Impossible, improbable, impractical, unreasonable, imperfect, inadequate, insufficient, ineffective.

All those words are a glimpse into the little secret that our proud, arrogant, and self-important race would rather gloss over and ignore: Mankind is limited.

No matter how brilliant, educated, or gifted with opportunity, earthly creatures still cannot cross certain boundaries in their thinking and their capabilities. We still have need of words like impossible and insufficient.

“For me, faith will always be a sounder guide than reason because reason can only go so far—faith has no limits.” Andy Andrews makes this statement in his book The Traveler’s Gift.

Man living by reason and logic alone still needs words like impossible, insufficient, mystery, unknowable, unexplainable… and the list goes on and on. Man’s logic, thinking, and reasoning still has its limits.

Andy Andrews’s statement has been floating around in my head for several weeks. I wondered what Jesus had to say about that, and so I went looking…

Interesting. Jesus doesn’t talk much about living sensibly, logically, practically, reasonably. He doesn’t say, “Be sensible. Be practical. Use your head.”

In fact, He asks His followers to do some pretty illogical things. “Love your enemies. When someone hurts you, give them another chance to do it again. Then forgive them, every time. Don’t seek revenge. Don’t worry about piling up money and goods. Give things away.”

Many things Jesus asks his followers to do seem pretty illogical and unreasonable…according to our “sound” logic.

What Jesus talks about, instead, is obeying God and having faith in God. And God’s logic is quite different from ours. That’s why the obeying is so important–we may not understand at all, but obeying keeps us on the right track, even if it doesn’t “make sense” to us. And sometimes, in our obeying, God teaches us to see things as he does.

How do we make our decisions? How are we living? Do we walk by faith or do we try to find our way with only the limited light of our own reason?

Walking by faith means I move ahead based on what I know of God, his character, his love, his plan. I do not make decisions based on my limited reason, energies, and strengths, or according to the logic and thinking of others.

Walking by faith means trusting in who God is and following the path his light illuminates, rather than wandering down paths laid out by limited mortals.

It almost sounds irresponsible, doesn’t it? We’ve signed on to the belief that learning to think for ourselves is commendable. We like to think we’re pretty smart. How often have you heard, “God gave us a brain; he intends for us to use it” ?

I’m not arguing against that, but I’m asking, What is your ultimate guide—your reason. or your faith in the Lord and Creator of the universe?

If I’m wrong, or if I’ve missed something Jesus said, then someone please help me out and speak up. But Jesus did not say, If you’re smart enough… Instead, he said, If you’ve got that mustard seed…