How About a National Day of Reasonable Prayer?
May 5, 2016 § 1 Comment
The Religion News Service reports that “the American Humanist Association, among the largest national advocacy groups of nonbelievers and other secularists, wants the first Thursday in May to be recognized by Congress as a National Day of Reason. But that day is already designated as the National Day of Prayer, with a 65-year history of support from Congress, state and local governments and every sitting president since its inception in 1952.”
Maybe we can have a National Day of Reasonable Prayer. Or a National Day of Prayerful Reason. One false dichotomy forwarded by many humanists, atheists and “free thinkers” is the mutual exclusivity of faith and reason. To the contrary, the God Christians pray to never asked us to forfeit reason in the process, but in fact expects us to include it.
“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord…” in Isaiah 1:18. God wants us not to cast aside sound reasoning, but to subject our thinking to His will. This can’t be done apart from reasoning that this is a good way to live. The wisdom of Solomon in Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make straight your paths.”
Many reasonable men agree. “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day,” Abraham Lincoln reportedly said. If we replace prayer with our own reasoning because we reject the notion of a prayer-hearing God, we have made reasoning our god.
We shouldn’t wait for a “Day of Prayer” or a “day of Reason” to do either, but it should be our daily practice to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances,” (1 Thess. 5:16-18) and submit our God-given ability to reason back to Him. There are good reasons to pray every day.
God&Neighbor 
Great post, Mike! Rejection of God actually extinguishes reason. A man who rejects the existence of God is most unreasonable – actually he is called a ‘fool’. It’s only in the turning to God that ‘reason’ can exist.