Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other.
~Martin Luther, 1483-1546
There shall come forth a Shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
~ from Isaiah 11
For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in Ephesians 1
Oh beloved, it is true. There is within each of us a wonderful machine. G_d, in His own manifold wisdom, has knit together within the head of each of us an organ which can process gargantuan amounts of data and synthesize it into useful information. Supercomputers with tens of thousands of processors still wince at the idea.
The brain is a beyond-amazing processor and storer of information. The ability of the brain to match patterns and moments and sounds and smells, and then to nearly instantly synthesize them into a coherent memory that is both relevant and helpful to the moment we are now in will probably never be matched (by technology) in exactly the same way a human being does it.
For the brain is not just a machine. It is an interface.
The brain is the enormous demarcation between the body and the soul. The brain branches up and out in complexity from the base out into temporal lobes and other processing and “experiencing” areas to create this connection between the body and the mind.
Even with the brain’s gargantuan abilities, though, it is but a reduction gear for a much higher order of magnitude organ within us. The mind (or soul) is not a sense of being that comes from the activity of the brain (though the soul can surely be affected by its own interface with the brain). The soul is that which is us. The soul is the combined reality, and affective and expressive ability of what a homo sapiens is. From the soul, flow intellect and true emotion and the sense of our identity. The soul is what you see in the eyes of a person (at least most of them) when they are looking directly at you.
Yet even this is not enough to define what a truly alive human being is. The soul, in its unmappable ineffability, is but a secondary interface, geared up to be able to connect across all dimensions of reality to our spirit. The spirit of a man is that which has been designed by G_d to allow us to actually connect with Him and to enter into actual communion with Him (read an infinite, eternal and Triune Being.
So, reason can lead us to the proposition that man is tripartite, and ultimately spiritual. But reason cannot comprehend this reality. Reason dwells down in the processing between brain and soul. And as such, reason is merely the stuff that is validated and even made self-evident by the flesh to which the soul is attached. Reason can (and should) bow to higher truth, but it will only bow when made to do so. For again, reason is attached to that part of us which cannot be redeemed. The flesh will always assert itself in damning pride.
Let’s change gears for a moment.
Try this on for size. We, the body of Christ, are but a finite manifestation of the the single Firstborn of the brethren. This Man is now a fully spiritual man (read more real than we are now). Now, all the good works possible in Christ are not one bit diluted by being spread among some one billion true believers. In reality, they are magnified into a spiritual symphony of works that are much greater than what Jesus did while He was on this planet.
Here is what this fool of a writer is really trying to say: We are dealing with Truth so enormous and Love so big and Freedom so encompassing; that for us to think that mere reason, or human ability to think can comprehend these realities – is simply synonomous with foolish pride.
So, for us to begin to understand Truth, we have to begin to think big. And when i talk about thinking big, i am talking about thinking at a completely different level, and in a completely different part of our being. We must learn to spend our existence in the spirit. For only in this part of who we are, is there even the capacity to take in the near-infinite flows of reality we can and should be experiencing as we grow in Christ.
And this is what Paul is talking about in the passage above. We are to connect our thinking to the thinking of His Spirit. Our mind must become His. And when we allow ourselves to do this, we begin to see well beyond the simple constructs of academic and scientific and political and economic thinking. We begin to see forever for what it is, and now for what it most surely is not.
So yeah, rational thinking is good (when it bows the knee to revelation). One of the greatest intellectuals of all time seems to thinks so…
So, are you often feeling at the end of your ability to understand what is happening in the salvation He has provided for you? Good. Tonight is your night beloved. Time to shift gears up into the spirit, and allow His mind to be yours.
