Reason

Wesley So, the current US Chess Champion (in 2017, 2020, and 2021), shares how he came to Christ:

On the small planet where elite chess players dwell, very few people worship Jesus Christ. If anyone discovers that you’re one of those “superstitious,” “narrow-minded idiots,” you’re likely to see nasty comments accumulate on your Facebook fan page. They wonder how I, the world’s second-ranked chess player, can be so “weak-minded.”

Wesley grew up in the Philippines and as a child was told that if he was good, God would bless him. But this confused him, because it seemed like the bad people received more than the good people. He knew of many famous crooks who went to church and they were pretty rich. So, Wesley decided to play it safe. He would recite the right words in church, but he never connected to God in a meaningful way.

He played chess since age six or seven and as he grew up, he kept on winning. But he could never afford to hire a coach or get serious chess training. When he was 18, he got an offer to play on the chess team of a small American university. So, he left home and moved to America.

Then I met the people who would become my foster family. They were Christians, and Lotis, my foster mother, could sense my unhappiness. She asked me what I wanted to do in life, and I replied that I loved playing chess but didn’t think I was talented enough to translate that into a full-time career. Lotis told me to focus on chess alone for the next two years—the family would support me any way it could.

His foster parents were mature Christians and insisted that living as a member of the family meant that he would need to faithfully accompany them to church. They taught him that the Bible was the final authority, deeper and wiser than the internet and more truthful than any of his friends.

Before long, I was practicing my faith in a more intense way. My new family calls Christianity the “thinking man’s religion.” They encouraged me to ask questions, search for answers, and really wrestle with what I discovered. I knew I wanted the kind of simple, contented, God-fearing life they enjoyed.

People in the chess world sometimes want to know whether I think God makes me win matches. Yes. And sometimes he makes me lose them too. He is the God of chess and, more importantly, the God of everything. Win or lose, I give him the glory. Will I rise to become the world champion one day? Only God knows for sure. In the meantime, I know that he is a generous and loving Father, always showering me with more blessings than I could possibly deserve.

Author Meghan O'Gieblyn, explores meaning, morality, and faith. She recalls the role of thinking and reason during her days at Bible College:

When I was a Christian, I had a naive, unquestioning faith in the faculty of higher thought, in my ability to comprehend objective truths about the world. ... People often decry the thoughtlessness of religion, but when I think back on my time in Bible school, it occurs to me that there exist few communities where thought is taken so seriously. We spent hours arguing with each other—in the dining hall, in the campus plaza—over the finer points of predestination or the legitimacy of covenant theology.

Beliefs were real things that had life-or-death consequences. A person’s eternal fate depended on a willingness to accept or reject the truth—and we believed implicitly that logic was the means of determining those truths. Even when I began to harbor doubts…. I maintained an essential trust in the notion that reason would reveal to me the truth.

Today, no longer a believer, she has her doubts:

I no longer believe in God. I have not for some time. I now live with the rest of modernity in a world that is “disenchanted.” ... I live in a university town, a place that is populated by people who consider themselves called to a “life of the mind.” Yet my friends and I rarely talk about ideas or try to persuade one another of anything. It’s understood that people come to their convictions by elusive forces: some combination of hormones, evolutionary biases, and unconscious needs. Twice a week I attend a yoga class where I am instructed to “let go of the thinking mind.”

Cosmos: Possible Worlds is a sequel to Carl Sagan’s 1980 acclaimed TV series Cosmos. It is hosted by astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson. In the episode, “The Cosmic Connectome,” Tyson delves into the marvels of the human brain and explores the possibility of a wonderful cerebral connection between man and the universe.

Tyson narrates:

Can we know the universe? Are our brains capable of comprehending the cosmos in all of its complexity and splendor? We don't yet know the answer to that question because our brain remains almost as much of a mystery as the universe itself. We think that the number of processing units in your brain is roughly equal to all the stars in 1,000 galaxies. At least 100 trillion. And it's possible that the real number of processing units is ten times larger. ... If all the contents of your brain were transcribed into written language, it would amount to vastly more books than are contained in the largest libraries on earth. The equivalent of more than four billion books are inside your head. The brain is a very big place in a very small space.

Just as biologists succeeded in mapping the human genome, neuroscientists are attempting to map something far more complex and unique to each and every one of us. It's called our connectome. If we could truly know another person's connectome, the singular wiring diagram of all their memories, thoughts, fears, dreams. How would we treat each other? Could we heal the brain of its countless torments?

