Is Faith Logical?
[00:00:00] Cody: Hi, welcome to Logic of God podcast. I'm Cody.
[00:00:14] Gina: I'm Gina.
[00:00:15] Ben: And I'm Ben. Today we're going to talk through some of the reasons of why we think that faith is logical and what that means for faith.
[00:00:36] Ben: All right, so starting out, I think the first question would be, is it possible to apply logic to God in any way, to religion generally? Because there is kind of a stigma in our culture of, okay, there is logic and reason. And then there is faith, and the two don't intersect at any point. So is it possible for us to be reasonable and apply logic to our faith?
[00:00:59] Cody: Definitely so. I would say yes. One of the ways that we do that is how we look at and analyze scripture. So there's different methods you can use for analyzing scripture. Hermeneutics is one of those processes and different types of digesting theology and systematic theology. How we approach God logically is we go in with some presuppositions.
[00:01:21] The first one being God exists. I think we all believe that God is at least a possibility of existing, but I mean. Just just a little bit. Maybe maybe I'll grant you that one. The next one would be, you know We believe God is good and perfect in his goodness. The next would be God loves us So God God loves us.
[00:01:45] The next would be he came as a human So he came to live among us and came in the form of Jesus. He suffered he died He rose again and is alive now The next would be scripture and how God speaks to us, whether through personal revelation or just through scripture. There's many different avenues, but that he does talk and speak to us.
[00:02:10] Ben: Yeah, and I would say that we do have other assumptions aside from just these. Part of these assumptions are informed by our life experiences, by our tendencies. So like, Cody and I are very logical, reasonable people by nature. To a fault to an extent. We can try to pursue Knowledge and understanding of a topic before we would pursue the emotional or the passionate or the faithful side of it first, whereas Gina doesn't struggle with that.
[00:02:39] It's not that she's not intelligent or she's not reasonable, but that's not
[00:02:42] Gina: debatable. I would say
[00:02:43] Ben: not. I mean, you're a part of this podcast for a reason, but that's not the thing that. You're pushed to it's not your nature to to pursue that to I'd say a radical degree like Cody and I do You say what we do is radical in a sense.
[00:02:58] I maybe not
[00:03:00] Gina: I think the pursuit of logic for Cody. I can't speak for you But for Cody it it prevents him from having the relational aspect of God because Cody's like, all right I'm looking for you. Where are you in in pages of Scripture and God's like Dude, I'm right here.
[00:03:20] Like, hello.
[00:03:21] Ben: And I would say I'm, I'm very similar in a lot of respects. I don't know if it's a super common problem. And it is a problem that can be addressed. It is something where you can take some steps back. You can understand the things that you can reason through and the things that you can't. And that's some of the stuff we'll be talking about on today's episode.
[00:03:39] Going into it. Yes, those are our core beliefs. And we chose those specifically because they're shared amongst. I would say all Christians. I can't think of any denomination that would disagree, strictly speaking, with any of those individual points.
[00:03:53] Gina: Would love to hear from you if you do disagree with those.
[00:03:56] Seriously,
[00:03:57] Ben: like, if you agree, if you disagree as a Christian with Christ's existence, I don't know why you would be a Christian to begin with. But, Or God's goodness or his existence. I would really want to know if you don't believe God actually exists. The point is, is that we do have other assumptions, but I think all Christians can agree on these.
[00:04:17] And from these, we should be able to expand and interpret scripture and interpret the ideas presented in scripture in a way that is consistent and can help us to understand God more, to understand his glory, his nature, and bring us to different doors that we do need to walk through. I don't believe that logic can lead us to open these doors, but I do believe that it can bring us to them, if that makes any sense.
[00:04:42] Cody: No, for sure. Definitely agree it would lead you to those doors. I think the more that you read or dive in, the doors, there's more doors to go through instead of having to wait till they're presented to you. I think you could find a lot of that through study and through applying yourself to study.
[00:05:01] Gina: I do want to make a quick comment because it kind of leads into the first question that we've kind of typed out here, but if you're the kind of, you know, Christian that Google searches what the Bible says about something, or you, you know, cherry pick your way through the Bible, you're not going to have the same success in processing the logic behind God.
[00:05:25] And I want to challenge you because that's how I used to be in this specific episode to lean in and. And I think that's what's going to be better about reading in your Bible, because you're not going to access any logical parts of God by cherry picking your way through the
[00:05:40] Ben (2): Bible. Yeah,
[00:05:41] Cody: absolutely. On that, I'd like to say you hear context is king a lot.
[00:05:44] Even in our church, you hear context is king a lot, and that doesn't mean the verse right before the one. There's a whole lot more context that goes into understanding, you know, who the people were that were being written about. So you have a cultural aspect. And how they were raised and the audience, how, how they would receive it.
[00:06:04] You also have the different timelines and a, a lot more aspects into context, quote unquote than, than just the verse before and the verse after for scripture. It goes
[00:06:15] Ben: perfectly into our first question, what does it look like to analyze scripture? Yes. So, yeah, kind of going off of what you were talking about, a lot of that is.
