Understanding of the Heart
Today we are seeing the rise of a new atheism. It seeks to
show the improbability of God and the rationality of nonbelief.
It regards religion as superstition. It claims science
as its authority.
And I suppose if you were looking for an example of
irrational faith, you wouldn’t have to look much further
than Easter.
To the purely rational mind, Easter is non-sense. A man
was crucified on Friday. And on Sunday he rose again. The
rational mind says either he wasn’t dead, or his resurrection
was a hoax. Over the centuries, conspiracy theories have
argued precisely this. The modern versions are by Richard
Dawkins, Sam Harris and the new atheists, and their ad
campaign that says “There’s probably no God.”
The problem with rationalism is that it denies the
God of religion, but makes a god out of reason. Reason,
of course, is perfectly good when it is a servant of higher
things. But when reason becomes an end in itself — when
it becomes an ‘ism’ — it doesn’t take us very far. It’s blind to
things of the spirit and to the vast reaches of the imagination
where so much of our life is lived, where so many of
our hopes and inspirations are born.
When reason becomes an end in itself, it gets centred
purely in the mind and ignores the heart. It puts great
faith in logic but can’t really deal with the illogical and
non-rational aspects of life which, in fact, is most of it. It
claims to be scientific but in fact it is an ideology, an idea
brought to science not derived from it.
Fortunately, most scientists, as human beings, are as
wonderfully irrational as everyone else. Pascal, the great
French mathematician, said “the heart has its reasons of
which reason knows naught.”
It’s in the heart that we find the power to love. It’s in the
soul that we learn to struggle with truth. It’s in the realm
of the spiritual that we learn to see ourselves as complex,
contradictory, and creative beings. It’s here we discern the
narrow pathways of wisdom, the golden thread that leads
us through the maze of life.
It’s in our relationships with family and colleagues that
we learn to become social creatures, giving up ourselves for
the other. It’s in the inner life we come face to face with
who we really are. We are, all of us, a mass of contradictions
— and that’s not an insult. It’s the joyful paradox on
which we must rely.
The deep truths of life are discovered by insight not
logic. And here our maps and guides are paradoxical and
circuitous, not linear. They lead us nowhere much of the
time, and back on ourselves frequently, and only with unexpected
suddenness do we break out into the open, into the
light we have believed in, but often never seen.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is just such a thing.
Into the darkness and certainty of death, God sent the light
of a risen life. There is no rational way to understand this.
You have to learn it at a different level. You have to come
to a moment when you find yourself being lifted miraculously
into grace and shown a new dimension of reality
by something entirely outside yourself. These moments
are deeper than reason can fathom, and more lasting than
simple proofs.
Jesus didn’t come to introduce a new philosophy but to
break open the power of God in thirsty souls and yearning
hearts. Understanding this has nothing to do with
your IQ or your level of culture and sophistication. It has
everything to do with your spiritual curiosity and your
sense of the sacred.
To be a Christian is to be someone who lives in the
power of resurrection faith. It is to hope in things not seen,
and to trust in the God who can break open the limits of
death. It is to feel alongside you, every moment of your life,
the warmth and presence of Jesus Christ: it is to know that
you are held for ever by the Creator of existence itself. This
Risen Christ, who walks beside you, sets people free from
every kind of fear and sickness. He forges new communities
of unlikely people across every barrier of race and class. He
shows us the way to a kingdom where no human ruler rules,
where love is the power that frees and unites.
We proclaim this faith afresh today.
Christ is risen. Alleluia!