I guess for me, a woman, it is more apples and apples.

I have found this to be true as well….

“There seems to be something about people who are deeply committed to women in high leadership in the church, regardless of other considerations. They tend to be immoral. Please read carefully. I didn’t say they ALL are. But, bluntly, they tend to be. I don’t know why. But it’s impossible to deny the correlation.”

…but for me it is all the more reason to be open to women in leadership and keep my morals in tact.

As to leadership within the evangelical church, I don’t find the exclusion of women “quaint” in any way (I know…also shocking). I too recognize the correlation identified by Phil, but I believe that some of the onus for these wrongheaded extremes must be laid at the feet of the conservative church. When you shut people out they have a tendency to go where they’re wanted, even if the place they’re wanted is wrong. A sense of belonging matters — for many people, it matters as much as being right. (I know this will be terribly difficult to understand for the more left-brained among us, but you’ll have to trust me: Relationship trumps reason almost every time. See: extremism of all stripes. See also: recruitment strategy of the Democratic Party.) The evangelical church must wrestle with its varying theological views on this issue in a more effective way. (And by “more effective” I mean “with more obedience to the Greatest Commandment.”)

I’m not really interested in rehashing the theological opinions on either side of this matter, but I think I may have just M-80′ed the can of worms. Gah.

So here is a question. Does God have no need for reason or is his reason so complete that seem he has no need for it? God measures, judges, is swayed by prayer… how does he do that? Does he use reason or is it some infinite pool of knowledge he uses. Does hid judgment just happen or does he sequence things, weigh consequence for individuals. Did he use reason in forgiving and letting David him live but having Achan stoned and burned. Did he use reason in choosing David over his brothers. I am not trying to argue, I just think these are interesting questions.

If reason is a tool for extending knowledge then you are correct, but what if reason is a tool for using knowledge as well. Is that something other than reason?

Did God use reason to love Jacob and hate Esau? Did he use reason for choosing Mary to be the mother of the savior, did he use reason to enter into Palestine during the reign of Herod and Rome. What reason did he use to choose the 12, was his observation that Nathanael was a man without guile a reason he was chosen or just an observation about Nathanael?

I guess you can say that I think God uses reason but does so perfectly. You might have another word for what I call reason, I do not so you can help me here please. Because God has all knowledge and is without sin, his reason is uncorrupted and pure. That would be my take at least for now.

I might also say that reason in us is a part of the image of God stamped into our lives at creation. The fact that we are sinful, limited and well sometimes stupid too makes our reasoning less than adequate to navigate all of life.

I do not believe Adam and Eve were created with limitless knowledge or limitless reason. They were not created infinite but they were given reason as a part of the package. That would be my assessment anyway.

I’d agree that reason is itself a created thing in some sense, in the way that we use it and understand it, at least. I do think it is an aspect of all created “intelligent free will” beings, including angels. As I suggested, God has no use or need for reason, which, for we finite beings, is about extending knowledge from the known into the as yet unknown.

I think it may be arguable that what we call “reason” is as integral to God as “personhood”. But that would not mean that God “uses” reason, or “needs” it, it would mean that Reason is an aspect of God’s Personhood, as are Love, Power, etc. It would make no more sense to say that God “needs” or “uses” Reason than it would make to say that he “needs” or “uses” Love. It is just ineluctably integrated into his Personhood, inseparably part of his very Self. That would explain why the imago dei includes the ability to reason, but always finitely, of course. To think otherwise would require us to deny reason as an essential aspect of humanness. Without reason, how could Eve have been expected to understand the very notion of actions with consequences? How could she have been responsible for her sin?

Reason is not just a set of logical rules. Rather, the logical rules are an observation about reality made by beings who can reason.

The air is getting thin up here, so I’m jumping out of the airplane now.

