Balance

In reaction to those who think logic is the ultimate pursuit of truth, many who suppose that emotions are the entity that brings us to a broken state of acceptance are in such opposition to the philosophical camp that their arguments lead them to assume there is no need to think beyond emotional experience and to therefore reject the role that logic may play in their faith.

I, however, do not believe that human beings are capable of riding upon an exclusively emotional experience indefinitely . Although higher emotions do set humans apart as special creatures, we are also equally endowed with rational cognitive thought. Once the emotions erode, which they will inevitably do, reason begins to scrutinize the situation. If one is not prepared to think through the logical side of the faith, he or she often falls away. I believe that this precarious approach to faith is precisely the idea behind Jesus' parable of the seed that sprouted quickly but soon faded because it was not rooted in firm soil. If one roots his or her faith in emotion alone, he or she will not be able to satisfy the entire human capacity for thought. This sort of failing belief can be examined in everyday experience:

When hearing a good ghost story, many will experience chills and wonder if the story could be true. People can become so engrossed in the emotions aroused when hearing a ghost story that even the person relating the fantastical tale, someone who might have created the story himself and therefore knows that it is purely fictitious, may even begin to believe the story for a moment. However, it does not take long for human reasoning to take control and destroy any belief in the story. If there is no logical grounding for belief, many will never make it to the point at which logic has been satisfied and the leap of true faith begins. In fact, in the West, our logic has attained such a privileged priority that it does not take long before the white knuckled experience of a good sermon begins to fade, and, once again, I can speak from personal experience. It is this sort of battle of logic that left me emotionally unprepared to handle pain when I first had to confront it.