We should act reasonably driven by love.
To do something that is unreasonable ignores wisdom and God is wise. Exactly what is reasonable in any given situation is not easy to find, awash as we are in contrary data, weakness of will, and people selling us lies. As a result, the best of us may fail to be reasonable, while the rest of us may often fall short of the perfect logic of God.
We live by mercy and learn through grace to hear better, choose better, and proceed apace.
Having chosen reasonably, when we are correct, we must do. If you want to do, then there is no safer fuel than love. Love wants what is best for the beloved and wishes no unnecessary harm. Love is joyful and perfect love casts out all fear. Motivated by love, the reasonable choice sings. Logic marries love and beauty like Bach is the child.
The Saint Constantine School had a gala where the brilliant decorators captured this idea. They took books, words you could still read, and fashioned flowers and beautiful decorations. I picked up a rose and read an argument, loving the beauty and wondering about the ideas. The room became a wonder land and the evening was real: the inner reality of consciousness met the beauty of the external world through words and icons.
I could open a flower and see propositional truth, the words of the books, or I could look at the flower and see what God and his child had wrought.
Just so.
The artistry met the argument and both were made complete.
This is why a heart appeal in a good cause is lovely. Having made the case, perhaps in some text or previous argument, the peroration gives a glimpse of the beauty of truth applied. We do not worship propositions, but propositions beautifully applied for the good.
Yet there is a danger here.
Beauty is deceptive as is reason without beauty. Pick one or the other and decadence or sterility will be the result. So many just now claim fact based or reason based living, but never show how this can result in a culture or lifestyle that is more than opposition, anger, or hate.
Never trust a movement that is based on opposing something else. Few are foolish enough to admit this, but you can tell. Is the overwhelming product of “reason” fear, anger, opposition? Where there is love, the beloved is extolled and there, any time spent looking elsewhere is grudgingly admitted as a necessity in a broken world.
We look briefly at the inferno only so we can go to Paradise.
There is a greater danger in those who know, superficially, that their Cause is so, just they need not “show their work.” Instead, they just will appeal to emotions. This is obvious when an evangelist dispenses with argument altogether to say “Mother’s prayers follow you” only. Perhaps this manipulation should be more apparent when some popularizer of atheism cries reason when all he has is a meme.
Reason goes awry, beauty can deceive. Keep them both together and then judge by the doing: the fruit will show if it is reason and love that came together.
The celestial rose is where words fail in completion of the Word, but words will have gotten us there. Reason driven by love will grant us a vision of Logic and Love unbending: Jesus the Word of God and the Beloved Known.
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