“Because, even knowing God, they neither praised or offered thanksgiving to the Holy One. Not only that, they became foolish in their reasoning and their hearts grew dark without understanding” (Romans 1.21).
Foolish in their reasoning. Sounds like what we are hearing: more tests are the reason we have more cases, it’s cold outside so climate change must not be real, it is what it is.
Reason: Theologically, it’s the idea that God gave us minds with which to think. We were not meant to take things in without thought but, rather, to take every thought, every idea captive. We take concepts and ideas and put them up against our understanding of the person and teachings of Jesus in order to discern the path we should walk.
But, as this year has taught us, reason is a fallible thing. The Anglican and Wesleyan traditions, which saw reason as a part of the Christian life, assumed an Enlightened mindset, one that considered the world and Scripture and dared to be challenged by them, forever remembering that we do not yet know all the answers (or even all the questions).
So how does our reason become so foolish?
In November, I try to be intentional about thankfulness. In my morning and evening prayers, I deliberately pray words of thanksgiving so that those words, if just for a little while, will turn my thoughts to that sort of mindset. My hope is that my focus will shift from myself and toward all God’s Creation that surrounds me.
Giving thanks is a means to opening the gates between myself and the world. Gratitude for the beauty of the sunrise on a chilly, clear morning doesn’t stop there. The brightening sky reveals the limbs of trees that were hidden in shadow and whose leaves either burn in color or cover the ground at their roots. Thrashing through those leaves are the birds, newly awakened, looking for food. Each of these is something for which to be thankful, which leads to something else.
To neglect taking time to give thanks is to keep the gates closed, to focus upon myself as if I were the universe contained inside one fragile form. And, in so doing, my reasoning takes nothing more into account than me, which makes my thoughts foolish.
This foolish reasoning, Paul is saying, ties to this failure of giving praise and thanksgiving (which go hand-in-hand). Our reasoning, our judgment of what is true is made foolish; because, we have forgotten that there is so much more in this world besides ourselves. We’ve failed to remember that there is so much more to Creation than just what happens within the sphere of our being.
So, in this month, we have the opportunity to open our gates, to let the world remind us that we are a part of a whole and not the whole. We can, in gratitude, inform our reason with wisdom and, perhaps, act and live and grow deeper in our love for all those around us.
Lest our hearts grow dark.