The Exercise of Reason as an Act of Worship to God

The Old Testament prophets appealed to reason, the New Testaments apostles appealed to reason, and Christ himself appealed to reason as He demonstrated the Father to us. Therefore, we too should exercise our reason as an act of worship to God, in whose image we are created.

When asked for the greatest commandment in the Scripture, Jesus’ answer included loving God with all your mind (Matt 22:37). Later on, in Paul’s epistle to the Romans, he urges us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1). This includes our mind. Everything we are is to be offered as an act of worship.[1]Therefore, everything we do, i.e. all of life, is an act of worship to God for the Christian believer.

Job reasons with his friends (Job 32:11-12). God tells Isaiah, his prophet, that he should reason (Isa 1:18). In the New Testament, we see John writing his gospel for the explicit reason of giving us evidence for belief (John 20:31). John doesn’t just tell us to believe, he gives evidence for our belief. We see Paul arguing for the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor 15). Again, we see Paul not just giving an authoritative pronouncement to just believe, but he lays out an argument that appeals to his audience’s sense of reason and logic.

Jesus himself uses reason many times. For example, in Matthew, the twelfth chapter, he is asked a question about the lawfulness of healing on the Sabbath. He could have just answered, “Because I said so,” but instead he constructs an argument and appeals to their reasoning abilities. Time and time again in the Scripture, we see appeals to reason instead of authoritarian pronouncements.[2]People expect arguments when they ask how we know something is true. They expect to hear good reasons connected to our answers that are logical and reasonable to the claim that is being made. Why would Jesus appeal to our reason if he didn’t make us in his image and give us intellectual and rational abilities, the faculty we call reason?

When we use reason and make good arguments, we are simply acknowledging who God has made us to be. Making good arguments is part of the Christian life (1 Pet 3:15). Our capacity to reason points back to the fact that we are made in God’s image. Our God is a God of reason and revelation.[3]  Not only are we madein God’s image (Gen 1:27), but we are called to image him to the world (Matt 5:16). When we reason, we show the world what God is like and fulfill part of who God has made us to be.

Sadly, the use of reason has been inappropriately discouraged in the church. It hasn’t always been this way. In fact, the church was the seat of knowledge for hundreds of years. Most of the institutions of higher learning in America were started by Christians and lead by ministers who were also statesmen, men of great intellect, men who believed that all of learning and life were connected. These were men like Jonathan Edwards who sought to be informed in a variety of disciplines.[4]So what caused the pendulum to swing the other way? J. P. Moreland links the rise of anti-intellectualism with American revivalism that produced an intellectually shallow, theologically illiterate form of Christianity.[5]This was a Christianity that began to separate the sacred from the secular, placing faith and reason at odds with each other, and that withdrew from intellectual issues. Christianity was then compartmentalized into a private box and kept separate from the everyday “secular” activities.

I have continued to see this today with friends involved in revivalist style ministries. They place an emphasis on words of knowledge and healings to show the power of God, but neglect sound arguments for the faith. I am deeply charismatic myself and in no way disregard these, but don’t see the use of reason as totally irrelevant or at odds with the power of God. I work at Vanderbilt University (top 14 school in US News and World Report) with some of the brightest young people in America today. They hunger for a deeply emotional, personal, and powerful God. But they also have questions, lots of questions that need good answers. Our biggest outreaches are when we bring in apologists or do apologetic trainings. This is one of the things that prompted me to pursue a Masters in Christian Apologetics.

The false notion of faith and reason being polar opposites should not be promoted from the pulpit. Passages like 1 Corinthians 1-2 and Colossians 2:8 are often distorted. The doctrine of depravity is taken too far making reason irrelevant and the nature of faith is only presented as a matter of the heart, not the head. If preachers propagate these false beliefs, it’s no wonder the congregation will as well. We see this manifest in small group Bible studies when we ask each other what a particular passage means to us personally instead of what it meant and how we can then apply the truth of what it meant to our present lives. A careful exercise of reason is not viewed as being important in our understanding of the Scriptures. Instead, we elevate subjective feelings, sincere motives, and blind faith as our guides overriding the faculty of reason that God has given us.

So, how can we, as followers of Christ, be encouraged to love God with all of our minds? Firstly, we must reconstruct a proper view of the role of reason in the life of a believer. Faith is not blind, it is based on evidence, namely the evidence of the empty tomb! When Paul wrote that Jesus appeared to over 500 people, he also mentioned that many of them were still alive (1 Cor 15:6), in other words, go ask them! Their testimony gives us a good reason to believe.

Secondly, we must push against the culture of mental laziness and consumption. Our culture is one of consumers, not producers. Instead of thinking deeply and writing, it is much easier to turn on a portable device and consume endless media. When I committed my life to Christ in college 26 years ago, one of the first things I did was fast media consumption in my house for six years. I would watch a movie in the theaters or TV in a hotel on a trip or hear the radio in the gym, but in my house, I only wanted an undistracted devotion to Christ. I was amazed at how much Scripture I read when I looked at my watch and realized only 20 minutes had passed, less time than one sitcom. My perspective began to change as I embraced spiritual disciplines like study and solitude. The mind is like a muscle; it must be exercised. You must read beyond your capacity, challenge yourself to engage in conversations with those brighter than yourself, read widely on subjects, and understand how a good theology affects every sphere of life.

Thirdly, we must realize that we are integrated beings and that one area affects another. If you are lazy in your body, you will have a more difficult time developing intellectually. A regular regime of exercise and activity can do wonders for helping you to process what you read. As you develop intellectually, you will be surprised at how much more you begin to see in your Scripture reading— like a trained doctor who hears a respiratory infection when others only hear a cough. This general intellectual development will enrich your life and allow you to see more dots connected between Scripture and all of life. After all, all of life is meant to be given as worship to God (Rom 12:1). This includes our minds.

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[1]Rich Holland, “The Mind and Spiritual Transformation” (video), presentation for APOL 550-B02, accessed January 22, 2017, Liberty University Online.

[2]Rich Holland, “Arguments and Reasoning” (video), presentation for APOL 550-B02, accessed January 22, 2017, Liberty University Online.

[3]J. P. Moreland, Love Your God With All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2012), 610, Kindle.

[4]Ibid., 153.

[5]Ibid., 162-166.