[00:06:24] There is the historical context, there is the biblical context, obviously, where you're looking at the verses before and after, reading the Bible in its entirety, but even reading the Bible in its entirety, there are a lot of things that the Bible talks about, individual historical events, that it doesn't expound upon.
[00:06:41] It doesn't give you a whole lot of information about what it's talking about, like Korah's Rebellion. Like, what's Korah's Rebellion? Why are we talking about this? Why is it even being brought up? And so, it helps to look at additional resources, it helps to go into the original wording of different things.
[00:06:58] So, in the original language, what do certain phrases mean? How do they translate? What was the process by which the original Hebrew, Or rather, the original Aramaic, and ancient Phoenician scholarscript, and Greek, and all of the different languages that kind of came together to make the Bible. How did all of that happen?
[00:07:17] What was the author's original intent? Is this always the way the Bible has been written? Have there been any changes? All of these are very important things to look at when you're trying to analyze Scripture. Because it will inform a lot of different things. If the Bible has been changed a lot, okay. If it's been changed a whole lot over the course of years, how do I trust it?
[00:07:37] If it hasn't changed a whole lot, was it right to begin with?
[00:07:41] Gina: So Ben, what are tools that you use to, to learn those things?
[00:07:44] Ben: The internet's a really helpful thing. Typically, the, the resources that I use are other authors. So there's J. Warner Wallace. He's a great guy. He wrote a lot of different books. One of them is Cold Case Christianity.
[00:07:56] He is a great resource. For a lot of information on the New Testament, specifically about Jesus Christ himself. There are other guys like Lee Strobel who have compiled a lot of different books. There's like The Case for Miracles, The Case for Christ, The Case for the Resurrection. And he compiles a lot of different information for you.
[00:08:12] He doesn't go super deep into everything. If you want super deep, And, to be fair, if you read a lot of these books, he will give you references to those books. And then if you're looking for external stuff, there are other guys like Dr. Gary Habermas. He's the guy who created the minimal facts argument. And There are some people who have issues with that argument, and we may go into exactly what that is at some other time, but that's not super important right now.
[00:08:38] Gary's written a lot of different works, and he's compiled a lot of different extra biblical information, as well as sources that aren't Christian. So, hostile sources, some people like Bart Ehrman, who are textual critics and historians, who don't necessarily agree with the divinity of God. Christ or the inerrancy of scripture or anything like that, but who do have some information that they can provide as far as maybe dating of the gospels, people who are not necessarily friendly to scripture and what they have to say about it.
[00:09:08] And that's a lot of useful stuff when trying to figure out exactly where we stand and why we stand in what the Bible says.
[00:09:15] Gina: That's awesome. Cody, what about you for your resources? I know you've got probably four feet of them sitting next to me. Yeah, all that stuff should be
[00:09:23] Ben: on a bookshelf.
[00:09:25] Cody: Books, definitely.
[00:09:27] I read a lot of dead people. I think it's good. You know, I like lately a lot of Second Temple literature to kind of dive into the Old Testament. They're closer to that time. So I think their writings were a little bit more Useful than current modern writers on Old Testament understanding and interpretation.
[00:09:46] Just got Logos for many other exegetical works and commentaries, it's great. And just plain old Google.
[00:09:53] Ben: Yeah, I mean, the internet is the source of all evil, but it's the source of some good. It can be occasionally useful.
[00:09:59] Gina: I'm a fan of the concordance and also blue letter Bible and the Bible project. Those have been really helpful for me.
[00:10:06] I'm not as, as deep in theological as, as Cody and Ben, and I take it a little, a little lighter. So if you're looking for a lighter, go there.
[00:10:15] Ben: Well, and to be fair, you really don't need to go in as deep as Cody and I do. Right. Kind of like I said, at the very beginning of this, he and I take this to a kind of crazy degree.
[00:10:26] Yeah. And the average Christian ultimately doesn't need to know the names of every single objection to the Bible as well as 15 different counter arguments against it. For most people, there are a set of things that you should pursue that are reasonable. You should know who was Jesus. Is there evidence for him that he actually existed?
[00:10:46] Is there a solid, good reason for us to believe in the Bible? Is it reliable? If so, how so? How much reliable? Like, how much should we invest in the reliability of the Gospels and the Bible in general? All these things are questions that have been asked for thousands of years, as long as the Bible has been around.
[00:11:05] And you'll find a lot of people who have invested their entire lives in answering these questions. And so you don't need to have the answer to every single question. Sometimes it is enough to know that there are people who can answer it. But I find that there's always a certain set of questions that all of us struggle with.
[00:11:21] And that really depends a lot on who you are. For Cody and I, the questions are often very logical in nature, and they tend to send us into spirals of arguments and counterarguments and counterfactuals and all sorts of nonsense. But there are other people who struggle with very different things. The most common thing that I see people struggling with, oddly enough, is the question of evil.
[00:11:42] And I don't think we'll go into that in this episode. It's enough to say that individual issues have been addressed. Individual Christians in the past, large numbers of church fathers, large numbers of missionaries and good men of faith, people who've been Christians forever and people who haven't, have written works about this, and who have genuinely taken it to heart.