Possible Preaching Angle:

Although Neil deGrasse Tyson professes to be agnostic, his description of the human brain does highlight the epitome of God’s work of creation (Psa. 8:1-9).

In an interview about his book (2020), apologist Timothy Paul Jones was asked:

In your final chapter, you talk about how one barrier to the faith is the way Christians, both throughout history and today, have used the Bible in ways that are abusive to the Bible. So many today find it difficult to trust a book that was used to justify the Crusades or used to justify chattel slavery. How would you answer the individual who’s struggling with that objection?

Jones replied:

Well my answer is the Beatles’ White Album. As we all know, the Beatles’ White Album, especially the song “Helter Skelter” was used by Charles Manson as an excuse for the Manson murders. He felt like the White Album was calling him to commit all of these murders, and yet nobody has ever indicted Paul McCartney for those murders. And the reason that they haven’t is because of the fact that the misuse of the White Album doesn’t reflect on its creator. Just because the White Album was misused doesn’t mean the creator of it was at fault. And I think we have to help people recognize that: The Bible is used [to justify terrible things]. But was it rightly used for these things?

The human brain has been rightfully called the greatest arrangement of matter in the universe. This is no overstatement. The following are six primary reasons.

-The brain is mind-bogglingly efficient. For all the work it does, it only needs to be fueled by the equivalent energy of a 20-watt light bulb.

-Scientists have recently calculated that the brain’s main processing units – neurons – add up to at least 86 billion. Neurons help us control our bodies and think thoughts.

-The human brain contains 528,000 miles of nerve fibers. They transmit information to different neurons, muscles, and glands.

-Scientists estimate the human brain contains 2.5 petabytes of memory capacity. This is equivalent to the information stored at all US academic research libraries.

-The brain is not snoozing during sleep. “Once consciousness is lost, it gets to work on all manner of chores: clearing out toxic molecules, regulating hormone levels (and) also filing away experiences for later recall.

-And finally, the brain produces the miracle we call consciousness, which to this very day puzzles scientists about how it exactly does this.

Dr. Rosalind Picard, founder and director of the Affective Research Group at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), was once convinced that she didn’t need God or religion. So, she declared herself an atheist and dismissed believers as uneducated. But as an educated person she figured at least she should read the Bible. Picard said, “When I first opened the Bible, I expected to find phony miracles … and assorted gobbledygook. To my surprise, the Book of Proverbs was full of wisdom. I had to pause while reading and think.”

She read through the entire Bible twice. She said, “I felt this strange sense of being spoken to. Part of me was increasingly eager to spend time with the God of the Bible, but an irritated voice inside me insisted I would be happy again once I moved on.”

In college, another student invited her to his church. The pastor got her attention when he asked, “Who is Lord of your life?” She said:

I was intrigued: I was the captain of my ship, but was it possible that God would actually be willing to lead me? After praying, “Jesus Christ, I ask you to be Lord of my life,” my world changed dramatically, as if a flat, black-and-white existence suddenly turned full-color and three-dimensional. But I lost nothing of my urge to seek new knowledge. In fact, I felt emboldened to ask even tougher questions about how the world works.

Today, I work closely with people whose lives are filled with medical struggles. I do not have adequate answers to explain all their suffering. But I know there is a God of unfathomable greatness and love who freely enters into relationship with all who confess their sins and call upon his name.

I once thought I was too smart to believe in God. Now I know I was an arrogant fool who snubbed the greatest Mind in the cosmos—the Author of all science, mathematics, art, and everything else there is to know. Today I walk … with joy, alongside the most amazing Companion anyone could ask for, filled with desire to keep learning and exploring.

Much of the world looks upon the adrenaline junkies who jump out of "perfectly good airplanes" as crazy, but jumping from 25,000 feet without a parachute or wingsuit? That would just be suicide, right? Not anymore. Luke Aikins plummeted from an airplane at 25,000 feet without any kind of parachute, landing neatly in a square 100-foot by 100-foot net set up to catch him. He landed at a terminal velocity of 120 mph. Utterly crazy and even stupid, right? The guy has a wife and a four-year-old son.

