Apparently there is a slogan on a wall of the ministry of justice in Kabul, Afghanistan, scrawled by the Taliban: “Throw reason to the dogs, it stinks of corruption.” We smile, or even laugh aloud, at such an idea. “What would you expect?” we say to ourselves, proud that we live in a culture where reason reigns supreme … or does it?
There are ideas in our culture that are not open to serious challenge, however reasonably made. For example, in 1999 Chinese palaeontologist Jun-Yuan Chen visited the USA and dared to question the standard thinking on evolution. When he was told that US scientists did not like to hear such criticism, he replied, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.” More recently, Jeremy O’Grady wrote in The Week: “We profess to be disciples of science, yet regard those who question global warming not as intellectually mistaken but as heretics.” And woe betide anyone suggesting that same-sex relationships are not to be celebrated. There are things it is just not reasonable to question.
We should not be surprised to discover that we are not as reasonable as we think. The Bible tells us that human reason, like everything human, is fallen: we have a tendency to “suppress the truth”; we have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie” (Romans 1:18, 25). Thankfully our minds, along with the rest of our bodies, can be redeemed in Jesus Christ.