[00:12:03] And also, it's important to know that these things are things that we do struggle with as Christians all the same, even when we know the answers, or we feel like we know the answers.
[00:12:12] Cody: No, yeah, for sure. The Bible's been around a long time, most likely the issue you're dealing with is not new. So,
[00:12:18] Gina: nothing is new under the sun.
[00:12:20] You can. That sounds biblical.
[00:12:23] Cody: Yeah. And everything is meaningless. No. Yeah, there's, there's lots of different topics that have been covered over the course of history that are not new, but sometimes you get, you know, a resurgent of certain topics and everybody thinks it's new and a hot button issue, but it's been around for.
[00:12:41] quite some time. So definitely can research on if there's a specific issue bothering you. There's probably a lot of old authors that have written about it in the past,
[00:12:51] Gina: but don't just look for like a one sentence verse that you can put on your Facebook page, like actually study it like real study.
[00:13:00] Ben: Yeah.
[00:13:01] The pursuit of knowledge for this, like deeper understanding is very important, but that does bring up. A good question, which I believe is our next one. When does my desire for logic or knowledge or understanding become idolatry? When is it too much?
[00:13:15] Cody: That's a good question. Yeah. I've definitely hit that wall multiple times because the pursuit of knowing definitely can become all encompassing and just take up all your time.
[00:13:26] I remember when I first got into kind of just deeper study and getting into things, the just realm of Calvinism and free will thinkers and just the, the rabbit hole of everybody fighting on that definitely got consuming. And, you know, you want to take a hard stance and, and whatnot, but you also got to remember your first love at the end of the day, you know, being Jesus and, and following him and what that looks like.
[00:13:53] Gina: Can you guys speak to your motive behind the desire for the knowledge?
[00:13:57] Ben: It's tough to say exactly why anyone desires something specifically. For me, it's the way my mind works. I'm not a naturally very emotional person, or rather, I don't enjoy exploring emotions to a deep degree. I like to explore things intellectually.
[00:14:13] I like to amass knowledge and I like to use that knowledge to control things. And that's one of the things about knowledge is that it allows you to affect the world around you. And not just, you know, physical things, and it allows you to affect emotional things. If you understand that emotional people exist, and how their emotions manifest, and what those emotions drive them to do, then you can affect those people, for good or for ill.
[00:14:35] And, yeah, so ultimately, the reason that I'm I feel the drive to do intellectual studies into Christianity, into God, is just because that's my natural inclination. That's the way I look at the world generally. I actually have a degree in physics, so by my nature, I look at the world as something that is understandable.
[00:14:54] It's a series of numbers and letters. If you have enough information, you can predict and understand anything. And that's ultimately one of the issues that I've had in Christianity, is that there's only so much you can do to understand God. At some point, he is beyond your understanding. It's not that logic isn't useful.
[00:15:13] But it is that if you pursue knowledge for knowledge's sake, you're attempting to try to gain a one up in many ways over God. It's kind of like what I was saying before. If I understand a person's emotions, if I understand what drives them, I can manipulate them to an extent. And I can do that for good reasons or bad reasons, but God's not that way.
[00:15:33] He knows me. He knows my heart, and He's the one who made me. And ultimately, if I'm trying to constantly learn more and more about Him, it's because I want to find a way to control Him. And I can't. No matter what I do, there's always going to be the vast majority of Him that I can't understand or control.
[00:15:49] Gina: Thank you for sharing.
[00:15:50] Cody: No problem.
[00:15:51] Ben: How about you, Cody?
[00:15:52] Cody: No, I, I relate with that a lot. Definitely try to put God in a box for sure. To, manipulates an interesting word for it, but at the root, I think that, that is, you know, the, the more you understand about somebody, the more control you have over them. Our feeble minds maybe go that direction with God too, um, pathetic when you think about it.
[00:16:15] But just what you said, I definitely agree with, but the thing that definitely drives me to further my knowledge and have come to realization because I, I felt weird about it in the past. Also reading Matthew 22, 37 when, you know, we're told to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind. If I'm not putting what God put in me to use and furthering my knowledge on Him, then I'm not really loving Him with my mind.
[00:16:44] But again, I also want to be able to relate that knowledge that I learned to other people. So use it for good. Absolutely.
[00:16:53] Ben: And Gina, what specifically drives you to understand God in the way that you do?
[00:16:58] Gina: I have a much different perspective than Cody. I have pretty frequent interactions with God. He speaks to me.
[00:17:08] And my family tells me I'm crazy when I say that, but he does. You know, the Word helps me understand the history, the story, you know, sometimes the purpose for things, but my desire for, for knowing and understanding God is, is more relational. It's because I want to know Him the way that He knows me. And I, I know that that's not going to be possible earth side, but that's not going to stop me from trying.
[00:17:37] So that's, that's it.
[00:17:40] Ben: Well, it's definitely not bad. And in a lot of ways, I think that actually does bring you much closer to God than That the logical or the reasonable path will.
[00:17:48] Gina: Yeah.