But there is another angle to this story. Aikins was clear that this stunt involved a ridiculous amount of training. For starters, the 42-year-old has over 18,000 jumps to his name. Then according to CNN, "He prepared for the stunt by doing dozens of jumps—each, naturally, wearing a parachute—aiming at a 100 square foot target, opening his chute at the last possible moment. In his practice jumps he would pull the cord at 1,000 feet, something he had to get special dispensation for. He said in the runup to the jump that he had consistently been hitting a much smaller target, giving him greater leeway with the full-sized net."

As Aikins said, "Whenever people attempt to push the limits of what's considered humanly possible, they're invariably described as crazy. I'm here to show you that if we approach it the right way and we test it and we prove that it's good to go, we can do things that we don't think are possible." Okay, so the guy still might be insane, but he does have a good point: Proper training will get you to places you never thought possible.

Possible Preaching Angles: Faith isn't just a blind leap into the dark. It is always a step that involves risk, but it is also based on good and sufficient reasons.

Oscar Isaac, the dashing X-Fighter pilot Poe Dameron of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, was raised in an evangelical household. "My dad was a man of extremes," he told GQ magazine. "So if God spoke to my father one day and said we were not supposed to have a TV in the house, it was suddenly gone." Isaac, who would play the father of Jesus in the 2006 The Nativity Story, did not have the faith of his father. He describes his religious separation as a "slow amputation." Dameron says religion is akin to the acting experience:

A director is always thinking, "What is the right combination of words that I can say that will unlock the right response in you? If I can say the right thing, it will unlock this thing in you, but if I say it wrong, the opposite will happen." Religion is a very similar thing. Like, somebody was meditating long enough that they put the right sentence together and thought, "If you say these words in exactly this way, you'll know how to live, but you have to say it exactly like this."

The great British physicist Stephen Hawking has emerged in recent years as a poster boy for atheism, especially in light of his heroic struggles against Lou Gehrig's disease. But the new film about Hawking's life, A Theory of Everything has been called a "God-haunted movie."

In one of the opening scenes, the young Hawking meets Jane, his future wife, and tells her that he is a cosmologist. "What's cosmology?" she asks, and he responds, "Religion for intelligent atheists." "What do cosmologists worship?" she asks. And he replies, "A single unifying equation that explains everything in the universe." In another scene Jane asks, "So, I take it you've never been to church?" When Stephen replies "Once upon a time," she asks, "Tempted to convert?" Stephen replies, "I have a slight problem with the celestial dictatorship premise."

Later on in the film, Jane challenges him: "You've never said why you don't believe in God." Hawking counters, "A physicist can't allow his calculations to be muddled by belief in a supernatural creator," to which she responds, "Sounds less of an argument against God than against physicists." In one of her two published memoirs, the real Jane Hawking argued, "However far-reaching our intellectual achievements … without faith [in God] there is only isolation and despair, and the human race is a lost cause"

This spirited back and forth continues throughout the film as Hawking settles more and more into a secularist view and Jane persists in her Christian beliefs.

Possible Preaching Angles: The movie does not come to any hard and fast conclusions about faith and doubt, but it does provide an interesting way to set up a sermon on worldviews, atheism, secularism, or faith and doubt.

Who says science and religion don't mix? Take your pick of these excellent quotes from Nobel laureates and pioneers in science:

Nicolaus Copernicus (16th century), astronomer and the first in-depth proponent of heliocentrism: "Who could live in close contact with the most consummate order and divine wisdom and not feel drawn to the loftiest aspirations? Who could not adore the architect of all these things?"

Johannes Kepler (17th century), one of history's greatest astronomers: "My Lord and my Creator! I would like to proclaim the magnificence of your works to men to the extent that my limited intelligence can understand."

Isaac Newton (18th century), founder of classical theoretical physics: "The admirable arrangement and harmony of the universe could only have come from the plan of an omniscient and omnipotent Being."

Carl Linnaeus (18th century), founder of systematic botany: "I have seen the eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent God pass close by, and I knelt prostrate in adoration."

Thomas A. Edison (20th century), the prolific inventor who held 1200 patents: "My utmost respect and admiration to all the engineers, especially the greatest of them all: God."

Robert Millikan (20th century), great American physicist, Nobel Prize 1923: "I can assert most definitely that the denial of faith lacks any scientific basis. In my view, there will never be a true contradiction between faith and science."

