Logic’s Grip

The grip of logic closes hard on dreams and possibilities, pouring cold-hard facts on optimism and draining the flow of believability out of all that’s spiritual. Logic’s grip, tightening in strangulation over creativity, claiming truth and redefining order to reward itself for intellect, it terminates the dream with a series of factual dots and dashes and mathematical formulas. Logic’s grip is not an embrace. It’s the strangling choke-hold of learned containment, masked in regimented prerecorded sequences. It’s the formula that always worked before for the same result. The Master’s degree in the very same boredom that drives a genius to depression. It’s the get-rich scheme that gets people rich but leaves them poorly spirited. The emptiness that pushes someone to the edge of themselves where, logically, they’ve been programmed to conclude that, to be in such a state, is undeniable evidence that there could be no such thing as God. And even if there is a God, there’s certainly no Jesus, no forgiveness and no salvation . That’s just not logical.

Logic says we’re just spirits passing through time. Ignited by a giant collision; created and re-created, we live, die and repeat until we learn the ways of perfection. Or we simply live and die: game over! Is this the logic we’ve learned?

So, logic teaches us that we should believe.
Believe in ourselves – Believe in the tea leaves, the inherent goodness of humanity, the rhythms of the universe.
We focus on our happiness – Smiles and laughter, fun and relaxation, companionship and affiliations.
We rely on our talents – Competing and comparing, absorbing and obsessing, bragging and stressing. And if we never get past our inward focus, we will always get what we always got because it is the logical progression of our linear intellect.

But belief is not the equivalent of faith and happiness doesn’t equal joy and a talent is not a calling. When belief wavers and happiness abandons and talent fades, those who have true faith in God are never stifled. They are joyously covered in the sanctity of their calling. Giving themselves away, they are shielded from the disappointment of logic’s letdown; sheltered from the fallacy of the ordinary, posing as the disciplined. Understanding that their power and authority comes from the Almighty, they are free to live the extraordinary life God has already provided for them. Free to step, full-stride into fulfillment; to compose the song that only they can write, while others grip and grapple for logic and self motivation, in the limitations of what they’ve learned to believe.

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21 (NKJV)

Photo credit to Glen Noble