Approaching the Unthinkable Thought of God: Faith as Super-rational

July 13, 2016 by Erick Sierra

Continued from Page 1

But to be fair, I should note that my motives here are different from Pascal's. For the entire question at hand is of unique urgency to the many Latin- and African-American Christians who, like me, engage more experiential-embodied-emotive modes of interacting with the divine. I have found these modes derided within intellectual Christian circles as wild, dangerous, and — you guessed it — irrational. As if, in their sweetly saving experience of Jesus, the Puerto Ricans in the storefront Brooklyn Pentecostal church of my upbringing had descended into mindlessness.

But I no longer believe, as I did for many years, that an emotionally detached, high-minded Christianity offers any better a window into God's reality. In fact, to me, such sectarian scorn seems to arise too much from the monied, gated-community consciousness of a faith fully rationalized. And Locke and Descartes laugh in their graves.

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