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(A six-minute read.)
In his history of Unitarian Universalism, the late Forrest Church—who himself was a Unitarian Universalist pastor in New York City—recounts a pivotal moment in his childhood that altered the course of his own religious trajectory.
Despite being raised a Presbyterian, Church’s dad gifted him Thomas Jefferson’s The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth for his tenth birthday. More commonly known as The Jefferson Bible, the book is essentially the result of Jefferson literally stitching together a version of the Gospels that is free from all miracles and the supernatural—or any allusion to Christ’s divinity.
For Church’s ten-year-old soul, it was a tonic, and he especially found the last lines of Jefferson’s work liberating: “There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.”
That’s it. That’s the end of Jefferson’s Bible.
There’s no resurrection; no coming back from the dead; no hope of eternal glory.
But it was just what Church’s young heart—and enlightened head—needed.
He had found religious glory.
While some of us might find such an end to the Gospels discouraging, Church’s reaction—and Jefferson’s move—speaks to the tension that every religious person for the last five hundred or so years has felt on some level (whether recognized or not).
Essentially, ever since the Enlightenment began in the seventeenth century, any person in the West picking up a Bible—or, really, any religious text—has had to filter their reading of it through the lens of an enlightened mind.
Even if we ourselves are fully committed to the authority of Scripture, even if we have an unrelenting belief in its inspiration, the questions of the Enlightenment haunt us:
Was the world really created in six days?
Did the Children of Israel truly walk over dry ground in the middle of the Red Sea?
Did a virgin really become pregnant?
Did Jesus truly rise from the dead?
There are many people, of course, for whom such questions are non-starters—on both ends of the spectrum. They are silly questions for the enlightened person who knows they could never happen and they are silly questions for those who know they absolutely did.
And then there’s the rest of us in between.
The reality is, ever since that famed Enlightenment, religion has to a great degree wrestled with the question of how to solve that tension between what Scripture says and what our reason tells—even demands of—us.
There are two extremes, of course—at least as I see it.
On the one hand, there’s the religious people who’ve doggedly committed themselves to a kind of pre-Enlightenment, fundamentalist attitude about Scripture. It’s the sort of “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” attitude. Nothing can be questioned and every story happened exactly as described; every command must be blindly and literally obeyed without question (though even here, of course, nobody ever truly follows every command literally).
On the other hand, there’s the religious people—and, obviously, many non-religious people—who’ve followed in Jefferson’s footsteps and essentially stripped the Bible of anything supernatural. It’s all fable and good advice, at best.
For my part, each approach leaves me feeling quite rationally and emotionally unsatisfied—and both, perhaps surprisingly and ironically, seem to reflect a level of intellectual dwarfism.
After all, as it specifically relates to the miracle-denying attitude: how narrow and small must my world be if I cannot imagine a reality that could exist beyond my rational capabilities?
Indeed, it seems boring to live in a world where the only things that are possible are the things that have been empirically proven. It’s a one-dimensional and monochromatic existence—when all three, and perhaps even four or five, dimensions eagerly await my beck and call.
Instead of being the fruit of an enlightened mind, such an approach to life seems to be the fruit of a stale, closed, and atrophied mind.
I want to make it clear, of course: there’s nothing wrong with asking legitimate questions. There’s no shame in wrestling with doubts.
I experience both of these things myself (as I admitted to one of my children the other night when, soon after going to bed, they came to my wife and me and pensively said, “Sometimes I wonder if heaven is real . . .” To which I said, “Me too . . . ”).
But asking questions and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that x or y couldn’t have happened are two different things. The former is a reflection of humility; the latter, it seems to me, comes from a place of arrogance and pride.
And the latter is also a lonely and unnerving place to be—to have no other source of authority outside my solitary, individual mind; to think that my reasoning capabilities—or even the world’s collective capabilities—are all I’ve got.
Though, again, this doesn’t mean I have to check my reasoning faculties at the door when I open the Bible or ponder religious questions.
It’s simply to say that if I’m truly going to have a satisfying life, that benefits from all the universe’s wondrous dimensions, it means my reasoning abilities will only get me so far—and there will likely be things I encounter in Scripture that either challenge and confront my reason, or leave it feeling scandalized.
Truly, if everything I read in the Bible could be easily ascertained and followed, I’m not sure the Bible would be worth my time at all (which is, obviously, an attitude many have already realized and embraced).
But there’s something exciting and satisfying, not to mention a reflection of humility, about willingly submitting to an authority outside myself—an authority that will, on occasion (though certainly not always), invite me into actions, beliefs, and behaviors I don’t fully comprehend—or perhaps even agree with.
Indeed, there’s something invigorating about surrender—especially when I don’t see the full picture (which, as a human, is basically all the time).
I could cite a number of examples, especially ones that are particularly relevant in this cultural moment, that reflect this tension—but I will refrain from doing so (though I will say, at the risk of dropping a huge bomb and then walking away, I’m especially thinking about questions of gender and sexuality).
Suffice it to say, as children of the Enlightenment, we must live within that tension and probably resist trying to solve it—at least if we have any inclination toward spirituality.
To resolve that tension, choosing Scripture over reason or reason over Scripture, would probably leave us either completely unable to relate to the people around us who don’t share our assumptions (in the case of an irrational spirituality), or unable to truly tap into a religious experience that reaches beyond ourselves (in the case of a non-spiritual rationality).
And, as I’ve said, I’m not sure either approach to life is all that satisfying.
So, yes, I believe God gave us reasoning abilities for, well, a reason. But I must also recognize that my reasoning abilities pale in comparison—by definition—to the Source of that reason.
And it may just be that God, in his infinite wisdom, has carried out actions, and has given instructions to follow, that my finite wisdom has a hard time comprehending.
But I shouldn’t expect anything less if I’m going to commit to a religious experience that’s worth participating in.
And it’s in those moments, when I reach the limit of my reason, that faith kicks in—not a blind faith that contradicts my reason, but a robust and humble faith that, energized by the parts of spirituality that do make sense to and inspire me, recognizes the limits of it.
Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.
I so agree! If there is nothing beyond our comprehension or capability, then we're screwed. And we know that we were created to be able to question, otherwise how is even limited understanding, or choosing God (or not), attainable? And I thank you for throwing in there the currently relevant "hot potato" of sexuality & gender. There is a lot in our world that I'm not aware of, and don't understand, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or should automatically be feared and condemned due to that lack of awareness and understanding.
YES!!