I would observe that the whole of scripture must be considered when arriving at conclusions about important things. Yes, Jesus said we must become like little children in some sense. But the mere existence of scripture, enormous amounts of which are incomprehensible to any child, suggests that He didn’t mean that we should STAY like little children, believing what we are told, without considering the source, and context.

Some Islamic children believe, in all innocent honesty, that they should grow up to murder the infidel, because they are told so by adults they trust. In this innocent belief-without-reason, they are behaving exactly as Jesus appears to command. Which is why, again, I think we have to look at all the parables that Jesus himself told, many of which are not really clear to a child (or many adults, for that matter). We have to look at the very earliest written expressions of the Christian faith, Paul’s early letters.

Rom 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Rom 8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

Your story of Christian awakening was thrilling, and very compelling. The Christians who came to you and quoted Rom 8:28 as if you should just magically feel better did not follow the simple injunction to “weep with those who weep”, a little farther on in Rom 12:15, surrounded by verses where Paul is telling us how to live together as brothers and sisters. I can see why you have a certain negative feeling about trying to use “reason” inappropriately, especially in dealing with great hardship.

I’ve told my story elsewhere in this blog, if you’re curious. (Actually, that whole thread is pretty interesting… you may want to just scroll up to the top when you get there, and begin and the beginning.) As you’ll read, it’s very different from your story. You’ll even see that I do not have unlimited faith in the power of reason. :-)

All I want to say further for now is that God gets to each of us in very different ways. I was broken in a very different way than you. That’s what makes Christian unity, when it happens, such an amazing thing.

I would be the very first in line to demand that women have every opportunity in business, government, etc., that men have. About my only reservations are jobs requiring upper body physical strength, like firefighting, police work, etc., where standards were simply lowered to let women in. I don’t think any woman is likely to be able to carry me out of a burning building… ;-) Or even drag me, for that matter.

Not that I want to be dragged. But I digress.

As I said, I think the Southern Baptist male deacon policy is a touch quaint… but as far as I can see, it seems almost to be a traditional holdover, not some kind of thoroughgoing attitude towards women, given the rest of women’s participation in our church work and governance.

Nevertheless, religious dogma and practice isn’t something that should be imposed on society in this way. Further, the Bible has plenty of examples of women in governing roles, especially in the OT, who weren’t necessarily religious authorities. And with women political leaders, the priests were still male.

So, short story: it’s a religious judgment about church leadership roles, but it is a civil democratic judgment about political leadership roles.

For the record, my personal preference would be a gender-blind pastorate, in some ideal world.

I report, though, that the churches most likely to have lots of women ministers, especially in top leadership roles, are also those most likely to be great fans of abortion on demand, happy enough with gay marriage and gay clergy, never saw a leftist dictator they didn’t like (they only dislike so-called “right wing” dictators with any enthusiasm, but Castro and Chavez and the Sandinistas are just fine, and they aren’t too upset by China, either), and would like the USA to become a completely socialist enterprise, with no significant military, and no real ability to defend itself. They tend to teach a moral equivalence on a great many matters that is repugnant. They tend to be in mainline denominations that are dying by inches (because they feel very sentimental about children, but don’t have any, and don’t mind suggesting you could kill yours, if you want, as long as they’re still in the womb).

There seems to be something about people who are deeply committed to women in high leadership in the church, regardless of other considerations. They tend to be immoral. Please read carefully. I didn’t say they ALL are. But, bluntly, they tend to be. I don’t know why. But it’s impossible to deny the correlation. I’m not describing the cause/effect relationship, because I don’t understand it, but it is there, somewhere.

Sigh, reading back, I just KNOW someone will misinterpret, and I don’t feel like rewriting at the moment. So: read the first two sentences in the last paragraph carefully. They mean, to me, exactly what they say, no more, and no less.

HOWEVER -

I think every church in America is foolish (and unBiblical) not to put women in significant roles of leadership. I think we need more women elders, and more elder couples. I absolutely do NOT think that a woman should have to be married to be an elder. That is an absurd idea, totally contrary to many of Paul’s teachings about the prominence and value of single people in the kingdom.

