Good News Quote #35

From Chapter Six, Why You Don't Have to Worry about Splitting Head from Heart: Or, How Thinking Welcomes Feeling.

Questions ought to have a place in our hearts, because asking questions is a way of seeking the truth and the love of truth is an important virtue. [...]


It's not just idle curiosity or intellectual pride. Above all, it shouldn't be confused with the obnoxious desire to be right all the time, which is a vice, not a virtue. The people who love the truth are not the ones who are always trying to prove they're right and everyone else is wrong. They're people who are glad to discover when they're wrong, because that gets them one step closer to the truth. And that shows how rare and difficult this virtue is. It's close kin to repentance, because it undermines our desire to justify ourselves and put others in the wrong, and thereby makes us more fair and just in our relationships. Without it morality is just a sham, a game we play to impress people or to persuade ourselves that we're good Christians.

Good News Quote #34

From Chapter Six, Why You Don't Have to Worry about Splitting Head from Heart: Or, How Thinking Welcomes Feeling.

One last unit in that army of cultural stereotypes fighting against people who think too much is what I call the "God makes no sense" move. My students make this move a lot. They say things like "I can't explain it, it must be God" or "It makes absolutely no sense, you just have to believe it" or "Faith means you have to let yourself believe in something crazy and illogical that you can't understand." These are the cliches of people who have taken to heart the warning that they'd better not think too much. It looks to me like they're trying to preserve their faith by not even admitting to themselves that they have questions about it.


And this is sad. It treats Christian faith as if it were make-believe. If you're a child trying to hang on to your belief in Santa Claus, then you really do need to keep yourself from thinking about it too much. Critical thinking really will kill your faith in Santa Claus. But the Christian faith is true, so it can stand up to serious questioning.

Good News Quote #33

From Chapter Six, Why You Don't Have to Worry about Splitting Head from Heart: Or, How Thinking Welcomes Feeling.

As reason welcomes emotion and subjects it to the self-criticism that values truth over self, the two end up pulling together in the direction of making us better people.


Of course not all our reasoning works in that direction. When it goes off in the wrong direction, the problem is not that we're thinking too much, but that our thinking is bad, lazy or dishonest. Our reasoning then is not in the service of truth, which is what reason is really for, but promotes our own self-serving agenda. This results in the perversion of reason that psychologists call "rationalization," as I mentioned before. It's a form of irrationality in which our thinking is all about serving emotional needs that have nothing to do with what's really true. So instead of learning to put truth before self, and thus turning emotions toward justice, generosity, and humility, our thinking is corrupted by the wrong kind of emotions, which end up driving everything.

Good News Quote #32

From Chapter Six, Why You Don't Have to Worry about Splitting Head from Heart: Or, How Thinking Welcomes Feeling.

This goes against an old stereotype about reason or rationality (I'll use these two terms equivalently). The stereotype is that in order to be rational, you have to deny your emotions. But that's never made sense to me. Reason is about finding the truth, whereas denying your emotions means telling lies to yourself about what you're feeling. There's no rationality in that. Some psychologists call it "rationalization," but that doesn't mean it's rational. In fact, "rationalization" is a technical term in psychology for a certain kind of irrationality, precisely because it refers to an attempt to avoid realizing the truth about ourselves.

Denial of reality is not what reason is for. And getting in touch with reality is one of the most important things our emotions are for. That's why reason and emotion -- thinking and feeling -- belong together: they both help us get at the truth about reality. But they get at the truth in different ways, which is why they need each other.

Good News Quote #31

From Chapter Six, Why You Don't Have to Worry about Splitting Head from Heart: Or, How Thinking Welcomes Feeling.

I've never heard anyone warn people about splitting their head from their heart when they're in the grip of strong, raging emotions that obliterate their capacity to think straight. No, it's always when you're thinking a lot that people warn you about splitting your head from your heart. And what seems to make them especially nervous is when you think too much about your feelings. [...]

There's nothing in the Bible to suggest that there's any such thing as thinking too much. And since there's no such thing, it's not something to worry about. We should all go ahead and think as much as we need to, just as we should feel as much as we need to. You can't really do too much of either. What you can do -- and this is what we should be concerned about -- is think dishonestly carelessly, uninsightfully, just as we can also have feelings that are dishonest, malicious, arrogant, and so on. There are evils to watch out for in both our thinking and our feeling, but sheer quantity is not the problem. The problem is not too much thinking or feeling but evil thoughts and feelings.

Good News Quote #30

From Chapter Five, Why You Don't Have to Be Sure You Have the Right Motivations: Or, How Love Seeks the Good.

There is of course a sense in which love for neighbors is unselfish. But this is not because it is motivated by the desire to be unselfish. Rather, it is motivated by desire for the good of the other. Think of how we love our children, seeking their good as well as taking delight in their very being. But sometimes, when you have to wake up in the middle of the night to deal with your screaming infant for the fourth or fifth time, there is no delight in your heart, just sheer exhaustion and devotion to duty. For once again, if you love, you'll do your duty for the one you love: you'll drag yourself out of bed to deal with this tiny bundle of misery, not because you desire to be unselfish but because she needs you. That's the shape of love, the way it directs your attention: it's not about you, it's about her. The delight is lovely when it's there, but it's not the essential thing. And the desire to be unselfish is surely not enough to get you out of bed for the fourth or fifth time -- it's too self-centered. Only love for your child can do that.

Good News Quote #29

From Chapter Five, Why You Don't Have to Be Sure You Have the Right Motivations: Or, How Love Seeks the Good.

So what should you do if you do discover that you have bad motivations for doing good things? First of all, join the club. You are a fallen human being, and you too have a deceitful heart. So of course you have mixed motives all the time. [...]


That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do anything about it. But instead of trying to improve your motivations or find the right one, the thing to do is repent and confess your sins. [...]


This is a point we often get backward. For some reason, we think we can make Christianity attractive to non-Christians by telling them how God's Spirit has been working in our lives to make us such good, loving people -- so different from our nasty, unloving Christian neighbors. And we wonder why non-Christians think we're self-righteous! It's one thing for a former drug addict to testify about how Christ has turned his life around; but when nice, well-off people who have their lives together talk about how powerfully God is working in their hearts, it's obnoxious.