Albert Einstein (20th century), founder of modern physics and 1921 Nobel Prize: "Everyone who is seriously committed to the cultivation of science becomes convinced that in all the laws of the universe is manifest a spirit vastly superior to man, and to which we with our powers must feel humble."

Erwin Schrödinger (20th century), discoverer of wave mechanics, Nobel Prize 1933: "The finest masterpiece is the one made by God, according to the principles of quantum mechanics … "

Charles Townes (20th century), physicist, shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for discovering the principles of the laser: "As a religious man, I feel the presence and intervention of a Creator beyond myself, but who is always nearby … intelligence had something to do with the creation of the laws of the universe."

Allan Sandage (21st century), astronomer, Crafoord Prize (equivalent of the Nobel Prize): "I was practically an atheist in my childhood. Science was what led me to the conclusion that the world is much more complex than we can explain. I can only explain the mystery of existence to myself by the Supernatural."

God destines us for an end beyond the grasp of reason.

—St. Thomas Aquinas, Italian Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, and theologian (c. 1225-1274)

God destines us for an end beyond the grasp of reason.

"The deeper we get into reality, the more numerous will be the questions we cannot answer."

—Author and theologian Baron Von Hugel (1852-1925)

Don't neglect your critical faculties. Remember that God is a rational God, who has made us in his own image. God invites and expects us to explore his double revelation, in nature and Scripture, with the minds he has given us, and to go on in the development of a Christian mind to apply his marvelous revealed truth to every aspect of the modern and the postmodern world.

Before Adoniram Judson became the pioneer of American foreign missions he was a rebel. He finished at the top of his college class and headed to New York City to seek fame and fortune as an actor and/or writer. He had renounced his father's belief in a personal God; his education had taken him beyond such primitive notions. Prayer, of course, was meaningless to him.

But by the age of 20, Adoniram didn't feel right about his life. Disillusioned, he headed back to his home in Plymouth, Massachusetts, stopping for a night at a wayside inn. Adoniram had trouble sleeping that night, because a man in the next room was critically ill and moaning and groaning in pain. Obviously, his neighbor in the next room was dying. In the darkness of his room, Adoniram thought about the possibility of his own death and whether he was prepared for it. At times during the long hours he thought about returning to the Christian beliefs of his father, but then he imagined what his college chum Jacob Eames would say about his father's doctrines. He waited for morning to come so that the terrors of the night would be forgotten.

Early the next morning, Adoniram went to the innkeeper. "That poor old man in the next room. How is he?" he asked.

"He passed away early this morning," came the reply. "And he wasn't old at all. He was a young man, about your age."

For some reason, Adoniram asked, "What was his name?" It was a rather stupid question, because Adoniram certainly didn't know anyone in that section of the country.

The innkeeper replied, "His name was Jacob Eames."

There was no mistaking the name or the identity. It was the young college friend whose religious skepticism had turned Adoniram against the religion of his father.

Dazed, he returned to Massachusetts and to his father. Echoing through his mind was the word lost. But it took three more months of intellectual struggle before he "made a solemn dedication of himself to God."

At the beginning of the 21st century, reasoned discourse [is imperiled]. Reasoned discourse is increasingly giving way to in-your-face sound bites….Hardball is the dominant metaphor for American public life. Our interchanges are confrontational, divisive, and dismissive. Truth is not something we expect to emerge from a conversation. It is something we hope to impose. Balance and fairness are casualties on evening shows as two, three, and sometimes four voices contend simultaneously for dominance. Volume and intransigence are the new civic virtues.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right….Time makes more converts than reason.

Pluralists contend that no one religion can know the fullness of spiritual truth, and therefore all religions are valid. But while it is good to acknowledge our limitations, this statement is itself a strong assertion about the nature of spiritual truth.

A common analogy is cited—the blind men trying to describe an elephant. One feels the tail and reports that an elephant is thin and flexible. Another feels a leg and claims the animal is thick as a tree. Another touches its side and reports the elephant is like a wall. This is supposed to represent how the various religions only understand part of God, while no one can truly see the whole picture. To claim full knowledge of God, pluralists contend, is arrogance.

I occasionally tell this parable, and I can almost see the people nodding their heads in agreement.

But then I remind them that the only way this parable makes any sense is if you've seen a whole elephant. Therefore, the minute you say, "All religions only see part of the truth," you are claiming the very knowledge you say no one else has. And you are demonstrating the same spiritual arrogance you accuse Christians of.