[00:17:49] Ben: A direct connection is always much better than trying to tangentially try to understand God through something he made.
[00:17:55] Gina: It definitely makes it interesting in our marriage. I guess I should share, like, Cody and I are married. Yeah, that might have been a good idea
[00:18:01] Ben (2): to
[00:18:01] Cody: start with. And I'm not the family that calls her crazy when she No, I
[00:18:05] Gina: have, yeah, I have a very non religious family. But it makes it very interesting in our marriage because He, he doesn't experience God the same way that I do.
[00:18:15] Cody: No, we experience God, I'd say, pretty much completely differently.
[00:18:21] Gina: And when I share certain things, you'll give me your logical explanation for how that's not miraculous or whatever. And I'm like, but you don't understand. So
[00:18:31] Ben: sometimes, well, something may have. Ultimately, a scientific or a rational explanation, but that doesn't mean that God's not involved in it in some way.
[00:18:42] Gina: Right, right. And I'm, I'm much more emotional and I'm a woman and you know, that's just the way that I think most of us are wired. You know, I think as far as, as far as like watching Cody as his wife, like in his desire for the knowledge and the logic and the explanation and the reason, like all of that, I think You know, I, I want you to have that emotional relationship with God.
[00:19:04] And I think you're building that, you know, you've had different experiences in the last year that you didn't ever have before. And so I know there's growth there, but I get worried sometimes that. You know, because you're so hyper focused on study that you miss the opportunity to have those relational interactions with God.
[00:19:23] And so that's why I actually wrote this question on the outline, because I'd really like to know from your perspective when that desire does become an idol instead of, you know, the path of knowing the Lord. I mean,
[00:19:36] Cody: for me, when it becomes an idol, I definitely think that's when it's You try to put limits on what God can do, like what I do when you interact with God.
[00:19:47] You know, if I'm trying to constantly explain it away with logic, I think that's an issue.
[00:19:54] Gina: Yeah. I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to make it personal. I just.
[00:19:57] Cody: No. And, and, and I think, I think there is a lot of that in the modern day today just because how do I say this without sounding like a jerk?
[00:20:08] Gina: Just try. Yeah.
[00:20:10] Cody: mean, so like, you, you have Benny Hen on one end who does a, you know, sport coat run through thousands of people and knocks them all over. And anybody who is a logical or reasonable person probably is just going to write that off as bullcrap. These people are stupid. You know, they're, they're not experiencing anything, but I've also met some people who speak very highly of him and said that.
[00:20:35] They've encountered God through him, so it's an interesting position to be in and writing things off just as, I'm not going to say perception is reality, but in some instances I think that that is the case.
[00:20:50] Ben: So then what would you say is the the limit of logic when we're trying to understand God?
[00:20:55] Gina: There's always going to be an element of mystery.
[00:20:58] Cody: There is, and that's one of the things, you know, I have this list of topics I want to study, and divine hiddenness is one of those things, because I don't think, and I've heard somebody say it before on some podcast I listen to, but there's a giant sword in the sky that followed you around, and anytime you did something evil, it slashed you down and killed you.
[00:21:19] Nobody would do anything bad. Like, if you had instant consequences, there would be no evil or bad in the world, so there really wouldn't be a choice. So there definitely has to be some sort of mystery aspect to God, because there wouldn't be a choice if there wasn't. If everybody knew that God is who he says he is, then there wouldn't be a choice.
[00:21:44] Sure. I think the direction I would go with that.
[00:21:48] Ben: So I love to talk about one particular Christian apologetic minister, who unfortunately died a few years ago, Nabeel Qureshi. I bring him up all the time, because I think he probably was one of the greatest Christian apologists who have existed in the past ten years.
[00:22:02] And I don't say that lightly, considering a lot of the different names that have come up. But in his book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, he talks about how he argued with his friend, Dr. David Wood, who was another Christian apologist. And he spent years, I think it was about three years, Combined arguing with him about Islam versus Christianity and slowly confronting each individual misconception He had about Christianity and coming to an a mental understanding about the different aspects of God in the Bible and about how his objections to the New Testament were And at one point he says that he's 85 percent sure that the New Testament is reliable and that it's correct in what it says about Jesus.
[00:22:40] And ultimately I don't think you can get much better than 85 percent in most anything when it comes to real life. Because there's always a chance that you're wrong about something. So logic and reason and argumentation got him up to the door. In more ways than one, but it did get him through it. Once he got to that point where he didn't have any more ammunition left, he asked God directly to reveal himself.
[00:22:58] And he describes in the book that logic and reason got him to the point where he was, where there was nothing else between him and God except himself. That there was no more information, no more knowledge, no more objections. But he was still him. And God was still God. And so he didn't know what his nature really was like, and the only way he could truly know God's nature is through God revealing himself to him.
[00:23:21] And he did that through one vision and three dreams. So it wasn't through studying the Bible, it wasn't through intellectual understanding, and it wasn't through thinking really, really hard about it. In the end, it was God revealing himself to Nabil. And then there was one more thing towards the end of the story where he had confessed his faith to God.
