand that we obey. Attempts to explain will require those symbols that can’t quite be defined. We have to say things like, “I’m not sure I can explain to your satisfaction, but if I don’t do it this way, I’ll be guilty of disobeying God.” To the flesh it looks like mere sentiment or emotion, something lower the reason. We cannot possibly convince the flesh otherwise, and who’s to say in “real” terms it isn’t? There is no certain proof on this level, only the sense of divine peace we can’t explain.
Thus, I may still have a divine necessity of dropping a rock on my foot despite knowing it will hurt. There are other decisions I’ll make contrary to human logic because symbolic logic is above that. We discount suffering as a steering component on itself. We examine human suffering in light of whether it matters at that moment in spiritual terms. The flesh is just a tool, and our entire human existence is merely a passing resource in service to something outside this universe. We take care of the flesh so much as God says it matters to Him, not on any other basis. We offer comfort to others who suffer, but only the comfort God says He wants us to offer, not the comfort which human logic says is demanded by the need. We use human reasoning when the Spirit is silent, which isn’t very often. We default first to the symbolic reasoning of the Ancient Hebrew traditions, which many people call “mysticism,” then slide on down to deductive reasoning, then abstract, and finally concrete reasoning.
There is no answer to the question of what a symbol means without a context in which to apply it. When that makes sense to you, we can talk to each other about following Christ.