Our goal is to reveal the truth about God’s kingdom of love and assist you in developing your own critical reasoning skills. God invites us,

Come now, let us reason together. … Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool (Isaiah 1:18 NIV84).

God has connected reasoning through the truth with cleansing from sin. This is because Satan is the “father of lies” (John 8:44) and it is by the truth that we are set free (John 8:32) from distrust of God. It is in a trust relationship with God that we are healed, but the truth has healing power only upon those who understand it and choose it for themselves; thus, Paul says that “each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5 ESV).

We are to develop our abilities in harmony with God’s methods and principles, so that we grow up “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13 NRSV).

However, such growth and maturity requires that we exercise our abilities. This is one of God’s design laws: the law of exertion. If you want something to get stronger, you must use it — if you don’t use it, you lose it. If you want strong math ability, you have to work problems. If you want strong musical skill, you must practice your instrument. If you want strong critical reasoning ability, you must practice critical reasoning. Thus, Scripture teaches:

But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil (Hebrews 5:14 NRSV).

What if you took a math class and your teacher’s method of instruction was to tell you all the answers? At the beginning of the class, the teacher gave stern warning that you must be prepared for the examination — that if you are not prepared when testing comes, you will fail. With the proper fear instilled, the teacher then has you memorize a long list of answers: question one: 47; question two: 83; question three: 19; and so forth. You diligently memorize the long list, but what happens when on examination day you discover the test is not about knowing a list of answers, but whether you can actually do the math? You would most likely fail the test, because you were never taught HOW to obtain the answers you simply memorized.

Sadly, many religious institutions (including many within Christianity) teach their followers the “answers” — the “right” doctrines, creed, catechism, or other list of fundamental beliefs — but they don’t teach them how to actually think, reason, or discern the right from the wrong. Even if their followers know the “right” doctrine, they don’t know why and, therefore, they don’t know how to make decisions in harmony with God’s kingdom of love and truth.

Come and Reason Ministries isn’t interested in merely giving you a list of “right” answers — no, we want to teach you how to think, how reality works, how to discern truth from error and healthy from unhealthy, so that you can mature to the full stature of children of God, capable of facing life’s problems and applying God’s methods to determine the healthiest course of action.

If you are new to our ministry, the following list of links to topics and various resources will assist you in honing your critical reasoning skills and enhancing your ability to be a thinker capable of wise decision-making and not merely be a reflector of other people’s thoughts.

So, come, let us reason together…

Design Law

In the beginning, there was God (John 1:1), and the Bible reveals that God is love (1 John 4:8). Our God of love is the Creator, the Builder of all reality: God built space, time, energy, matter, and life. The laws of God are the laws upon which reality is constructed to operate, such as gravity, the laws of health, physics, and the moral laws.

Created beings cannot build space, time, energy, matter, and life, so we make up rules that we call “laws” (such as tax laws and laws on commerce, advertising, and making substances legal to sell or not, etc.) and then threaten to inflict punishments upon people who break our rules. Humans can pass laws to make marijuana “legal,” but they can never pass laws to make it healthy. God’s laws are not like human laws.

Satan’s root lie about God, which deceived both angels and humans, is that God’s laws are like our laws: mere rules; God is then portrayed as a dictator who, in order to be just, must inflict pain, suffering, and death (punishment) for rule-breaking.

The first step in becoming a thinker is to know God and know God’s law. So we invite you to read the following blogs and reason for yourself. As you read these blogs in order, consider the evidence and come to your own conclusion, as you see how the question of which “law lens” — design or imperial/imposed — is used to understand biblical truths and differentiate various doctrines.

Seven Levels of Moral Decision Making

One reason there is so much disagreement about what is right and wrong is that people are at different levels of maturity and use different standards to determine what is right and wrong. As Christians, we are to grow up, mature, and advance. Hebrews describes the problem if we don’t:

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity (Heb 5:11–6:1 NIV84).

Staying as spiritual infants means that we “are not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.” Our goal is to mature, advance, and grow up to become righteous children of God. The links below will provide insight into the seven levels of moral decision-making as well as tools to assist in your continual development and maturity.

Integrative Evidence-Based Approach to Discovering Truth

This is the method of harmonizing Scripture, science/nature, and life experiences — finding truth in which all three threads come to the same conclusion. You can discover more about this method at:

Now, with your thinking caps on — understanding the difference between design law and imposed law, comprehending the seven levels of moral development, and utilizing the Integrative Evidence-Based Approach to truth — explore the many topics, blogs, seminars, TV shows, podcasts, and Bible Study Classes on our site and reason out the evidence for yourself. Make every day a journey of ever-increasing discovery and advancement in God’s kingdom of truth and love.