Many times, when I have conversations with people on the Internet that involves something spiritual and I appeal to logic, people will say things like “God’s ways are higher than our ways and we can’t understand Him.” This brings up the age-old question of whether God’s ways are reasonable and logical. Is this just the way that we’re bypassing our uneasiness or is God actually so removed from us that we cant understand? Should we just dismiss everything that is difficult as we will never understand that because we disagree with it?
One of the most important words in the New Testament for me was always the word logos which when translated into English is “the word.” A friend of mine always translates the Greek word logos to logic, so I wondered what the actual translation was and how he arrived at this conclusion. The following is an excerpt from Britannica concerning the word logos in Greek.
The idea of the logos in Greek thought harks back at least to the 6th-century-BCE philosopher Heraclitus, who discerned in the cosmic process a logos analogous to the reasoning power in humans. Later, the Stoics, philosophers who followed the teachings of the thinker Zeno of Citium (4th–3rd century BCE), defined the logos as an active rational and spiritual principle that permeated all reality. They called the logos providence, nature, god, and the soul of the universe, which is composed of many seminal logoi that are contained in the universal logos.
One of the things that stood out to me in this definition, were the words reasoning and rational. There is also reference in this definition to the universality of the logos. In other words, what we often say about creation is that it points to God and that it also points to reason. There is no need to abandon reason or logic when we are talking about God whether we are a diehard Christian or an atheist. There is plenty of evidence to believe there is reason and logic in all of creation and that should include God.
Logos, by definition, is closely related to the reasoning power in humans and also closely related to the character of God referred to by John when he describes Jesus as the Word (logos). Jesus should make this matter clearer and not more difficult. Just because we don’t agree with the logic the universe reveals doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Science, spiritual seekers and nature itself are beginning to agree, while groups like Fundamentalist Christians are doubling down on their assumption that god is illogical and something we cant imagine.
When we open up to the enlightenment of the cosmos, we find the logos there that is reasonable and logical. Disciplines like Quantum physics are bringing these things even more into focus. Clinging to long-held religious assumptions, that were formed out of ignorance, only causes us to repeat the mistakes of the past. God may not be what we thought, but also might be better and more reasonable than we imagined.
I invite you to open up your mind to the reasoning and logic of the cosmos and I believe you will find God there!
Be where you are, be who you are,
Karl Forehand
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