Video Transcript: Logical for the Lord

Hi, I'm David Feddes and this talk is about being logical for the Lord. We're here at the end of  a course on logic and critical thinking. And rather than just in the course, with a little bit of  thought about Venn diagrams or something else like that, I want to bring it back to the  importance of being logical because we're people who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. At the  beginning of the course, I just said, Please, don't be a smug slug. Don't be a slug by being  lazy, but be ready to think harder. And don't be smug thinking you already know everything  you need to know. But think humbler be eager to learn. So don't be a smug slug. That's how  we started the course. And in the first week, I said, now we need to develop our thinking  skills. We want to get at truth. So we want to think harder, we want to think humbler. And we  just plain have to develop more and more skills, so that we can see the structure of  arguments. So that we can detect various biases and fallacies that warp our thinking. And  that work the way we make a case and that work the way other people make their arguments  to be able to detect those things, and not be fooled by bad arguments and not offer up bad  arguments ourselves. We learned a little bit about using inductive logic and probability and  analogies, and to think about what kinds of things are going to be more probable than others.  And we also learned a bit more about using deductive logic and proofs. We learned about  truth tables, about using various forms of proof about Venn diagrams and all kinds of things  like that. But what again, was the point in all that some of that, you may have said well I'm  never going to use a Venn diagram again. And the moment I'm done with these proofs, I hope  I never have to look at another one. And as for those truth tables, I hate them all. Well, or  maybe you love to discuss, but whether you loved it or hated it, the ability to think clearly,  the ability to see whether an argument is actually sound, and valid or not, is very, very  important. And the ability to have the kinds of thinking skills that can start things through that ability is very important for a Christian, and for somebody who is living for the Lord. So I want  to think about being logical for the Lord. And I want to talk about six things. The first three are related to how we relate to God, value, the logos, logically, and I'll explain a little more about  that in a moment. Love God logically with your mind, grow holier, logically through the  transformation of your mind. Those are things that involve our relationship to God and logic,  reasoning, sound thinking are very valuable. The last three are more about how we deal with  other people. Witness logically defend your Faith logically from attack, resist lies. Logically,  those are just some dimensions of being logical for the Lord. value, the logos, logically, the  Logos is the word. In Proverbs 2:6, it says, The Lord gives wisdom from his mouth come  knowledge, and understanding the Lord is the source of wisdom and knowledge and  understanding and truth and reasoning. In the New Testament, the Gospel according to John  begins by saying, In the beginning was the Word, the logos, and the word the logos was with  God, and the logos was God, the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the  world, the logos became flesh and lived among those that love us is Jesus Christ. When you  value logic, you are valuing Jesus, because Jesus is the Logos, the word, through whom all  things were made, the logic of the universe, and all human logic that is sound comes from the logos, the wisdom, who puts certain patterns in the world, and created the patterns of our  minds to reflect the patterns of his great mind. This doesn't mean that every element of  human thinking is divine. But our ability to think that comes from God. This doesn't mean that every truth table is a direct invention of the Lord. Some of you while you were working  through truth tables, or Venn diagrams, may have thought that devil invented this stuff. It was such a pain in the neck for you. But now, the ability to really think things through to map out  how some reasoning works, and to get at truth. That is part of what it means to know Jesus as the Got to know that he's the word, the source of all wisdom of all sound thinking. So when  you're logical, when you develop your ability to be more rational, and accurate, and truthful,  in your thinking, you're valuing Jesus, the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, you are  valuing the Lord God, who is the source of all ways, the reasoning and logic, were called the  love of God. Logically, Jesus said, The greatest commandment is, Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength. So love God with  your whole being. And a vital part of your being is your mind. And a vital dimension of your  mind is your power to reason to think things through to draw conclusions to stay, take some  truths, and on the basis of those truths, to be able to infer your way to other truths. That's 

