“Common sense would thus become uncommon sense.” (Bill’s Story)
If it is God’s will, it does not need to make sense. There is no reason why
what is right will make sense to an individual who (a) does not have all the
facts and (b) whose reason is compromised in more than one way. (a) and (b)
apply to all people at all times. Whenever I seek to justify what I believe to
be God’s will with reference to reason, I am really saying I do not trust the
process of seeking God’s will at all. I am suggesting that, if my reason were
to find a course of action to be irrational, I would conclude that it is not
God’s will. If I am really trusting God’s will, my assessment of whether or not
it is rational is valueless.
If a course of action is warranted by virtue of reason (and rejected
if it does not mean this test), I am really relying on reason, not on God, and
God is entirely left out of it. The test is this: if something appears to be
God’s will, and I test it against reason, and it does not make sense, and I
conclude it is not God’s will, I am not seeking to do God’s will at all: I am
seeking to do what I think is rational, and I am merely using the ascertainment
of God’s will as a sort of Magic 8 Ball to come up with one or more candidates
for the right course of action, and the candidates themselves have no value by virtue
of their origin in God unless coincidentally rational. The divine origin thus
falls away as a certificate of validity and we are left only with reason. This
is atheistic divination masquerading as a combination of piety and reason, when
it is neither pious nor rational.
The fact that reasoning and revelation are incompatible as
grounds on which to adopt a course of action has the same logic as the
relationship between cause and effect and the impossibility of multiple independent
causes.
If I think what I think because my brain biochemically and
electrically programs me to think what I think, I have no cause to believe that
the thoughts are (a) about anything or (b) true or that (c) any of my
inferences are logically valid. If the thoughts or inferences are caused
biochemically, they will be caused whether or not they are about anything, are
true, or are valid. They are no more meaningful than burps or the sound of
sawing. They are non-rational elements in causal chains.
Similarly, if something is right because it is willed by
God, it will be right regardless of whether a chain of reasoning can prove its
status as God’s will. It cannot be right both because it is rational and
because it is God’s will. That would give it two grounds for its status, and
two independent grounds cannot interact in such a way, particularly where one
cause, the chain of reasoning, by its nature, is inherently fallible. This is
like saying I did not go to the beach (a) because it was raining and (b) because
the bus was cancelled (assuming there is no connection between the rain and the
cancellation). Either I would not have got there in sunny weather, either, in
which case the rain is irrelevant, or I would have stayed at home even if the
bus were running, in which case the bus is irrelevant. Both cannot be grounds.
Similarly, when I explain to someone else why something,
which is God’s will, is rational, I am really saying my reason is my god. That
puts the other person in their place. I have stopped doing this. That is why ‘yes’
means ‘yes’ and ‘no’ means ‘no’, and that is the end of it. When someone explains,
for instance, why they are cancelling, hoping that their rational explanation
will be both convincing and comforting, they are wrong: they are really saying:
to see you would be irrational; and this is insulting. One is being asked to
bow to the other person’s reason. If someone says, ‘It is not God’s will,’ I
can bow to that, precisely because it is God’s will: God knows best for me and
you, and if you have discerned that, I must trust that, prima facie. Hence:
never justify, never explain, never defend, never try to sell God’s will on any
basis other than the fact it is God’s will, and never try to comfort someone
because they do not like God’s apparent will by using reason to do. One must
simply stay silent in the face of it.
Moreover, since anything but the plain evil or nonsensical
can be argued for as well as against, using reason, let us leave reason out of
it altogether. I could argue why I should stay in my job or leave, see a friend
or not, learn Javanese or not, go and live in the Alps or not. As many plainly wrong
courses of action—perhaps many more—are devised rationally and with a sincere
desire to do the right thing as are prompted by malice or uncontrolled impulse.
Hence: I will no longer try to reason out courses of action. I just ask and listen, and that is it.