Ladies are smart, fellas, and sometimes ya’ll are dumb when left alone. Really dumb.

By the way, I would make a terrible elder. There is a woman in our church, however, who I think would make a great one. She is slow to speak and wise, a good listener, and although it’s not a requirement, has a great sense of humor. She would make a great addition to our already-wonderful male elder board. She is an empty-nester. I would love to vote for her to become an elder. We have yet to see if that can ever happen.

Mike, what would we do without your comic relief?

It is a bit quaint, to me, that they only have male deacons, and only men take the offering.

But women sometimes preach or share after a missionary trip, in lieu of the regular pastor. And in church business meetings, I think the women speak more than the men, quite often. There have been women teaching adult sunday school classes in the past, not just kids, though currently the adult teachers are men. Any deacon who condescended to a woman in a business meeting would probably be run out on a rail, or just laughed at… not sure which.

Men tend to run traditionally men’s ministries, and women tend to run women’s, but that may just be a natural self-selection. No women seem to feel excluded by the men’s prayer breakfast, and I haven’t noticed men clamoring to attend the monthly women’s luncheon. When men and women show up on church “workdays” the men tend to chop wood for the firewood ministry, and do the heavy lifting, and women tend to do the cleaning and painting. No one would complain if a women came over and picked up an ax.

Many women in the church are employed outside the home. No one thinks anything whatsoever about it.

Bluntly, as far as Southern Baptists go, this election is about abortion and gay marriage, socialism and national defense. Sarah Palin is just so obviously a MOM that she doesn’t push any negative button for any woman I’ve heard discuss her. And the men are simply proud to have a strong spokesperson for their point of view, which they haven’t always felt they had in McCain.

Outside of the very specific issue of male pastors and male deacons, I’ve seen no significant difference between how this church runs and how the local Lutheran church runs (where we went before). I think this article is an attempt to make something out of nothing, in all honesty.

As far as the article:
1) I have no issue with Lifeway Christian Bookstores pulling the magazine off the shelves that featured women pastors on the front. This is EXACTLY freedom of speech. They have every right to bury their heads in the sand and live in fear when Christianity becomes a little progressive (aaack!!).

2) It is just weird to me that Richard Land (in the article), because of the way he interprets scripture, has a problem with a woman working outside the home, but has no problem with Sarah Palin leaving her baby with a nanny to be the Vice President of the United States. “There’s no disconnect or inconsistency whatsoever,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.” Huh? Oh, I guess it helps that Todd Palin is letting her. (I’m not joking.)

3) The last two paragraphs of the article are especially moving:
“The Rev. Carolyn Hale Cubbedge at First Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia, said the Southern Baptist Convention fails to consider the New Testament’s entire story, including the social context of the patriarchal society when it was written.

“I shed a lot of tears over this,” said Cubbedge, whose church is now part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group of Southern Baptists who have separated or distanced themselves from the denomination. “I felt like this convention that had nurtured me had really abandoned me. That was painful.”

I think we agree that much of what God “has put in motion impacts people without partiality”. In some ways, that’s the central point I’ve tried to make. I think it’s important to understand that this fact of our lives was an essential feature of a universe in which we could have something like free will. It isn’t that God doesn’t care, or can’t be reached, or is powerless, it’s that God understands something we don’t about the ontological requirements of a universe for intelligent beings with free will.

I’d have to agree with you in this, “God is the only one uncorrupted and unlimited in his reasoning ability”, except that it isn’t clear to me that God actually reasons. Reason is a tool for extending knowledge, and God knows everything that CAN be known. Reason is more something like eyes, a tool for finite beings to use in surveying their world. When we cannot see everything it once, reason is our way of extending our immediate perceptions. Angels, being finite beings, may need and use reason… and if so, it appears that a failure to correctly apply reason would be a critical component in Lucifer’s original rebellion. After all, who tempted Lucifer? And whatever gave him the idea that he could be God, or like God? Powerful as he was, Lucifer was finite, and made a very (I hate to say this) human decision, enabled, at least in part, perhaps, by flawed reasoning.

