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I have a confession to make.
I was in fifth grade at Woodrow Wilson Elementary in Lynwood, California. One day after school, Greg Mattoon and I squared off in an epic street fight in a vacant lot overrun with boisterous classmates.
Well, it wasn't so much an epic street fight as it was two young boys with no choice but to use their fists to settle a disagreement. Actually, we likely pushed and slapped each other far more than we exchanged punches. And, truth be told, Greg and I had no disagreement. We were best of friends. We were well-behaved in school. We were among the most accomplished students, academically, though we were both outdistanced by Weird Al Yankovic. But that's another story.
The brouhaha--with emphasis on the "haha"--was initiated by a charming, sandy-haired n'er-do-well classmate, Danny Burgess. Today, Danny is likely either an inmate in prison or a promoter in Hollywood. Danny was the Eddie Haskell of my childhood. The morning of the fight, Danny came to school curious what it would look like if two of the smartest and most reserved kids in school traded blows. By the end of the day, after much daring and cajoling and manipulation, it was An Event.
But, the dust-up with Greg Mattoon is not the confession I feel compelled to make. My confession is that for years as a youth I bought into the rumored, adversarial relationship between faith and reason. But it's the skeptic who artfully frames faith and reason as opponents.
Just as Danny Burgess skillfully convinced Greg Mattoon and me to meet in the vacant lot.
Faith is dismissed as the province of the wishful thinker, the sentimental, the na�ve; Reason is assumed to be the domain of the logical thinker, the intellectual, the sophisticate.
In reality, however, faith--at its most genuine--is the result of reason. Faith, according to scripture, is the confident conclusion that what we hope for will actually happen; that what we cannot see is as real as what we can see.
The Apostle John closed his gospel with this challenge to reason: "Many other signs [empirical evidence] Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples [witnesses], which are not written in this book;but these have been written [as testimony] so that you may believe [essentially, the verb form of faith] that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:30-31).
It takes an expansive mind, a courageous heart, an imaginative spirit to see what others cannot--or, choose not to--see.
That afternoon not long after the skirmish had started--quietly, unnoticed, by our shouting peers--Greg and I asked each other, "What are we doing here? How did this happen?" Without an answer, we left the vacant lot of our peers and walked home.
What does it say of our culture that the those who are esteemed among the intellectual elite can only see what they can only see?
How clever is the incarnation of Jesus? When Jesus became "the image of the invisible God" and walked among men (Colossians 1:14)? How did the incarnation of Jesus appeal to the reason of man?
It takes an expansive mind, a courageous heart, an imaginative spirit to see what others cannot--or, choose not to--see." How might faith require an expansive mind, a courageous heart, an imaginative spirit?
Of all the sentient beings on this planet, only humans can have faith: the "confident conclusion that what we hope for will actually happen; that what we cannot see is as real as what we can see." How does our ability to "imaginate" (to imagine what either does not exist or cannot be seen, and to create it) speak to the value and power of faith?
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