[00:23:44] He had said he believes Jesus Christ is Lord. At that point, he had intellectually accepted the gospel. But the point he describes as him truly becoming a Christian is when he broke the news to his family. And it broke his heart. And it broke his family's heart. And it nearly destroyed their relationship.
[00:24:03] And he went out crying into the street and he's like, God, why didn't you just kill me? I could have taken that, my family could have taken that, I would be with you, and they would have believed that I was still a Muslim and our relationship would have been fine, why didn't you just kill me? And the Lord spoke to him and said, because it's not about you.
[00:24:21] And at that point, he was truly a Christian, and he felt As if the whole world looked different, and he saw the world the way God saw things, and not the way that he wanted to see them. And, so yeah, all that is to say, there is value in reason. There is value in textual analysis. There's value in looking at the history of the Gospels.
[00:24:43] But it will only bring you up to the door. In the end, you have to talk to God to open it. And he's the only one who will. You can't do it yourself.
[00:24:51] Gina: That's really good.
[00:24:52] Ben: That is amazing.
[00:24:54] Gina: I have so I want to share maybe I shouldn't I don't know
[00:24:58] Ben (2): go for it
[00:24:59] Gina: Okay,
[00:25:00] Ben (2): or no, I don't know
[00:25:02] Gina: So I have this like routine at bedtime where I try to Envision the Holy Spirit being present and it helps me fall asleep.
[00:25:11] And the Holy Spirit to me looks like a pink sparkly cloud and it like hovers. And to me, it doesn't. So one night I was going to bed, I was feeling really unsettled and I couldn't fall asleep and I couldn't see the Holy Spirit. And so I started to get like angry. And I like curled up in a ball and I went into this vision and in this vision I was standing in front of these doors.
[00:25:41] And so it just reminded me of, you know, in the, in the dream or in the vision or whatever it was, I wasn't asleep. There was like an angel and it said like, you have to knock. So I had to actually knock on the door and ask to be let in. And then I was let in. And so what you're just describing about. You know, you have to actually talk to God to get the door to open, like you absolutely do have to take that initiative because He will not just let you in and He will let you stand there.
[00:26:06] You know, it's not like when our five year old stands outside waiting to be let in from the backyard. You actually have to ask to be let in.
[00:26:15] Cody: So yeah, and I mean salvation is through faith. So I don't think you'll 100 percent be able to remove the need for faith like the story of Nabil that you shared There's always gonna be that further step.
[00:26:30] You can you can only get there. You can only get so far with logic
[00:26:34] Ben: Well, and you know, what? Dr. David Berlinski. Dr. David Berlinski is a well known skeptic He's he's not hostile towards Christianity or Judaism or any faith. Really? Hebrew is not the kind of man who would dedicate himself to a religion. He wouldn't call himself necessarily religious.
[00:26:50] He's read the Bible. And he appreciates it, and he thinks that it's a very good book, and he recognizes its importance. And he looks down on aggressive atheists who talk about how there definitely isn't God. And when you listen to him talk about these different things, he talks about how there are no proofs.
[00:27:07] It's arguments. You can make convincing arguments, you can make unconvincing arguments, and then you can make counter arguments to the convincing arguments, but in the end it's all And Dr. Berlinski is a mathematician. He's accustomed to numbers and those numbers telling the same story every time and being able to walk those numbers to a logical conclusion that will happen no matter who goes through that process.
[00:27:27] So when he looks at things like the Bible and faith and things like that, he's looking for something that will be 100 percent every single time. This is it in order to believe it, because that's how he is. And he will recognize that it doesn't mean that Christianity isn't true. It means that for him to believe, there has to be a standard, an actual proof rather than an argument.
[00:27:51] Faith doesn't step into it for him quite yet, I don't think. I pray that it does. I pray that eventually he gets to that point. But I think he really is the manifestation of how far reason by itself can get you. It can get you to an appreciation for God and an appreciation for Christianity and for Judaism.
[00:28:09] For And to some extent other religions as well, but it can't get you through the door.
[00:28:14] Gina: Do you think that it requires, like, humility?
[00:28:18] Ben: Yes. I think the pursuit of knowledge is fueled in large part by pride.
[00:28:22] Gina: So how would you respond to James 4 6 that says God opposes the proud?
[00:28:29] Ben: I would agree.
[00:28:30] Gina: So you're blocking yourself with your pride from having that access of getting through the door.
[00:28:37] And God is actively opposing you in that.
[00:28:40] Cody: For sure.
[00:28:40] Gina: Yeah. Okay.
[00:28:43] Cody: 100%. Subtle dig, Gina. Thank you a lot. What are you trying to say?
[00:28:48] Gina: That I love you. And so does Jesus.
[00:28:50] Cody: Is that an I told you so moment? No,
[00:28:53] Gina: no. I just, I felt like I needed to make that point for the listeners.
[00:28:57] Cody: Yes. It's for the listeners, you see. It's for their benefit.
[00:29:01] The listeners. Yes. So. All of this logic on our end, and we try to put this God in a box of logical reasoning, is God himself logical? Well, so,
[00:29:16] Ben: I suppose that depends on what you mean by logical.