I think this points to will. The Bible isn’t terribly clear about the status of angels, but they are surely finite, created beings, with different limitations than humans. Lucifer’s rebellion was surely even more an act of will than a failure of faith (after all he KNEW God in a way we do not), and perhaps a failure of reason (correctly judging consequences) was a part of it. On the other hand, I think many people sin knowing full well the consequences, so it is not a failure of reason with them, either, but a sheer excess of selfish will.

I’d have to say that your list of dangers in reason is equally applicable to faith, especially faith uncorrected by reason.

Pride — well, you know. I know people who are very, very proud of just how much faith they have. In fact, they’re proud of their “ability” to have unreasonable faith. They have no protection, or little protection, from false teaching, because they do not possess the ability to distinguish what sounds good (or especially spiritual, even) from what IS based on a clear, reasoned understanding of scripture. Personally, I think pride flows from a lack of reasoned understanding of one’s place in the creation, and a lack of reasoned self-examination.

This in particular gives them little defense against

Superstition — Which in my reading of history is WAY more likely to appear in people of great faith and small reason than vice versa. Cult members often have incredible faith, self-sacrificial faith, great obedience flowing from that faith, etc. And back to pride, for a moment, the people who are most absolutely convinced of their personal rightness AND righteousness seem to be cult members. However much superstition you may want to lay at the door of reason, far more lies at the door of incorrectly informed and reasoned faith.

As noted above,

Rebellion does not appear to flow primarily from incorrect reasoning, with the first Rebel being a case in point, but rather an excess of pure, selfish will, a “damn the torpedoes” attitude, if you will. That excess of selfish will can manifest as faith in the wrong things, rationalistically justified, of course, as in cults, but not limited to cults.

We may be talking in circles here. I think faith has a very critical role for any Christian, and I suspect you think that reason does. In fact, you’re using reason in making your points in this thread. You seem to fear the perversion of reason more than you fear the perversion of faith, however, while I fear both, and therefore I want to stress the corrective nature of their integration.

I think the “meta-message” of the existence of scripture, the way it is written, the behavior of the apostles, the ways they characterized their faith, and the ways they dealt with the body of Christ in teaching and ministry, are all re-inforcement that both knowledge of scripture and reason are critical. And, as I said earlier, Paul’s general education was surely a part of his success, and has to be part of why God chose him, or how God prepared him after choosing him (assuming God had chosen him considerably before the Damascus Road experience), however you’d like to characterize it.

There is an enormous body of literature on this general topic, generally called “faith/reason integration”, or “integration of faith and reason”, or “integration of faith and learning”. If you haven’t read it, I’d recommend The Idea of a Christian College: Arthur F. Holmes.

I am still interested in pursuing Mike’s original question about what seems to be unanswered prayer. I don’t think that prayer is “only” to affect the person doing the praying. That is simply not a scriptural limitation to place on it.

I’d counter that some of the things we consider great central tenets of the faith are actually bits of theology worked out over generations of believers grappling with apparent contradictions in God’s revelation, until the appropriate application of reason produced such a deeply satisfying answer that it became part of the canon of faith.

On that list are things like the trinity and the fully-god-and-man understanding of the incarnation. All of these took generations to work through, hundreds of years, and at every point up until the resolution, the apparent contradiction of data seemed unreasonable.

Look at the trinity, for example. Generations of believers looked at the biblical data and said, “It just doesn’t make sense to believe ‘God is One’ and also to say ‘God is the Father, and God is the Son, and God is the Holy Spirit’.” Many did still believe it, but they did so unreasonably. I can imagine many in the early church cautioning believers that “these things are just beyond our understanding, don’t question them, just accept them.”

