Apologetics Friday (but on sunday)---Thinking about thinking

Thinking about thinking Faith and Reason Ideas and their consequences Logic and emotions Philosophy 1. Faith and Reason What is faith? Hebrews 11:1 Faith is the assurance of the things we hope for and the conviction of things that we have not seen. What is reason? A basis or cause for some belief or action. Some have said, “Faith is a blind leap into the dark”. What do you think? Do you have to abandon reason to have faith? God has given us both faith and reason. Christ does not call us to “leap into the dark”, but step into the light. 1 John 1:5,6 2. Ideas and their Consequences We need to understand the consequences of our ideas and beliefs. The bible commands it. 1 Peter 3:15 God has given us a mind to think with and tells us to use it for his glory. Romans 12:2 and Matthew 22:37 Our ideas or beliefs always have consequences. Think about this for a second. If you believe that God is holy and just and there will be a day of judgment, that belief has consequences for your life. You will not want to rebel against this holy God. The consequence of your belief is a change in your heart towards God. And that will result in a change in your actions towards God. Ideas can have good or bad consequences. Those who believe they can breathe under water may drown trying to. Those who believe that gravity doesn’t affect them may jump off of the empire state building. Muslims who believe that martyrdom will get them to heaven will fly planes into buildings. This is a bad consequence that stems from bad ideas. On the other hand, believing that getting your shots from the doctor may keep you from getting the measles. Believing that there is a cure for cancer has lead to many major medical breakthroughs. So you see that some ideas have good consequences. But those consequences come from the root of the issue and that is whether or not the belief is true or valid. 3. Logic and Emotions Logic is a gift from God and is to be used for his glory. God has made us as reasonable creatures. And reasonable creatures should strive to think logically. God has also made us emotional creatures. This means that our emotions and logic should not contradict each other but compliment. For example, looking both ways before crossing the street is a logical thing to do. If you cross safely, your emotions are stable and you are pleased. If you look both ways and then proceed to cross and are nearly hit by the moving traffic, you emotions react. Your heart beats rapidly, you tremble, and you are scared. This emotional response is also logical. It makes sense that you would react this way, you were nearly killed! So logic and emotions are not opposed, but they can be unbalanced. Logic and emotions must be complimentary to one another. Emotions are good but they cannot determine what is true. Feeling good about something does not make it good. If smacking your brother makes you happy, it doesn’t mean that it was right. Emotions are the part of the soul that appreciates and responds to life. We cannot trust our emotions to determine truth for us. But when the truth is revealed to us, let us not stifle our emotions. Let them well up with worship to our God. Let them compliment the truth and logic that you found. Emotions cannot be the key factor for reasoning. 4. Philosophy Philosophy has often been described as thinking about thinking. Proverbs 4:5,6 We should aspire to gain this wisdom. The greek words that make up the word philosophy are “philia”, which means love, and “Sophia” which means wisdom. So the word “philosophy” means “loving wisdom”. This is not anti-christian. We should not be scared of philosophy. Although some philosophers and their thoughts are hostile to Christianity, we should not be afraid to examine why we think the way we do. Philosophy has determined much of the way you think right now. Many clichés that you have heard came from the lips of philosophers. Some of the greatest theologians of the church were also philosophers: Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, and Jonathan Edwards. Philosophy asks questions such as “What is real?” “How do you know it is real?” “What is truly good?” The problem comes when we seek our reasoning above the reasoning of scripture. Scripture must be our final authority. This is even philosophical. We turn to scripture because it is truth. All philosophy and philosophers desire to be true. Truth is the goal of philosophy and the bible is our ultimate source for finding it.