The Limits of Reason#RTTBROS #Nightlight #USA250 #Nation250 #America250

The Limits of Reason

#RTTBROS #Nightlight #USA250 #Nation250 #America250

The Limits of Reason

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

— Proverbs 14:12

THE STORY

Thomas Paine believed in God. He just did not believe in much else.

His 1776 pamphlet Common Sense was one of the most influential documents in American history. Washington ordered it read aloud to his troops. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies in a population of three million. Thomas Paine lit a fire that no one else had been able to start.

And yet Paine himself demonstrated with painful clarity what happens when the light of reason is mistaken for the Light of the World. He went to France after the Revolution and celebrated the French Revolution, which devolved into the Reign of Terror. He was eventually imprisoned by the very revolutionaries he had championed.

He spent his final years in poverty and near-obscurity in America. When he died in 1809, only six people attended his funeral. Reason, unmoored from revelation, is a fire that eventually burns its own house down.

THE REFLECTION

This devotion requires honesty rather than sentiment. Thomas Paine was brilliant, courageous, and genuinely committed to human freedom. He was also a cautionary tale.

The difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is not primarily political. It is theological. The American founders built their case for liberty on the foundation of God-given rights, "endowed by their Creator," Jefferson wrote. The French revolutionaries removed the Creator and placed human reason on the throne. The results were catastrophic. They always are.

Proverbs 14:12 is not a pessimistic verse. It is a protective one. There is a way that seems right, logical, enlightened, reasonable. But if that way does not reckon with the nature of God and the nature of man, it leads somewhere dark.

The American experiment succeeded in proportion to its faith. That is not a coincidence. It is a principle.

THE PATRIOT’S PRAYER

Pray It Forward: Ask God today to show you an area where you have been trusting your own reasoning over the clear teaching of Scripture, and ask for the grace to submit it to Him.

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