Yet it was the unsettled irrationality of the statements as they stood that led to the long project of building the theology of trinity. The purpose of that project wasn’t to probe the unfathomable mystery of God’s inner workings, that part of himself that God give us no access to. Rather it sought a rational framework harmonizing the data, the revelation of himself that God HAS provided us in scripture.

The power of that doctrine is demonstrated in how many other areas of our understanding of God are reinforced and reformed with better understanding based on that doctrine. An understanding of the trinity that is rationally formulated gives us better understanding of everything from creation to atonement, from Jesus’ explication of the church’s on-going status of becoming his body to our understanding of the Kingdom of God. Think of how much poorer our conception of atonement would be if it did not include an understanding of the trinity.

There are several areas of Christian thought that are now being “held in escrow”, if you will, until a reasonable resolution of apparently contradictory evidence is reached. Creation / Evolution / Intelligent Design is one such area. Biblical data and the data of the physical record seem to be in contradiction. For some, the only two possible resolutions are to abandon reason and cling to an interpretation of biblical data that take no account of any outside evidence, or to abandon faith wholesale and become brute naturalists.

I think most of us here would agree that those are not the only options. Faith commits us to accept the truth of the biblical data. Being human, and therefore rational, commits us to accept the truth of the empirical data. Reason compels us to find resolution for the apparent contradiction, and I believe it has done so: a narrative interpretation of the Genesis account, along with a humble acknowledgment of the mathematical improbability (almost impossibility) of such high complexity arising within the parameters and time frame of the earth’s existence, apart from divine intent and guidance at key points.

If we look to the church fathers at Nicea and Chalcedon, we find that some acted out of hubris, but many more acted out of a humble and earnest sense of obligation to a God who has given us both revelation of himself, and rational minds, and who expects us to employ both in our pursuit of Him and his will.

As for Adam never stubbing his toe and the loss of a child; two very different kinds of pain. Prior to the fall Adam did not know the pain sin brings about. Did he stub his toe, I don’t know nor is it relevant to reason or faith. Did he know the loss of a child, did he know the sting of a lie, did he know the poison of shame, did he know the impurity of desire turning to lust… NO.

To want a life without pain is not what most people I see wanting and defies reason. To live a life where my pain is manageable is what people want. Most people want a life they can manage and be in control of, but this is impossible. Our problem as humans is we cannot manage our pain that well. So we resort to crazy things like drug abuse, people abuse, life abuse and much more. We take a drink just to take the edge off, we eat a sandwich just to enjoy something we like in the midst of struggle even though we are not hungry. We hoard when people around us are starving. Why? Because we are sinners and we must manage the pain sin brings into our lives.

As for where prayer enters the mix. Certainly there area few times in Scripture where a prayer seemed to change the mind of God. How that works I don’t really know. But the times are few where this is recorded and in the face of a vast realm of scripture, drawing conclusions from a smaller piece is not usually a great idea.

Here is what prayer seems to do in my opinion. Prayer changes me much more than God. John said we would be like him because we will see Him as he is. Something about entering into God’s presence changes me. It changes my prayer, changes my heart, changes my attitude, changes my perspective, changed my reasoning, changes my faith, changes my understanding and in changing all these things aligns me much more with God. In one very real sense prayer is something people do when life is unmanageable, as a tool to manage life. But this kind of “Life management prayer” has its greatest impact when people give management of their life over to God.

Michael scenarios are all difficult because they go past our ability to reason. When your reason strengthens your faith it probably is on a healthy trajectory. When your reason weakens your faith it probably is not on a healthy trajectory. When your reason empowers your ego it is probably not on a healthy trajectory, when it brings a proper placement for you in this world and with God, it is probably on a healthy trajectory.

Michael the reason this is such an important IMO discussion is that unhealthy rarely produces healthy. For us to help those who hurt, which I would hope is at least a huge part of asking these questions, we must develop some semblance of healthiness.

