It’s a conversation that allegedly took place between Abraham Lincoln and his best friend, Joshua Speed. Speed, upon finding Lincoln reading the Bible, laid a hand on his shoulder and remarked, “I am glad to see you profitably engaged.”
“I am profitably engaged,” was the affirming reply.
“Well, if you have recovered from your skepticism, I am sorry to say that I have not.”
“You are wrong, Speed,” said Lincoln, looking up from the pages of his Bible. “Take all of this book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will die a happier and better man.”
I like this for numerous reasons.
1) It’s Abraham Lincoln, an obviously smart and great man who gave God respect, believed the Bible, and relied on Christ for strength to lead America through one of it’s most trying times.
2) It’s a great statement on the cooperation of reason and faith. Christianity is not unreasonable. It does not require blind or stupid faith. It requires a reasonable faith. That would be, as Lincoln described it, a faith that travels along with reason until reason can go no further, at which point faith goes the rest of the way alone. That says that faith is not antagonistic to reason, it’s just that reason alone isn’t enough.
3) Joshua Speed, who was Lincoln’s best friend, did not share Lincoln’s belief. This is a good example for us, because we tend to gravitate, especially with best friends, to people who support the same belief systems we hold. We might have acquaintances that are not believers, but rarely best friends. This account lists Speed as Lincoln’s best friend. I’d be curious as to whether Mr. Speed will be in heaven. It’s hard to imagine a long, close friendship with a man like Lincoln that wouldn’t have convinced Joshua Speed about the reality of all that Lincoln believed at some point.
At any rate, it’s a great example of the kind of friendships I believe we as Christians need to cultivate—relationships of mutual respect with unbelievers (or what I like to call: “not yet believers”).
John Fischer The Catch 
Good stuff! I’m glad to see you’re posting these links on FB.
Point taken about friendship, but I hate to burst the bubble a bit. 😀 Lincoln is deified for some reason by our culture, but what did he say and do? He declared an unlawful and unjust war on the South, who had every constitutional right to leave, promoted Unitarianism and was the worst kind of humanist! But he’s still honest Abe in most government published history books.. and we believe them even though they were written by atheists who have no idea how to spot Christianity in history.
If you examine his response a little closer you can see he places more emphasis on reason than faith. The humanist philosophy is strong on reason and puts more in man’s hands and less in God’s. Reason is what fuels our current amoral crisis and has convinced most Christians in the USA that they can’t make a difference. If the pilgrims or our founders had that attitude there would have been no USA! There would have been no Declaration of Independence or Constitution founded on God’s law.. Lincoln wasn’t even a church goer.
I urge you to reexamine the life and fruit of Abraham Lincoln. The man who pit brother against brother and who gave us the current government that we have. I challenge you to find a confession of faith in Jesus Christ on record by our great centralizer, Abraham Lincoln. Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong. And I’m not saying he wasn’t a believer.. just- why do we automatically assume he was?
Love this! Even without a statement of faith I see three things in this story that would indicate to me that Lincoln was at least not a non believer: He was reading the Bible, he considered it “profitable”, and he indicated that he was willing to accept any part of it on faith that reason could not explain. I also love your point about friendship, John. We believers, for the most part, have maintained a pretty exclusive club for quite some time (my opinion). The problem is that we do miss relationships with people who are “not yet believers”, the very people with whom we have been commissioned to share the good news.
Wow, God is good! I just started working with a Muslem family helping them with their elderly parents. He knew I needed this.encoragement to stay there and be a light in the darkness. Thanks John for being a light in my life for many years. I first saw you in concert in Seattle at a church in 1975!