What also is striking about your reply is that in how it doesn’t account for Jesus and the Gospel, and in how it talks about man, his reason, and works, it again creates a very strong picture of religion. And again, the picture is that science, “the search for knowledge about Nature through man’s reason,” is supreme. The people at the top of the mountain you talk about aren’t simply believers, but theologians (And you identify what they believe, and even if they’re Christian) . And the going to the top of the mountain (works) is religion, not a relationship with God, as He desires. It may in a sense be a cliche, but it’s also true that the religions of the world are about man trying to reach up to God, while true Christinity is about Him reaching down to us.
On some specific things you wrote, you said reason can lead to evil. But the Bible says our reason is evil, and it always leads to evil. God’s Word says our righteousness is as filthy rags before Him. What actually God is most concerned (CONT’D)
about is our hearts, which the Bible says is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. There is plenty else in the Bible, too, that says without God’s direct intervention and instruction, we simply cannot truly know ourselves and our real motivations. We need a Savior in every way. We were made to utterly depend on the Lord, and our reason actually works wonderfully and finds its true fulfillment if we do. But we have to take our proper place first.
On Pilate’s question on truth, again, Christians have the answer even though Pilate didn’t. Jesus said He is the truth. And He told Pilate He came into the world to bear witness to the truth, and that every one of the truth hears His voice. He also told the Samaritan woman that God wants worshipers worshiping Him in Spirit and in truth. (Cont’d)