You Can't Have It Both Ways
This article responds to David Courchaine's sermon "Spiritual and Logical Clarity," streamed July 22, 2026. It looks at the main idea running underneath the whole sermon. It is part of our series of responses to Message followers. Scripture is quoted from the King James Version unless otherwise noted.
You Can't Have It Both Ways
Underneath David Courchaine's whole sermon was one big idea, and everything else was built on top of it. So it is worth looking at carefully, because if that one idea does not hold, a lot of what he built on it comes down with it.
Here is the idea, in his own terms. He said there are two kinds of clarity. There is logical clarity, which is working things out with your head, using reason and evidence. And there is spiritual clarity, which is trusting God even when a thing makes no sense to you. He said you need both, and that a person who leans only on his own reasoning is "stuck." God, he said, gives you the spiritual part.
Now, a lot of that is fair. We are not meant to be cold calculators, and we are not meant to be lazy either. Faith and thinking are not enemies. So far, so good.
But watch what the idea does once he starts using it. Let's look at the evidence.
What it does to your questions
Every time someone asks a hard question about the Message, or points to something that does not add up, David has an answer ready. That person is "stuck in logical clarity." They are leaning on their own reasoning and missing the spiritual part.
Do you see what that does? It turns your questions into a spiritual failure. You are no longer a person who noticed a real problem. You are a person who is not trusting God enough. The question never has to be answered, because the asking itself has been made the problem.
That is a very handy tool. And it only works in one direction. Let me show you.
He used reasoning the whole time
For the length of that sermon, David reasoned with you.
He gave careful definitions. He walked through history. He built arguments step by step and asked you to follow them. And when he came to my book, he made his sharpest point of all. He said that removing words from a source without telling the reader is "editorial misconduct by definition."
Stop and look at that last one. "Editorial misconduct by definition" is not a spiritual feeling. It is a claim about evidence and reasoning. He looked at a source, compared it to a quote, and drew a logical conclusion. He expected you to weigh that conclusion with your own mind and agree.
So David trusts reasoning completely. He trusts evidence completely. He used both, for an hour, to make his case.
He only says reasoning cannot be trusted when you point it at the Message.
Aim it at my book, and reasoning is a fine and proper thing. Aim it at the prophet, and suddenly you are "stuck in logic" and missing the spiritual part.
That is having it both ways. And you cannot have it both ways. If careful reasoning is good enough to judge my book, it is good enough to judge the prophet. If it cannot be trusted to judge the prophet, then it cannot be trusted to judge my book either, and his whole "editorial misconduct" argument falls apart in his own hands.
He does not get to use the tool and forbid the tool in the same sermon.
"You can't even prove that logic works"
David saw this coming, so he reached for one more argument. He said you cannot actually prove that logic is the right way to figure things out. You cannot prove it without already using it. So, he said, in the end everybody has to accept something they cannot prove. Everybody is trusting something.
That part is true. Everybody does start somewhere. But look at what he tries to do with it, because it does not get him where he needs to go.
First, saying everybody trusts something does not mean everything people trust is equally true. I trust that the sun will come up tomorrow. Another man trusts that a stick will tell him where to dig for water. We are both trusting something. That does not make us equally right. You still have to look at each claim on its own.
Second, and this is the part that undoes him, the moment he argues anything at all, he is using the very reasoning he just told you not to trust. It is like a man standing at a pulpit, speaking into a microphone, telling the whole room that microphones do not work. If he really believed it, he would put the microphone down. David never puts it down. He keeps reasoning with you right to the end, because he knows reasoning works. He just needs you to stop using yours when it points the wrong way.
The wall this builds
Now step back and see the whole thing at once, because this is what matters most.
Put all of David's answers side by side. If you bring evidence against the Message, you are stuck in logical clarity. If you doubt, that is Satan working on you. If you ask for proof, you are like Zacharias, who got struck dumb for asking. If you cannot make the pieces fit... well, you were never meant to fit them with your head.
Every single door is closed. Every one leads back to the same place: stop asking, and just believe.
Think about what that means. There is no question you could raise, and no evidence you could bring, that this way of talking cannot wave away. Nothing could ever count against the Message, because every objection has already been labeled a spiritual failure before you open your mouth.
That is not strength. A belief that nothing could ever test is not a strong belief. It is a locked door with you standing on the outside, being told the lock is for your own good.
Here is a plain question to ask yourself. If the Message is true, why does it need a rule that keeps you from checking it?
A true thing is not afraid of a fair look
The God of the Bible does not work this way.
When the apostle Paul preached in Berea, the people did not just take his word for it. They "searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so." They fact-checked an apostle. And the Bible does not scold them for it. It calls them "more noble" for doing it. Paul himself wrote, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." Prove all things. Not most things. All of them.
That is the opposite of "stop asking and just believe." That is "go ahead and check, because what is true will hold up."
A true thing does not need to forbid the test. It welcomes it. Only something that would fail the test needs a rule against testing.
The honest way
So here is what I want to leave you with, and it is simpler than everything David built.
You do not have to choose between using your head and trusting God. That was a false choice from the start. You are allowed to do both. You can love God with your whole heart and still ask an honest question, and God is not angry with you for it.
Use your mind. Look at the evidence. Ask the hard questions. And then aim all of it at everything, the same way in every direction, including the Message.
If the Message is true, it will stand up to that. If it can only survive by telling you not to look, you already have your answer.
You can't have it both ways. Neither can the Message.
Footnotes