I think too much reason or better said maybe unsatisfied reason will almost always lead to a few places.

1) Pride. The puffing of the ego and straightening of the will is a direct result of unsatisfied reason. We can get a little big for our britches at times. We can get a bit cocky before God at times. Sort of the “if I were running the show God, things would be different” attitude.

2) Superstition. People will often fill gaps in reason with superstition. If this worked this time it will work again and eventually superstition gains ground. It is how some people dance for rain because somehow that worked before and reason said it was what caused the god of rain to act. It is why base ball players eat the same meal every day game or wear the same socks or undies.

3) Rebellion. Simple and true, rebellion is often the result of unsatisfied reason. Think Solomon for a moment. Everything under the sun, I will try it all, every part. Why? Reasoning gone bad.

I don’t fully get the reason as a pure entity and people are the ones who get it wrong thing. I may not be smart enough to wrap my mind around that. I do get this however. If reasoning is pure and sin corrupts the reasoner or limits the reasoner then God is the only one uncorrupted and unlimited in his reasoning ability. The gap is ours not his, to close it will require relationship with him. To close it took an act beyond reason, the sacrifice of his son. I wouldn’t do it. Not because my love for my son is greater than his but because my love for you is smaller than his. If I have to choose between you and my son, you are going to die. God knew the way for his Son to die so I could live, then for his son to live again so I would never die. I can draw the map but the journey itself defies reason. Sorry to be a preacher but as Popeye said, I am what I am.

This blog was more fun when you could successfully bait the girls into completely justifiable feminine rage.

I’ll summarize it for her though, and post her thoughts back here.

Any one can write
Haiku. Just stop at the
seventeenth sylla

It’s also worth pointing out that these foundational laws of reason also give rise to several extensions, both in terms of principles that get us someplace, and in terms of definitions of logical fallacies.

And, even with laws of reason in place, we’re still stuck with having to discern the quality of our starting facts and presuppositions.

Leonard, I don’t think there are ANY questions we shouldn’t ask. But there are times when asking particular questions can be more helpful, and times when asking the same questions can be less helpful.

The time to be doing your careful thinking about the WHY of human suffering and loss is not right after your right arm has been accidentally cut off…. Or, as you point out, when your child just died. The time is much sooner than that, so that you are a least a bit better prepared for the suffering and loss we all face, sooner or later. No one has a corner on it.

I continue to believe that certain theological perspectives are simply less “comforting” than others. And, in my opinion, the less comforting ones are frequently less supported by scripture. That’s why I keep recommending a certain book… read earlier in the thread for that.

I certainly agree with the role of the Holy Spirit working in us to lead us to proper perspectives. But surely there is no chance that the Holy Spirit will lead you to believe that Moses was also Abraham, or that one could be a Gentile and Jew at the same time, or that some pagans are really Christians, or whatever. Yet, equally silly propositions have been put forth by people, frequently claiming the Holy Spirit as their origin.

The Spirit works in me (I hope and believe), but I am unlikely to directly see it in someone else. All kinds of people claim the operation of the Spirit as their reason for doing and believing all kinds of things. My primary defense against such is less likely to be the Spirit whispering in my ear “Don’t trust THAT guy” than it is to be my reasoned evaluation of what is claimed, in the light of scripture and tradition. Paul tells us to test everything, and this is part of what he meant. And, Paul tells us what spirit-filled people are likely to be like, how they are likely to live and respond to life, etc. I don’t recall much direct scriptural support for the notion that the Spirit, in me, will tell me directly that something someone else is doing or saying also comes straight from the Spirit.

If that were the norm, to be blunt, we would not need scripture, or at least only about 20 verses or so. The scripture is as large as it is partly to provide multiple attestation, and partly because it has so much guidance in it to keep us from error. That implies it’s pretty darn easy to fall into error. As Eve demonstrated, you can fall into error from either lack of faith in what has been clearly revealed to you, and also from lack of reason in asking questions that need to be asked.

