Reasonable God

One of the trendy saying's you hear in church circles is that we need to be relevant to the culture. But sometimes because of our desire to be relevant we strip down the gospels and deflate the power of God to a more reasonable level. A level that we can handle, a level that we can explain to others. One of the questions that I hear a lot is simply, "Why?" If there is one thing I have learned in following God is that God many times asks us to change something, or to do something, or even to say something to someone. But we don't want to obey until we know why He is asking us. Then if we suspect the reason He is asking us, we judge whether or not it is reasonable for us to listen to Him and obey. So what has happened is many churches have lost the power of God, the miraculous, because they cannot live with the "why" question unanswered and therefore cannot handle the mystery of God. Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard says this, "Woe to the person who smoothly, flirtatiously, commandingly, convincingly preaches some soft, sweet something which is supposed to be Christianity! Woe to the person who makes miracles reasonable. Woe to the person who betrays and breaks the mystery of faith, distorts it into public wisdom, because he takes away the possibility of offense!..... Oh the time wasted in this enormous work of making Christianity so reasonable, and in trying to make it so relevant!" Christianity or God is not meant to be reasoned away and explainable, it is meant to be mysterious. And as far as I am concerned, miracles will always be relevant.