This past Sunday you may have heard me make a possible puzzling statement…
“Pure rationalism will lead to irrationalism.”
What does that mean? Let me explain. Man’s reason and senses enable him to navigate the physical world around him. Such is the common grace bestowed by a reasonable God who gives man the ability to navigate the habitat of his world.
Birds have feathers
Fish have fins
Moles have claws.
Man has senses and reason.
But man must navigate a higher realm.
a more important realm
an invisible realm
a realm beyond the senses
a spiritual realm
the “upper story.”
That realm is the realm of God.
Because the questions that demand answers are:
· Metaphysics: What is behind and above the physical?
· Epistemology: How can we know for certain in areas we can’t evaluate?
· Ethics: What is right and wrong and how do we know?
All life depends upon the answers to these 3 questions. The answer is self-evident.
“Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.” (Rom. 1:20)
God is the answer for our metaphysics. He who is eternal and personal makes a reasonable universe with answers for existence and order and especially for man in the image of God. Thus, the universe is not eternal and not God, and yet, through God, it has eternal meaning and glory. Man is also not God, but has an eternal glory which comes from being in the image of God.
God is our answer for knowing, or epistemology. God makes man with senses and reason to navigate the physical sensory world that we inhabit; we can know about the physical world with relative certainty and we can know of the divine world through God’s revelation of Himself in the Bible.
And God is our answer for ethics – right and wrong. His law, revealed in His word, the expression of His holy nature, is our immutable standard for right and wrong.
Thus our faith is not based upon finite man and his finite reasoning but upon the infinite person and word of God.
We have metaphysical meaning and dignity.
We have a foundation of final inerrant truth.
We have a standard outside of man for what is right.
Christianity is not only internally consistent but it is externally livable – except that you must bow to a Supreme Being, which man is loathe to do.
But when you eliminate the infinite personal God who is Trinity and who has revealed Himself …you now must substitute man’s reason who is not infinite, and man without God is just part of nature…and nature is not personal.
Thus we have gone from “the Lord is my shepherd” – Christianity
To “I am my shepherd” – humanism
To “everything is my shepherd” – pantheism
To today “nothing is my shepherd” – insanity
And that is where we are: “The only thing wrong is saying there is right.” And that has made us insane.
The absence of God has brought us to rationalism that has made us irrational simply because “ye shall have no other gods before me.”
Thus, our world – western civilization – is slowly going mad. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Communism, and polytheism have driven great parts of our world to irrationality. And now secularism – life without God – is slowly driving us mad.
o “What gender would you like to be?”
o “Right and wrong on moral issues is hate speech.”
o “God is not allowed to be spoken of in civic gatherings”
o “The normal historic family is not to be seen as such.”
o “No Merry Christmas.”
o “No Christmas carols.”
o “One is not a human in the womb.”
“Where there is no prophetic revelation the people are unrestrained, but happy is he who keeps the law.” (Pro. 29:18)
www.dentonbible.org. Tommy’s notes.