I pray, in faith, for clarity of reason. I pray, in faith, to see clearly what are the starting points from which to reason. I reason from the scripture as a way to keep from error, and to correct faulty reasoning I may have done about one part of scripture, when I discover an apparent contradiction in another part. (Note my presupposition: scripture, to be scripture, must not contradict itself in significant ways. When it appears to, we hold our conclusions in abeyance, waiting for a better idea, which hopefully is provided in the Spirit. What we DON’T do is dogmatically cling to a conclusion that seems to flow from one passage, but is not supported by another.)

The pastoral use of reason is critical in preparing Christians with concepts and perspectives that will help them defend themselves in hard times. But unless it’s just a reminder of a concept or perspective that has already been built in the Christian, reason has very limited immediate application in alleviating suffering. I wouldn’t try to convince someone of God’s providence using the “open view of the future” or “open theology” when they’ve never heard it before. Or, at least, not until some considerable time had passed.

But if someone has just suffered a terrible loss, and in a moment of anguish cries out, “Why did God let this happen?”, or worse, “Why did God DO this thing?”, and has been pastorally prepared with clear teaching and reason on the matter, scripturally based, at an earlier time, I think it’s just inevitably easier to provide comfort, after first “weeping with those who weep”. I certainly don’t recommend “reasoning” with someone who has just experienced a great loss…. all you can do, sometimes, is just be there, and let them say what they need to say, and be God’s arms around them.

The central point, as scripture makes clear in the comments about rain falling on us all, just and unjust, is that the universe is NOT totally controlled by God in every particular, not because He can’t, but because of how He designed it in the first place to satisfy His reasons for creation. It boils down to this: the desire to feel no pain, and to experience no loss, is the desire to be dead, or the desire to be in heaven. It is just not the nature of life on Earth, even before sin. There is no scriptural reason to think Adam did not have pain nerves, and never stubbed his toe.

But it’s better for this lesson to be taught before the pain or loss, and the reasoning from both scripture and science that supports it.

We have strayed quite far from the specific topic of how prayer affects things, and particularly how prayer for the relief of pain interacts with God’s actions and the nature of creation itself. Yet, I think it’s all connected in this way: the Scripture tells us many times when God has “changed his mind” due to prayer and human pleading. And it says that God hears. More troubling are those scriptures that imply that all we have to do is ask in faith, and it will be ours. We feel unworthy when we pray, we hope in faith, and no apparent answer is forthcoming, nor apparent divine intervention in the problem about which we prayed.

That fact has led to lots of bad reasoning about the apparent “faith status” of the people doing the praying.

Mickle Mirth? Mighty Moose? Mousy Magistrate?

Anyways.. umm… buh bye.

Go Dodgers! Win! Then, immediately start sucking again!

Have I mentioned Kirk Gibson lately, A’s fan?

:)
:)
:)

The Law of Identity: a thing is itself [A = A]. Red is red.

The Law of Non-Contradiction: a proposition and it’s contradiction cannot both be true at same time and in the same manner. [if A=B, then A ≠ not B] An apple can’t be both red, and not red, at the same time and with the same meaning for all the words.

The Law of the Excluded Middle (sometimes a subset of the law of non-contradiction): A proposition is either true or false [if A=true, then A≠ not true] If it is false that all apples are red, then it is not true that all apple are red.

There’s a case to be made for a fourth law, sometimes called the law of sufficient reason, or the law of causality. It was more popular a hundred years ago, before Einstein and quantum weirdness, but I think a good case can still be made for it.

That would work wouldn’t it?
Just sayin

Instead of a goal instantly winning the game, however, in this sudden-death overtime, whomever actually directly answers a question from the moderator instantly gets my vote.

GO!