[00:29:19] Cody: So would he ask us to do anything illogically?
[00:29:24] Ben: Well, yeah.
[00:29:25] Cody: Why is that?
[00:29:26] Ben: Well, in part, it's kind of like what Gina just referenced with the book of James.
[00:29:31] It's that he opposes the proud. Oftentimes we look to logic and patterns because we're trying to ascertain the likelihood of success. We're trying to exercise a measure of control. When God asks us to do something that doesn't make sense to us, he is asking for us to relinquish control to him. So like, when he asked the Israelites to walk around Jericho, that didn't make any sense.
[00:29:53] He never had asked them to do something like that before. He never asked them to do something like that again. And prior to that, he'd asked them to walk around in the wilderness for 40 years. And prior to that, he brought them out of Egypt, the place where they had been enslaved forever, And they had to do a lot of stepping out in faith in that process because Pharaoh came after them with, you know, a few hundred chariots and was planning on either forcibly taking them all back or killing them.
[00:30:14] There were multiple points where they were told to do something that didn't make sense. And he told them to do it in that particular way because he's God and because they needed to relinquish control to him.
[00:30:24] Cody: So, would you label all faith as illogical?
[00:30:27] Ben: Not at all. Okay. Because the thing is, is that the reason you listen to God is because you know He's correct, and you know that He loves you.
[00:30:35] That's one of the reasons why we've laid out the core assumptions at the very beginning. Just because God asks you to do something that doesn't make sense given the patterns you observe in the universe generally. It doesn't mean that it violates the core assumptions. That God is good, that God loves you, that He knows what He's doing.
[00:30:53] Those are not violative of what He asked. Asking you to walk around the walls of Jericho, whatever your personal Jericho is, I imagine we've all been asked to do something irrational at some point, something that didn't make sense to us. We're told to do that the way that God tells us to do it, because He is God, because He loves us, because He sees the big picture.
[00:31:12] And if he asked us to do things the reasonable way, we wouldn't need his help.
[00:31:17] Cody: Yeah, we could reason our way out of it.
[00:31:18] Ben: Yeah.
[00:31:19] Gina: Which I've done before. You end up in the belly of a whale, just to warn you.
[00:31:24] Ben: I feel like that's also biblical,
[00:31:25] Gina: in some strange way. But
[00:31:27] Ben: for the life of me, I can't imagine which story that would be.
[00:31:31] Gina: Cody shared with me, like probably two years ago now, there was this really sweet video on YouTube and the, there was a pastor and I'm really botching this story, but he basically said that God does not tell us things that are not reasonable. So like, you know, he's not saying thou shall not flap your wings and fly.
[00:31:50] He gives us like, Things that are actually possible and the example that I'm relating this to from my family is the New Age Spirituality so I want to tackle Logic there because I think a lot of people believe that they can become enlightened enough and spiritual enough to where they don't even need God and I'd like to tackle that just briefly because I know it's not something that we could probably fit in one episode
[00:32:15] Ben: Sure, so as far as, what are we tackling first?
[00:32:18] The idea that God never asks us something that is logically impossible?
[00:32:23] Gina: Well, I wouldn't say that, but I would say more like with the things God tells us not to do.
[00:32:30] Cody: So, like, the command not to practice necromancing or witchcraft and channeling the dead type of mentality is kind of the bad spectrum and, like, faith to move mountains.
[00:32:45] Gina: Like, you have the one side of the spectrum that's, you know, New Age spirituality and channeling and crystals and all of that, and then you have like the whole other end that is the faith to move mountains. So I would like to compare and contrast a little bit.
[00:33:00] Ben: Yeah, there are certain things we're told not to do, like, like witchcraft and a lot of, you know, different vague spiritual things.
[00:33:07] Tarot readings and whatnot. Not every single thing that we decide not to do as Christians is specifically outlined in the Bible, but you can generally get a feel for what it is you're not supposed to do. And typically when you look at all of these different things, they're actually attempts to take control away from God, spiritual control away from God, and give it to you.
[00:33:26] And you see this with a lot of new age spirituality, and it It pulls a lot from Eastern influence, like from India. It's the idea that you, at your heart, are the divine being. And because you are the divine being, you are God. You are a part of God, therefore you are God, and therefore the things that you think and the things that you feel are divine.
[00:33:46] And so you can exercise that divine control in any way that you see fit, because you are God, and God is God, and he can do what he wants. Or she wants, because, you know, if you are a woman and you are God, you are a she. So there's also a big push against intellectual consistency, which kind of ties into the logical theme that we have here.
[00:34:06] Because when you look at Hinduism, there are so many different gods from so many different pantheons, and Jesus is thrown in there, and they all have different origins for the universe and their births, and it doesn't make sense. You can't actually combine all these things together. But it doesn't matter, because that's just the Mutual exclusivity is not a part of the religion.
[00:34:26] It's fine. Anyone and everyone can believe whatever, and because it all has an element of truth to it, because it all has an element of the divine, because it is all coming from us, and we are humans, and therefore we are divine, and therefore we are God, and whatever we make is good. So, when you look at a lot of these different practices, they are attempts to rob God of His control over our lives.
