Reason and Beyond

Reason, the second tenet of British Unitarianism, is strongly and fundamentally linked to freedom of religious belief – freedom requires responsibility, and responsibility requires reason. Humankind must accept responsibility for their choices and their acts. Every time we come across a new person, or a new situation, or a new way of thinking, we find that some things are better and others worse, by trial and error, by measurements of happiness and welfare, by comparison and reflection. This is how we cultivate responsible behaviour – by using reason as our guide.

image: catholic.org

But we need to be aware that it is not an infallible one. We are human beings, not automatons, so our reasoning is rarely completely based on logic; our desires will also influence our beliefs. In other words, we might believe that we are making an entirely reasonable decision about what to believe and how to act, but our reasoning mechanism can also be seduced by what we want to believe. We are also influenced by external factors - by advertising, by persuasive articles in journals and magazines and on the internet, by the desire to fit in with others, and so on.

And of course there are irrational elements in our experience of ourselves and our universe. But how else can we comprehend them, or understand them, at least in part, unless by using our reason?

The process is like this: find out what commends itself to your reason as truth and then accept that as your authority. If you work at it faithfully, your whole life long, with help from fellow pilgrims, you might become a better, wiser and more loving human being. If enough of us do the same, and put our beliefs into action, it might even lead to a better, wiser and more loving world.

But I also believe that there is more to life and how we respond to it than being perfectly reasonable and logical. I agree absolutely and completely that the final authority for an individual's faith should be their own conscience. But I think that this involves our hearts as well as our heads.

When I first became a Unitarian, I was "converted" if you like, by reading the first section of Alfred Hall's book Beliefs of a Unitarian, when he wrote: "Unitarianism is ... more than anything else an attitude of mind. It is a fresh way of looking at life and religion. ... Its method is that of appeal to reason, conscience and experience generally, and above all to elemental principles of truth and right which are implanted in the human heart at its noblest and embedded in the universe."

So Hall was saying that what is in our hearts is as important as what is in our heads. Yes. There are some things in life that are beyond reason - how we love, how we feel compassion for others, and also, to some extent, what we believe, what gives our lives meaning.  I believe that both reason and passion are important - I am increasingly finding that while I can reject beliefs on the grounds of reason, there are also some aspects of "doing religion" or having faith that are beyond reason. For example, I have a growing awareness of God or the Spirit at work in everyday life. This is on the basis of intuition, not reason, but I believe it is real, in so far as it makes sense to my deepest self.

Heart and mind together, reason and passion. We need to use all our faculties to find wholeness and completion and meaning in our lives.