"The End of Reason"

Lately, my thoughts have been hella disorganized. So much stuff rattles through my brain that I find myself just typing into a draft text message so that it won't escape out of my brain one day. Then I remembered, isn't that what a blog is for? Oh yeah, I have one o' dems. To all of my imaginary readers - expect more posting soon.

"The End of Reason"... actually means something to me now. I've heard the phrase tossed around from time to time, but it's never actually meant anything more than an ambiguous phrase used for exaggerated anticipations.

My whole life I've been an experiential learner. I've been called a fool for it (probably rightly so), but I've never been able to truly understand something unless I experience it. So why in the name of all that is holy (no hyperbole) have I been spending the last seven years trying to understand the nature of God, spirituality, Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity through reason? Probably because it was just how my brain used to think it worked, because I'm also a very logical and linear thinking person.

I reached a roadblock some time ago. It seemed (arrogantly, yes, but depressingly) like I've figured out everything I needed to know that was possible to figure out through reason - the things that I didn't know were simply not able to be known through my own understanding. So at the beginning of this new year, it dawned on me (or was placed on me through providence)... it's time to take the next step.

Where reason ends, experience begins.

I once heard a story of a man (I hope to meet one day) about how he thought to himself - "There comes a point where you can't know anything through reason any more. You just need to accept these things through blind faith." And it didn't sit well with me, no matter how accurately it seemed to portray my situation. So I picked up Brian McLaren's (who is one of my favorite authors of all time) book called "Finding Faith - the search for what is real" spontaneously one day - and it just happened to be about this very thing.

The first half of the entire book was about media by which you can experience God. Situations and scenarios in life itself where one can't help but think... "This. Is. Real." These things seemed to be so obvious intellectually, but in my heart of hearts I knew... I needed to start travelling this road and this needs to be the map I use (for a little while).

So I'd like to list them off, and maybe anyone who stumbles on the blog will benefit from such a list: a (among many) point of origin on the search for truth.

1) Nature/Creation - Seems like the easiest was on his mind for the first. Walking through what was made directly God, beyond the influence of man, helps us to appreciate the intricacies of organisms, how perfectly nature fits things into their ecological niche, and how amazingly balanced the environment is with itself.

"God, what an amazing artist, engineer, scientist, inventor, manager, and risk-taker you are..."

2) Ritual - "Using our bodies to bond to meaning." Ritual (being a part of something bigger by performing certain actions) is differentiated between ritualism (the body just 'showing up'). He mentioned devotional reading as an example, and how his grandma used to tell him while he had problems with the text he was reading to, "Just enjoy the meat, lad. Put the bones aside to take care of if you have time later, but enjoy the meat first."

"As I eat this ritual meal, I bond to the story of Jesus. As his body was broken like this bread and as his blood was poured out like this wine, it was so I could be forgiven..."

3) Obedience/Self Denial - God is often found when we do things we don't want to do or refrain (intentionally) from doing things we want to do. Abstaining from an affair when a coworker sexually advances on you, intervening in a family members harmful addiction, or opening up a window of shame by admitting you've been morally wrong in the way you've handled certain things are all examples of this eye-opening self-denial.

"Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teachings come from God." -Jesus

4) Worship/Art - Best experienced in music, public art involvement demonstrates a spiritual beauty and sincerity that we all long for. The collective sense of involvement into the worship can evoke many different feelings that are all beneficial to our spiritual well-being.

"I am so full of doubts and confusion about you but these people are so sure of you, and that is where I need to be tonight. Around people who are surer of you than I am at this moment."

5) Community - It is well understood that we can find God in people. Being vulnerable among those around you, 'making an impact' on those less fortunate, and simply gathering together in the name of God can draw out our deepest longings for belonging.

"Where two or more come together in my name, I am with them. How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity!"

6) Suffering - I would go so far as to call myself a masochist, but I really do appreciate pain more than most people. Pain can strip you of everything you think you are, but really aren't and reduce you to nothing but your barest minimal self. It's in these moments, I believe, when you have nowhere else to turn that we can experience God the truest and most real.

"I don't know why God allows terrible things to happen in this world. In my own small way, I can do my part to make sure I am not part of the world's problems, but part of the solution."

7) Compassion - When we ask God where he was when we see so much suffering and why he didn't do anything, the answer is often "I have done something. I have placed you in this situation with a compassionate heart and the ability to help." Sometimes selflessness itself is the best way to know the heart of God.

"If no one felt any compassion or any outrage, then we would have reason to believe in a dispassionate God. God was in those being tortured, mistrated, killed - suffering and dying with them."

8) Life-Change - When we've reached our wits end. When we realize that we've done everything we can do to change ourselves and do things our own way and fail is when we turn to God. Maybe he likes to reduce us to nothing so that we'll turn our 'everything' to Him?

" 'AA keeps telling me about this Higher Power bit, but I don't buy it yet. But then I prayed anyway, and right after that, you walked in the door. Kind of spooky, huh?' "

9) Prayer/Intervention - Answered prayers are probably the most clear way of experiencing God. Especially when to call it a coincidence is the stretch.

"If you are ever on the receiving end of one of these miraculous "coincidences," you have this strong feeling that, proglematic issues notwithstanding, you have experienced God. Many of you know what I mean."

10) Solitude - When a person truly "comes to himself" is an amazing spiritual experience. Becoming completely aware of oneself is the perfect opportunity to come before God. It's the perfect opportunity to entire into community with God, otherwise you're only fooling yourself.

"The charm of fishing [like God] is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive, but attainable - a perpetual series of occasions for hope."

11) Repentance/Grace - Giving yourself over unapologetically to apology is holy. Whether on the distribution or receiving end of pure, unadultered grace, you find yourself in a spiritual situation. Because there is no greater truth than what God has done through grace for us.

"Grace is what a father feels when he catches his son doing something wrong, and theboy bursts into tears and says, "I am sorry." Punishment seems unnecessary; a stern word even seems out of place. The father takes the boy in his arms and simply says, "It's okay. I love you."

12) Joy - As one of the fruit of the spirit, it's hard not to experience God when you experience joy. Often times, the two are linked inseparably.

"I remember saying quietly, 'Thank you.' I suppose it was for the blessings of being alive, finally having a fabulous wife, feeling wonderful, being surrounded by a vibrant, vital city - all of that. I can't honestly say to whom that 'thank you' was directed, but I know I wasn't talking to myself." - Larry King

And so I begin a journey. I'm the most undisciplined and lazy person I know, so I can only hope and pray that I'll take this journey seriously, but I finally have the clarity I've been praying for.

This is where to go next. To apply this precept to more than just God - to the Bible and everything else in my life.

Where reason ends, experience begins.