[00:34:46] When you look at the miraculous things that God works through man, whether through spiritual gifts, which, you know, Lord willing, we will address at some point, or miracles that He will work through us without the gifts specifically. And, you know, he does this throughout the Bible, he'll, you know, like, sending birds with, yeah, birds with food to, to the prophets, or, you know, creating manna out of the, the sand of the earth, or whatever.
[00:35:08] All these things are things that God does, and he doesn't need us to do it. With the practices of witchcraft, or sorcery, or whatever, you are attempting to take that power from God. and use it yourself for your own means. And to an extent, Moses actually practiced this. It's a bit of a niche point in scripture.
[00:35:27] There's a point where God tells Moses to speak to a rock, and it will open up and gush water. Instead, he strikes it. There was no reason for him to hit it, and it still gushed water. But in the end, he was punished for this, and his punishment was he never got to see the promised land. He chose to work the miracle the way he wanted.
[00:35:45] That was taking power from God, honor from God, and giving it to himself. And so that's, that's where I'm at with a lot of this stuff. The main reason that it's wrong, aside from inviting demonic influence into your life, which I think we will also probably cover in another episode. And if you don't believe in demons, fine, whatever.
[00:36:02] But it's the idea that you are trying to pull from something that isn't God to influence the world around you, to take control from him and use it for yourself.
[00:36:11] Cody: Great explanation.
[00:36:12] Ben: Thank you.
[00:36:13] Gina: You said Chef's kiss.
[00:36:16] Ben: Grazie.
[00:36:18] Gina: So when is, when is the knowledge good enough? At what point can you comfortably stop?
[00:36:24] Or can you?
[00:36:26] Ben: In the words of Habakkuk, his greed is as wide as the grave and like death is never satisfied. I would say that for the people who live off of this stuff, knowledge is never enough. And to an extent, I think that's okay. I think that the constant hunger to know God, if it's tempered with the, the knowledge that at some point when you reach these doors, when you use the knowledge to get to each individual door, you have to ask God to let you in.
[00:36:54] And in the end, you can't force the doors open with enough headbutts, so to speak. As long as you preach that approach with the required level of humility, I think it's fine. But I don't think I'm ever going to have enough knowledge. I don't think it's ever, it's going to be a. Probably eternal long after my death, I'm going to continue trying to know more and more and more.
[00:37:14] And I think, you know, all bad things are just a good thing that's corrupted. In the end, a thirst for knowledge I don't think is bad. I think it's when you try to substitute God and your need for Him with your pursuit of knowledge. That's when it becomes a bad thing.
[00:37:27] Cody: Right, and I think hoarding it for yourself is bad.
[00:37:31] Absolutely. So it's what you do with that knowledge I think plays a big part.
[00:37:36] Gina: Well, you guys are practically bursting with it. So
[00:37:38] Cody: I wish I'm a layman
[00:37:42] Gina: for now. I don't think you're a layman. I would say I'm more of a A basic layman. Oh, come on. You guys are, your hunger is very inspiring and I wish that more Christians took their study of the word as seriously because I just, I know so many people in so many groups that I lead that they're like, well, I was having a bad day, so I Googled, what does the Bible say about this?
[00:38:07] And it's like, oh no, no, no, no.
[00:38:11] Ben: I mean, Google's a tool. It's an okay tool.
[00:38:13] Gina: It is, but like, God has such a personal explanation for not just like the instance that you're in, but just for your total testimony and getting to watch you guys in your studies and your hunger. Like, I'm hungry for God in a totally different way.
[00:38:32] And your example over our household has been very, very helpful. Like we were watching our five year old read Genesis today, which Would not happen if you were not as in the word as you are like morning noon and night and it Creates a love for the word in our house For our three children that and for me that I would not have had otherwise, especially with my upbringing So I appreciate that in you.
[00:38:58] Ben: You're welcome.
[00:38:59] Gina: Thank you
[00:39:00] Ben: Well, honestly, I think it's the union of your two perspectives that actually makes you guys work so well together because I think ultimately it's just It's the balance that you should be pursuing. It's the balance of logic and reason versus faith and passion. And when you have all four of those elements together, that's when you can truly know God.
[00:39:18] And since the two of you are together as man and wife, you're one person. And together, you're pursuing God. And so I think, I do see, Gina, your influence in Cody. And Cody, I do see your influence in Gina. And both of you together influence your children. And I think that that's an incredibly powerful thing.
[00:39:33] Cody: Thank you. No problem. No, for sure. The logical side, at least for me. The, the logical side definitely hampers the relational side, and I think that's what I've been missing. And what a lot of people who follow the more analytical approach are missing is the relational side with God, which He wants.
[00:39:53] Gina: Well, it kind of brings us to the last little point, which you already mentioned is Matthew 22, 37.
[00:40:01] And you love God with all your mind, and He knows that. That's And I think it's just perfecting the other two, your heart and your soul. And the soul is, I think the hardest because it requires like supernatural God stuff in order to accept that was not an articulate way to say it, but
[00:40:20] Cody: break that down for us.