As a primary tool Paul would find a synagogue, go reason and see if any Jewish people wanted to discover the Messiah, he was often backed up by miraculous power. Both of which were empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring about faith. Which by the way is the big difference in Hammas and our work in India. The Holy Spirit and the Gospel.

If reason is its own entity so to speak with a governing set of rules or law, can you tell me what those laws are? That would help me understand your OS here in this discussion.

I think that even if reason remains untainted that we do not. We kind of get in the quagmire of greed. Greed is not only about stuff it is about knowledge, power, information, influence and I am sure you can think of more as well. Reasoning corrupted is a some of the most fertile soil for greed to plant its seeds. The human hearts capacity to be deceived and to deceive itself makes the corruption of the reasoner almost limitless and almost undetectable to the reasoner. Pride (loving the sound of our own voice and thoughts) tends to move us deeper into a quagmire (one of mt smart words) of self deception, corrupted reasoning and eventually landing us under the hand of a perfect God. This is my summary of Romans 1.

I have a tendency to be a bit self preoccupied in my reasoning, so even if reason remains uncorrupted by sin, I do not nor do you. For reason to be effective in the area of THE Faith, the reasoner must be regenerated, submitted, and humble. Even then we have a million kinds of Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Nazarene, Church of Christ… you get the picture. Some of which are absolutely convinced of the reason used to create their faith structure and doctrine. And this is with the help of the Holy writ and God the Holy Spirit.

Every few years someone comes along and says all the reasoning used before was wrong and now there is a better way to reason, a better starting point, a better set of questions… They say you misunderstood all along, and were off in your original interpretation… This is what could be classified as church history or just the emergent movement, or the reformation, or the great awakening, or the charismatic movement from Azusa Street in 1906 or …

Boil that down and you have some pretty big questions and some pretty small answers.

What if as a part of our corrupted reasoning we were asking questions we were not meant to ask? Kind of like the 7 year old who is supposed to be asleep but interrupts his parents intimate moment with the question… What are you two doing in there? Most parents are not going to answer the question with a detailed explanation of sex, but rather an immediate “GO TO BED” followed by a simple. Mommy and Daddy were praying… you get the point.

One of the most devastating impacts of too much information on the hearts and minds of kids today is they ask questions they cannot answer nor could they handle the answer if they had it. We call this the loss of innocence. Much faith loses its innocence simply by its demand for answers.

When I got the call that my 5 month old cousin had dies of sids and his parents needed me, I hopped a plane and spent 8 days with the family. When I walked up the driveway the parents ran to me and fell into my arms. We stood in the driveway for an hour and cried together in each others arms. We then sat down and cried for a few more hours, in silence, in pain but together.

In the morning we sat down and began to work on the “next” thing to do. for 2 days we cried, moved to what was next, cried moved to what was next and then the question came. WHY? Why did this happen? Was it our sin, was it God’s fault, WHY? Why? why…

My response was “I don’t know” then we cried, got angry, cursed (me too) cried, got depressed, and did what was next. In the final couple days there I sat with the parents, grand parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, all people of faith.

I asked them; other than an explanation, what do you need from God right now. Comfort, confidence and hope were their answers. In that moment, the gap between understanding God and human pain and reasoning powers gone wrong was so big and trite “all things work together” quotes sounded like bullshit.

I encouraged them that while “why” was a natural question to ask it was a thief. It was the one question that would steal from them what they needed from God. Why steals our confidence in God’s love, power and kindness. Why, demanding and answer, leaves us trapped in a place without hope. Why keeps us stuck in a place where comfort look in on us but never stays. Why is a thief. One reason is that even if it were answered, we would not think the answer worth it. If God told me why, I would not say, Okay God, that is fine, its worth the death of my baby, my dreams and the plans we made for his life. Thanks for answering me.

I tell you this, not because you are missing some piece of information but because it illustrates how stinking damaged we are as reasoners. Even with the Rules of reason firmly entrenched I am damaged interpreter of the informa