loving God with your mind. What is the church? It's the church of the living God, the pillar and  foundation of what? The truth, the truth, it's all about truth. When you love God, logically, you are seeking truth, because he's the God of truth. And you might say, oh, yeah, but logic  doesn't apply to God. Well, let me just ask this question. If the Bible says Jesus rose from the  dead, and somebody says, Jesus did not rise from the dead, and you say, but the Bible says  he did. Well, what's your basis for saying they're wrong? They're wrong, because of the belief  that Jesus did not rise from the dead contradicts the truth that he did rise from the dead, it  contradicts that's a logical statement. Without the principle of contradiction, you'll believe  anything, Jesus rose from the dead, and He didn't rise from the dead, God is love and God is  not love God is hate. If you have no logic that says, if this is true, then that can't be true, then there is no ability anymore to love God with your mind, or to seek the truth. Logical Reasoning is a vital part of taking truth that God gives, and then extending it and applying it to different  areas of thought, and of life. So don't say all logic is no big deal. You know, there may be  some things where you say, well, that's just not my thing. I wasn't very good a t proofs. And I  don't know if I'm ever going to be. But I just want to say that learning the ability to think more clearly and having trained your mind, keep on training it keep seeking to think as clearly and  as logically so that you can sort out nonsense. There's a question a famous question, Can God make a rock that he can't lift? And if he can't, well, then there's something God can't do? Well, actually, God can make a rock of any size. But to say that God can make a rock that God can't lift is to have implicit that there's something God can't do. But there's no rock of any size that  he can't make. You've just got a contradiction going on in that statement. And as CS Lewis  says, when you make a sort of contradiction about God, you're not safe saying something  very profound about him. nonsense about God is still nonsense. Okay? If you're talking  nonsense, if you're talking to contradiction, then you're not helping us to understand God  better. So learning to love God, logically, it's part of loving Him with all your mind. And that's  part of the greatest commandment that there is. You grow holier, logically, you grow holier  how, by truth, and by its impact on your mind. When Jesus was praying for His disciples on  the night before he died, he prayed, sanctified and by the truth, Your word is truth. And so  when we hear his word, the word of the Father through Jesus, we know that that word is truth. And we know that that truth, sanctified, that truth makes us holy, as that truth comes into our minds, and we think it through and we apply it in different ways. We become holier logically.  How are you transformed? One key way is Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. In  another place, the apostle Paul says, No, put on the new self. And how has that new self being transformed and renewed, it's being renewed in knowledge, after the image of its Creator,  when your Creator is the Logos, the wisdom, the source of truth, he knew you through  knowledge. And of course, this knowledge is not just the mere study of truth tables, and Venn  diagrams and arguments and probabilities. But the ability to think clearly about the truth, God revealed, is so vital and so grow holier logically. Now if you become a rationalist, where you  overemphasize the importance of human reasoning and downplay the value of human rather  revelation, or God's revelation, when you say my reasoning matters more than what God  reveals, well, then, actually, that's not even being logical. That's being downright stupid,  because it's logical to listen to the source of all wisdom. But my point is simply, some people  can claim to be super logical, and it can harm their holiness, or make them very ungodly. But  that's not because they're too logical. It's because they're relying only on their own self  centered way of thinking not because they're such great reasoners another way of being too  logical is not really being too logical, but downplaying the role of emotion and feeling and  seeing it doesn't matter. emotion and feeling are part of being human and matter a lot. The  problem isn't that you're too logical, it's that you're too neglectful of the emotions, you can  never be too smart or too logical in your pursuit of God's truth. But you can neglect other  aspects of human reality. If you think that logic and reasoning are all there is. But grow holier,  through the truth, grow holier through the renewing of your mind, grow holier by being  renewed in knowledge, grow holier, logically, thinking, the way God wants us to think thinking truthfully, and accurately. And then as we move from how logic impacts our walk with God,  let's think about how it impacts the way we relate to others. Part of witnessing involves logic.  Some people say, Well, you don't use reason or logic or anything else. Well, nobody told the 

