Sep
20
Rationally
Filed Under Devotional
I had a guy tell me one time that my belief system was not rational. I suddenly realized that I often used the term “rational”, but I was smacked if I really knew what it meant. I felt a wave of uncertainty wash over my like my very underpinnings were being eroded. I began to think there was some great scale somewhere that one could take an idea and measure against to see if having that idea was rational or not. It didn’t help that this guy was a college professor and I was working my tail off and going into debt to hear what he had to say. I thought he must have had some special training or received a certification to make such a statement. After all, he was smart and I wasn’t. Otherwise, some guy would be working his tail off and going into debt to hear what I had to say!
“Whoa, perhaps that thought was not rational,” I thought. Well, rational or not, I looked up the word. It means agreeable to reason; reasonable; sensible; (hmm) having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense; (hmm) pertaining to, or constituting reasoning powers. Hold on, now! I was on to something. All I had to do was compare my belief system to the definition to see if it is rational.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1
Sounds more reasonable than saying that all matter was once compressed into a tiny speck of ultra-dense matter and then, for some reason, it decided to explode.
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Genesis 1:27
This sounds more reasonable than living matter popping up from non-living matter and then, through random selection and mutation over billions of years, there was me.
It suddenly dawned on me that just because I came to different conclusions than this guy while looking at the same question, I wasn’t irrational. From where I was standing, if anybody was not exercising reason and sound judgment, it was mister college guy who, by the way, I was working my tail off and going into debt to hear what he had to say. Therefore, it seemed that the only irrational thing I was doing was working my tail off and going into debt. I, of course, rationalized finishing college because I didn’t want to stop working my tail off, I just wanted a different way to do it. I also had to have some way to pay off my debt.
“but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;” 1 Peter 3:15
Oh, yes, try to do it rationally.