Vern: That sounds like formal logic, not reason. It’s not mathematical, or even like your LSAT games.
Davis: What is it then?
Vern: No, how not what. When you say something follows from something else, you’re reasoning.
Davis: Who says “follows from”? Even lawyers don’t talk like that.
Vern: You don’t literally have to say those two words to do what they say.
Davis: But where’s the power, the force?
Vern: It’s in us. Where else would it be?
Davis: Sometimes, Vern, you want to interrupt aggression with reason, logic.
Vern: That’s interesting. In my business, we’re often accused of masking power plays with reason, assuming reason is something other than power when it is just used to hide the real interests behind it. So I’m surprised, though I guess I shouldn’t be, that you want more power than I’m giving you with the word.
Davis: At least give me something I understand—a binding law.
Vern: God-given, you mean?
Davis: That would be a good start. But you don’t have to put it like that. Something like addition, or mathematical proof, that people can’t deny without being called insane.
Vern: That works in math class, but it’s not much good off campus. And anyway, spirit can’t be clean-cut, or the kind of force that’s one-way. If everything worked by mathematical equations, the meaning might go missing.
Davis: All right, go back to Church, then. Whatever definition we give would have to at least cover those worshippers.
Vern: Some of them, anyway.
Davis: Well, what do they have to do with reason?
Vern: Don’t think of them as just bowing to an idol.
Davis: Who says I was?
Vern: Well, the preacher in the pulpit is giving reasons, revealing reason. The stories you hear in Sunday school tell of reasons.
Davis: It’s more about ethics… and love is not reason or some sort of negation.
Vern: There wouldn’t be jealousy if love wasn’t a negation.
Davis: But I’m pretty sure jealousy is a sin. Think Jesus, love of your neighbor.
Vern: No one has ever loved everyone. Our ethics have to be more personal, even if we do believe in the incarnation.
Davis: I suppose you’re going to tell me that self-sacrifice is just another opposition? That even if we think we are going against reason, it’s still got us cornered.
Vern: Here I stand. I can do no other, nothing else. I negate every other option. That’s an ethics of reason.
Davis: And God?
Vern: The last reason.
Davis: That’s it?
Vern: No. That’s it. What more do you want?
Davis: I don’t know. Should it matter what I want?
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