Apostle Paul that it says he reasoned, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. He was reasoning  and persuading. He was reasoning daily in the School of Tiranus, when he stood before the  governor fastest, he said, what I am saying is true and reasonable. So, the apostle Paul, when  you read his letters, he would use logic when he was speaking of the resurrection of the dead. He's talking to some people who denied that there is such a thing as resurrection. And the  Apostle said, Now let's think about that. If there is no resurrection, what does that mean, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, what's the next logical step? Our faith is useless. And what's another logical inference? Our preaching is useless. If we don't  have any hope in this life, what do we conclude? Where do we pity more than All that, he uses logic and says, If you don't believe in resurrection, it'd be stupid to be a Christian. So he's  reasoning and showing true and necessary consequences. He's saying, if there is no  resurrection, here are the consequences. If there is a resurrection, well, then here are the  things that follow logically from the fact of Jesus being raised from the dead. We must witness logically, and so we can use orderly argument orderly reason, and we should avoid bad  arguments. Earlier in the course, we saw some of those bad arguments such as personal  attack, or equivocation or a whole host of other bad arguments. Look at the way that you  argue for the Lord, the Lord's got a truth, and he's a lot more likely to bless sound reasoning,  presenting his truth. Logically, then he is through personal attack or any of the other bad  modes of argument that are out there, witness logically, and defend your Faith. Logically,  that's all part of witnessing, but also part of what's sometimes called apologetics. The apostle  Peter said, always be prepared to make a defense an apologia to anyone who asks you for  a reason, a logos, for the hope that is in you, you want to be logical. When you talk about the  logos, you need to defend your Faith logically, because you're giving a logos a reason because you're making a defense and apologia for believing in Jesus, the logos. So always be prepared to give an explanation. And that doesn't always mean I'm going to haul out a Venn diagram to prove that Jesus rose from the dead or use other logical ways of proving it doesn't mean that  you think clearly that you do understand valid inferences and invalid inferences. You could do  a Venn diagram, you know Have resurrections, things that have been raised from the dead,  things that haven't been raised from the dead humans and overlap those. And if you say the  category of humans, and things that rise from the dead does not overlap, they are saying  there is no resurrection of the dead, you're using universal inferences to say that if there is no resurrection of the dead than any human, even Jesus can't have been raised from the dead.  So if Jesus has been raised from the dead, well, then you can make your Venn diagram and  say, some people at least are raised from the dead. And if he says that others are going to  rise, well, then we conclude the others, in fact, all are going to rise. So learning to think  logically, to notice when something isn't proved, and when it is, is a major part of defending  the faith. There are a lot of attacks on the Christian faith that are based on the shoddy or  rottenest arguments. But you've never learned how to debunk an argument, how to break it  down into see the parts and the bad inferences in it. Well, then you might get bowled over by  false attacks on the faith, and closely related to that, then is, let's resist lies logically. Look at  what Jesus did. When people were trying to trap Jesus, Jesus would come back at them with a  question, or with a very logical statement that just pure straight through everything they were trying to do. And you see that times he just his opponents had to give up marveling at his  answer, they became silent. They no longer dared to ask him any questions. They were trying to trap him. They were trying to get him in a corner. And he just overpowered them with his  brilliant or take decent, the first martyr, they could kill him. But they couldn't beat him in an  argument. The Bible says they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which  Stephen was speaking. Now, that's not just a matter of his excellent logic, though he certainly did employ excellent logic, they accused him of being against Moses and the temple. And he  went on to explain exactly how God worked through Moses, and what the purpose of the  temple was, and how that purpose had been fulfilled and surpassed in Jesus. So he was using  sound argument, and they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit in which he was  speaking, when you're full of love for the logos, and then you train your mind to operate  logically, then you're going to have a wisdom and an ability to discern lies, and to fight back  against them, and to overcome them. So again, whatever you thought of some aspect of this 

course, some of the exercises you had to go through that challenged your logic. Remember  what I said at the beginning, a think a little humbler. If you found it too hard for yourself, don't take it as an occasion to say, oh, that stuff was stupid. Just say, Well, you know what, maybe  I'm not quite as logical or skilled at logic as I thought I was. And just keep on seeking to hone  your mind to train it. Be logical for the Lord value Jesus the logos logically, love God with your  mind logically, grow holier logically, witness logically defend your Faith logically, resists lies  logically, keep on doing your exercises, keep on training your mind, be the kind of person who can really testify to the truth and praise God for His truth and use the modes of reasoning that God has given us to show and to demonstrate the wonders of God's truth.