Sword of Truth: Balancing Faith and Reason

Originally posted at: http://wp.me/puJQo-4B

A year ago, I started the series Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. Over the course of the last year, I've read all 12 books, a total of almost 10,000 pages. Some may ask, what in God's name possessed me to read 10,000 pages? The story that Terry Goodkind weaved was, by far, one of the best stories that I had ever read. I could identify with the main character (Richard) and the intellectual appeal to reason. The characters had depth, the issues that were addressed were complex, and Goodkind's ability to weave multiple storylines kept me reading.

While I was down in Florida earlier this month, I finished book 11 and couldn't wait to read the final book and finish the journey that I had started. After purchasing the book and reading at a breakneck pace, I neared the end of book 12. Yet, as I read, the ideas that Goodkind had started early in the series were coming together...and they were not something that I could agree with.

Roughly around books four and five, the main villain for the latter portion of the series was introduced: Emperor Jagang. Jagang is the leader of the Imperial Order, a movement which is largely fanatical in nature, advocating that humans are evil by nature and cannot be redeemed until the afterlife. As the series progresses, readers are introduced ad nauseum to the ideas of the Order and what it stands for--blind faith in the Creator. This is a stark contrast to the Wizard's Rules, which are based on reason and logic.

As book 12 ended, it became clear that the Order was representative of Christianity--ideas of the former remnants of the Order being referred to as "men of God," the emphasis on faith over reason, and humans being inherently sinful all came to the fore and were clearly related to religion. The story was resolved--reason and logic triumphed over blind faith. The tangible, law-governed forces of the world won the battle against those intangible, emotionally-based forces.

In the process of reading, I was disturbed by what I read. What Goodkind was implying shook me up a great deal and has caused me to question my beliefs in a way that I didn't think possible. Religion was characterized as villainous, evil, and stealing the magic away from life. Those who followed it were brutish, inhuman, and vile people. Let me pause for just a moment and say that Goodkind is an adherent to Rand's philosophical view of objectivism. Objectivism, in short, is concerned with "rational self-interest" as Rand put it.

Ultimately, Rand's ideas are played out in the battle between Richard and the Order. Richard represents the rational mind--the man who chooses to think and despite prophecy, enacts his own free will, confounding the rest of the characters. The Order represents the lack of rational thought, with most of the ideals held dear by the Order seeming absurd and contradictory when juxtaposed to the Order's cause.

What is perhaps most disturbing, yet not surprising, is that the side of religion is characterized as being a way for people to escape rational thought. Characters tow the party line as the Order brutalizes entire populations into following its dogmatic approach to existence. Time and time again, individuals abandon rational thought in favor of a better existence in the afterlife.

As a disillusioned, yet professing Christian, I find the ideas in the series difficult to grapple with. While there may be some circles of Christians that lack rational thought, there are also those who value being able to think rationally. Perhaps it's because I am older and in grad school that I find the central premises of Goodkind's works (and thereby, Rand's) to be so tasteless. I agree that rational thought has a place in one's day-to-day interactions. However, so does faith. To make a sweeping statement that all religion is merely an escape from rational thought is dangerous. I will agree that some individuals may use faith as a crutch, rather than incorporating rational thought into their thought patterns. I may even agree that in the past, many religions have brutalized others into towing a dogmatic line at the risk of physical or intellectual death. I do not agree that this is always the case.

In my understanding, faith and reason have what some scholarly circles call "dynamic interplay" or "dialectical tension." That is, one cannot exist without the other and exist in tension with the other. Faith and reason must be in balance with each other. Faith must not abandon rational thought and neither must rational thought abandon faith. Even Paul encouraged Timothy to keep a level head about him, to reason with what he heard (2nd Tim 4:5). Blind faith needs reason to balance it out, to ground it, to say, "Remember that you have a mind of your own and that God meant for you to use it." Reason needs faith to lift it beyond the bounds of time and space, to remind it that there are miracles, and to say, "Don't get sucked down into the mire of human existence--not everything is rational or knowable." Thank God that unconditional love isn't rational, and that Christ is the perfect balance of reason and faith.