[00:40:21] Ben: Well, isn't that some radical supernatural God stuff? Amen. Put it on the shirt.
[00:40:31] Gina: Yeah, you can pick that up in our merch site on our blog.
[00:40:34] Ben: Yeah, tune in to Logic of God, buy our merch. Thanks a lot, folks. We're out. Now, I agree. I'm not sure what word exactly is used for soul here. Typically, the Greek word This kind of goes into one of the first points we talked about, where context is important.
[00:40:50] In the Greek, they had a different interpretation for soul than we do. They had a different term, spirit, for the immortal essence of a person. Soul was actually the union of a person's mind, a person's body, and a person's will. Essentially, what the book of Matthew is saying here, what Christ is saying, and what the Old Testament that he was citing is, the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord with everything that you have.
[00:41:15] That's really all it means. Every, every aspect of what you possibly can have. Your emotions, mind, body, will, your spirit, everything. And, yeah, I, I think, while Cody and I do absolutely struggle more with, I think, the heart aspect. Looking around in, in common society, Before I rail on the current state of the world, I think it's important to say that throughout history, when you look, different cultures at different times have struggled with different aspects of loving God.
[00:41:46] When you look at certain things like the Puritans, they had a very robust, you know, Intellectual understanding of God during that specific societal period. But if you were to, if you were trying to pursue a relational part with God, that would have been a bit more difficult. They were very strict. They, they, they didn't want any kind of sinning whatsoever.
[00:42:05] Because logically, why would you ever allow any kind of sin? It doesn't make sense. It logically follows that if you know what the right thing to do is, then you only do what is right. And you expunge any kind of resistance to that fact. It logically follows. Right now. We don't have that problem. I would say right now we kind of have the opposite problem.
[00:42:24] Gina: We have no boundaries.
[00:42:25] Ben: Yes, there are literally no boundaries. And while it's a lot of, in common culture today, it's very funny to you know, make fun of the Puritans and the Puritanical. All those fundamental Christians from way back in the 1980s, you know, touched by an angel. I mean, in. Yeah, we had a lot of corny stuff from, you know, not that long ago where it was very focused on heaven and angels and the Bible and it was, it was everywhere in pop culture.
[00:42:50] And now we've gotten to the point where you are your own God. You, whatever it is you decide, whatever it is you feel is God.
[00:43:01] Gina: Well, you have truth and then you have my truth.
[00:43:03] Ben: Yes. There is no the truth anymore. It is just whatever truth you feel is the truth is your truth. And I have my truth, except for when your truth interferes with my truth, then my truth is actually the truth.
[00:43:15] So you better be careful not to interfere with my truth, because then you're going to be in trouble.
[00:43:20] Gina: That also interferes with my always being right, because that's how I identify.
[00:43:23] Ben: I also identify as always being right. How can that be possible? That's just my truth. My
[00:43:29] Gina: uniqueness. It just makes me that special that I can, yeah.
[00:43:33] Oh,
[00:43:33] Ben: moral
[00:43:33] Cody: relativity. That's five episodes there.
[00:43:38] Ben: To be honest, God willing, we'll get to that as well. But the point is, is that right now, society generally seems to be suffering from a lack of introspection. from a lack of analyzing its own beliefs and seeing if they are intellectually consistent and Lord willing the pendulum will swing back and at some point we'll find a nice middle ground where people Pursue an intellectual understanding of God, but understand that yes, you do need that emotional depth to it as well That's where we're going to try to go with with this podcast specifically.
[00:44:11] Cody: Yeah
[00:44:12] Ben: And, you know, thank God we have the, uh, the robust representation here that we do with two logical people and one person who's much more in tune with the spiritual and emotional side. Sorry, Gina, you are a little outnumbered. But No,
[00:44:22] Gina: that's okay.
[00:44:23] Ben: But considering how much you love the Lord, I do think you do more than enough work to balance things out.
[00:44:27] Gina: I try.
[00:44:28] Cody: But it's the Logic of God podcast, not the Emotionalness of God podcast.
[00:44:33] Gina: Well, and that's something I put on my, like, notes. You know, I, I believe that we're made in the image of God and emotions. represent a portion of God. So, you know, we have the logical side of God, but we also have the emotional side of God among other sides as well.
[00:44:52] Cody: Are we going to get into the sevenfold spirit?
[00:44:54] Gina: No.
[00:44:56] Ben (2): For another time. There are only so many things we can cover on a single podcast. I suggest we not overdo it, love.
[00:45:04] Gina: We could make it, like, the revival and just never stop.
[00:45:07] Ben (2): You know
[00:45:07] Ben: what? The never ending podcast. Granted, at some point we do need to actually release this thing.
[00:45:13] But We'll just live stream it.
[00:45:16] Gina: It'll be on the news. Three people sitting in a room, never leaving.
[00:45:21] Ben: They have no clue what we're talking about.
[00:45:25] Gina: Well, thank you for tuning in to The Logic of God. We hope you enjoyed our episode. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and share and also feel free to leave a review and also follow us on social media. Have a great day.
