At a loss

I feel out of touch with my mind or who I used to be. I don't even know if that makes much sense, but that is the way I feel right now. It feels like something has changed in my brain and that I no longer think about things the same way that I used to. It is as if my cognitive abilities took a leave of absence.

Now, while this is true I don't believe it was something that happened overnight either. Several months ago I came upon a really hard period in my life where my mind and faith were pushed to the limits, placed at odds against one another... fighting hard on both sides. They were fighting hard until one day... when i just seemed to snap.

Yup, snapped.

All of a sudden it seemed as if I didn't really care anymore. I remember writing in my journal that I didn't really have any motivation for seeking the truth. I just didn't care anymore. Well, let me tell you that is not a good place to be. In fact it was very hard for me.

During that time though I was picked up from the midst of a broken mess and brought back into the arms of a loving God (had I really ever left?). However, while this was happening I pretty much ignored anything having to do with reason. I didn't think about things very hard. In fact I started spending less and less time reflecting on things. (and if you knew me before hand you would know how much I like to just sit and think... or well how much i had to just sit and process things.)

So thats what I think the problem is. I think that maybe I've been out of it for so long that i'm just out of practice. It's hard to form congruency when you have been living in a jumbled mess... and it takes a while to sort things out. But I want to start doing that again.

However, on the flip side, I don't think that reason will play as big of a role in my faith as it did before. It's not that I am trying to separate the two. In fact, if I don't use reason to some extent i'm bound to end up with all sorts of weird doctrinal errors. But, what I'm talking about is letting reason take precedence over faith. My faith is in God and not in reason. So, even if reason goes against what I feel is true by faith I must walk by faith. I cannot trust reason because reason is limited to a sphere of knowledge.

Now I do not speak these things concerning some doctrinal matters otherwise again i could end up believing all kinds of weird stuff. Instead I try to limit the realm of reason at God and His son Jesus Christ. That is a realm that reason can work for, but it must never touch/control. The Lord is my God and reason will not take His place.

This also means that when I look at issues in theology I look at them differently than before. Whereas I used to trust reasonable thinking to determine the truth, I now have less confidence in the power of reason. This comes from reasoning about reasoning. I realized that my sphere of knowledge would determine the outcome of my reasoning. For instance, in a court of law one must be proved guilty. This is a matter of evidence. If the evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt that one is guilty, then they are found to be guilty (or should be). In a way the amount of evidence in a court trial is comparable to the sphere of knowledge that I am talking about. There could be an important piece of evidence missing that would change the entire trial around. Just as this is true, there could be one piece of knowledge that would totally flip the way one would understand an issue through reason. Therefore, absolute certainty about a topic cannot be arrived through reason.

This does not mean that there is not an "absolute." (if you want to call it that though it has some connotations i don't like) It just means that you cannot completely arrive at it through the use of reason.

However, when we make this conclusion we must be careful that we don't overlook the fact that while reason may not be able to bring us to a complete conclusion concerning things it can bring us within the realm of a reasonable conclusion. Or can it?

In order for something to be a reasonable conclusion it should contain a large majority of the evidence... or of the sphere of knowldge. Of the 100% of the evidence or sphere of knowledge perhaps the amount required for a reasonable assumption would be 80% or so. However, when it comes to God, we can't even begin to imagine the edge of that kind of sphere of knowledge.
His ways are far beyond our ways. We couldn't ever be able to say we have enough information to make a reasonable assumption.

Here I am obviously speaking in spiritual terms, not in terms of science. In science we can determine the validity of a reasonable assumption through experiments and results. It's not exactly that easy to do that with God. God is not something we can master... in fact, He is someOne we could never even hope to master or control, nor should we ever even begin to think we can. May God be revered forever, the eternally blessed God.

So, basically, if I were to wrap this all up in a nutshell, I use reason as a tool, acknowledging its limits. It can help us to be fairly certain about things, but as to their complete certainty it leaves us lacking.

May I say though that when it comes to scripture I believe each point it makes is in congruence with the truth. So, even if it says two things that look like they are contrary, there is a way in which they work together to form the complete picture. The scriptures do not contradict themselves, at least not in their original texts. As for the texts we have now that are not the originals, i take that any apparent contradictions are at fault because of transcription errors, yet all the rest can be trusted. (Though we must not write something off as a transcription error so quickly either.)

ok ok so I rambled about thoughts about reason and the Bible and God and stuff... but thats what I do. so, yeah. Alright... i'll write later hopefully.