The heart Has its Reasons

Blaise Pascal, the brilliant mathematician and Christian apologist
of the seventeenth century, made this remarkable observation:

The heart has its reasons,
of which reason knows nothing . . .

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason. . . .
Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that. And from that realization some retreat into denominational familiarity. (Or some form of institutional framework where thinking is not necessary or encouraged.)
I don’t think Pascal was not arguing for subjectivism over reason. He was not saying we should jettison our thinking in favor of sentimentality.
Rather, Pascal was making the observation that learning and reason by themselves are cul-de-sacs. Cul-de-sacs figuratively grow tedious if all you do is go around and around in safety and security. They have limits to what they can truly tell us about reality. Leaving the safety of the cul-de-sac is entering the freeway of mystery and faith. Pascal was arguing that our heart does in fact see, and we must look at life with the heart if we are to embrace a true perspective on our world.