The Christian God does not want us to follow Him blindly. He gave us an imagination, intellect, will and memory (CCC 1703-1705) in order to “…perceive the wonderful unity of the mystery of God…” (Pope John Paul II).
If God doesn’t want us to follow Him blindly, He must have evidence of His existence. Therefore, in Christianity, faith and reason are indivisible. We cannot have clear reasoning without God, or faith without clear reasoning. One always leads to the other.
One thing that blocks clear reasoning is choosing to sin. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) said sin darkens the intellect and weakens the will (Summa Theologiae, II of II, Q. 142, Art. 4).
Sin also leads to other (and more grave) sin, which in time diminishes us to mere animals acting on feelings or instinctual desires.
We are so much more than animals. We are religious beings (CCC 28) with the “seed of eternity” borne inside of us (CCC 33).
See source: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3142.htm.
The “Big Three”
If we were made to come to know God, where does He explicitly reveal Himself?
The three revelations of God: Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium (or the teaching authority given by Christ to the Church) are known as the “three-legged stool.”
We must choose to accept God’s invitation to come to know Him in order to attain peace and freedom through what He has revealed to us. These are revelations of His Son, Jesus, by the Holy Spirit through: the Canon of the Sacred Scripture, the teachings of the apostles (called Apostolic Tradition), and the teachings of the Magisterium–the “three-legged stool.”
The Power of Choice
We are designed to come to know and love God, but only at our employment of the afore-mentioned faculties. Since they are uniquely ours, we each have the power of choice–the freedom to choose God’s way throughout our lives, or not.
God is just. He would would not want us to be used as instruments of injustice by inciting rivalries, perpetrating murder, or exacting revenge. Jesus, tells us to “turn the other cheek” in Luke 6:29 (forgo retaliation) and to forgive “seventy-times seven times” (bring your hurts to God) in Matthew 18:22.
Since God would not want us to follow Him by compulsion or coercion, we must choose to follow Him by using our own gift of reason, and by renouncing our appetites for personal pleasure.
God is Love
In exchange, God teaches us what love really means. Real love is sacrificing one’s selfish desires for the sake of the truth and wanting the good of the other.
God illustrated love by sacrificing Himself on the Cross for us to provide a way for us to be with Him forever in heaven.
The Eucharist
Our God, all powerful as He is, described Himself as “meek and humble of heart” (Matt 11:29).
He is meek and humble in that He stays with us in the Eucharist as the Bread of Life, so we can feed on Him during our earthly sojourn.
In doing this, God exchanges our shame with His great dignity and glory, a splendor we could never earn.
