Reason is a tool, a way of approaching things. Most jobs require more than one tool. Rationalism is restricting yourself to just one tool. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If all you have is reason, you will miss things that cannot be perceived through reason.
If you wade into the ocean with a cup and scoop up some water, you would be a fool to say, “I have the ocean in my cup.” What you have is one tiny sample of the ocean water at that location on that particular day, at that particular time of day, in that particular season, during that particular year. The content analysis of that cup of ocean water could change significantly at other times. But the whole approach of rationalism is that those changes don’t matter; whatever you can make of the contents at that moment is all you really need to know. It treats reality as a static thing.
So maybe you are particularly bright, and your container is a bucket that holds more. And maybe you travel around the world, stopping from time to time in many places, both along the shore and out in the middle of the ocean, to scoop up another containerful of ocean water. Maybe you will get a better understanding, if you do this long enough. You still wouldn’t understand the ocean.
Someone who leaves their cup/bucket on the shore, and wades out into the water with a different sense of things, a different level of perception, will end up with a totally different notion of the ocean. They try to feel the power, the rhythm, and sense the force of life at work there. They gain a sense of their insignificance and the vastness of Creation. You don’t get that from reason. You can get a little of that from an artistic temperament, but it won’t really change you. To come away from that moment in the ocean changed, to merge yourself a little with the totality of the ocean, you have to work from a much higher faculty than intellect and emotion.
To encounter God in that moment requires both the heart and the spirit. There is simply no way I can use human language to tell you about the Spirit Realm and how things work there. The best I can do is use parables to indicate to you something of the essence of what your heart will experience when you encounter the Spirit Realm. (That zone of encounter is what we call “the moral sphere”.) I might be able to help your mind prepare for the rolling waves of imperative that come crashing down on your fleshly nature. It’s possible I can suggest things that allow your conscious awareness to rise above mere reason and feeling. But it’s really between you can God.
There’s no sin in scooping up ocean water in a container. There’s no harm in trying to analyze the physical contents. There’s folly in thinking that doing so will provide sufficient answers to your life.
Rationalism does not and can not give purpose.
I recently listened to a Q&A with Dr. William Lane Craig. He spent most of the time explaining rational reasons for believing. Towards the end of the interview he was asked a pointed question of whether it was better to accept the resurrection of Jesus on the basis of evidence or revelation. His answer? That it is vastly better to accept it on the basis of revelation.
There are people who try to accept revelation on a rational basis, but the results are not encouraging to watch. You have to accept revelation because you can’t escape it.
Most people have an implicit and nearly unshakable faith in their own reason that they are not consciously aware of because they are blinded by pride. Anything that threatens the illusion that they are or can be the masters of themselves and reality is automatically rejected in numerous and ingenious ways by that cowardly pride which is, for most, hidden from the person it rules. It is a vicious circle that can only be broken by the grace of God and revelation.
That implicit and unshakable faith in reason remains unchallenged and unmasked in churchianity. They claim to follow the Word of God in the Bible but they do so while eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil instead of the tree of life.
It requires a great deal of humility to let go of ones control of reality via reason. That control is a an illusion, but it is an illusion that I often prefer to the truth because the truth is so hard on my flesh and pride.
Being a prophet is a thankless task. You are called to reveal the truth in love that would set people free, but instead they see you as a threat to themselves. It is a bit discouraging that you do not have a larger platform, but I am not surprised given the nature of your work work and calling.
Thanks, John.