A denial of reason
Jesus is a denial of reason.
At first glance, such a statement seems out of place. How can a person be a denial of reason? It confuses two categories. We analyse ideas with our rationality. Ideas are reasonable, but to call a person a denial of reason seems to suggest the person is an affront to our rationality.
If this is the case, they are exactly right! Jesus is even more catastrophic for our reason than we realise.
The coming of Jesus shows us that we humans are completely unable to help ourselves. Humans have done so well on earth because we possess a great capacity to solve problems. We apply our reason to seemingly intractable issues and we are able to chart a way forward – the very technology on which you are reading this is testimony to the human capacity for reason and problem-solving.
But there is one problem which we cannot solve. We have not lived with God as God. We have made ourselves gods instead. We therefore face the judgment of God. The variety of religious experience around the world testifies to human attempts to solve the problem of our relationship with God. But we cannot do it! Instead Jesus comes and solves the problem for us. He represents a denial that our reason or our effort or our devotion can fix our status before God.
Jesus is a denial of reason. He is a denial that our reason can fix our deepest need. To make that realization and to meet Jesus in the Bible is to meet someone who is very reasonable and to trust him is in fact the most rational act a person can commit, for by it we admit the failings of our reason. Why not make that step today?
Jason Ramsay was minister at Newport Anglican.