On Paradox

Posted in full from The Beginning of Wisdom:

The language of the Christian faith does not shy away from paradox. A paradox is a statement that on its surface is a contradiction, but for which a reconciling answer is possible. Christianity is full of such statements. Much of the language of Christian paradox is lyrical: we must be poor to be rich, we must lose our lives to save our lives, we must be last to be first.

But some of the language of Christian paradox is disconcerting: How do we reconcile the teaching that God is both three and one, that God is both infinitely just and infinitely merciful, that God’s will is sovereign yet man’s will is still free? And the list grows, and our faith begins to feel fragile, and the question presents itself: Can Christianity be trusted? Are these paradoxes foundational truths or fault lines in the bedrock of our faith? One man looks at the dual nature of Christ and says “impossible”. Another man looks at the dual nature of Christ and says “mystery”. One is certainly a fool, and one is wise. But which is which?

It is here that I must acknowledge my great debt, not to a theologian, but to a kindergarten teacher. Though she does not know it, Mrs. Greak, who taught four Wilkin children to write their names neatly and raise their hands politely, taught their mother a vital lesson on paradox.

She explained at meet-the-teacher night how difficult it was to teach the concept of time to a five-year-old. Each Monday she instructed the class to take out their journals and write at the top of the page: “Today is Monday. Yesterday was Sunday. Tomorrow is Tuesday.” The class followed her instructions and harmony reigned.

Her difficulty began on Tuesday when the process was repeated. As soon as she gave the instruction to write “Today is Tuesday”, looks of concern would flood her students’ faces. With the instruction to write “Yesterday was Monday” a hand would go up.

“Mrs. Greak, you told us today was Monday.”

“No, Monday was yesterday. Today is Tuesday.”

More worried looks. Another raised hand.

“Mrs. Greak, you told us tomorrow is Tuesday.”

“No, today is Tuesday. Tomorrow is Wednesday.”

Following this pronouncement, the children would get upset. From their perspective Mrs. Greak had stated a complete contradiction: She had told them first that today was Monday and then that today was Tuesday. Which was it? Could this woman be trusted to teach them addition if she couldn’t even keep track of what day today was?

Of course, both statements were perfectly true. Mrs. Greak’s class was grappling with a paradox: two seemingly contradictory statements that could be reconciled. But because five-year-olds do not yet grasp the concept of yesterday, today and tomorrow, they questioned her grasp on logic. The problem was not with the message. The problem was with the limited ability of the hearer to understand it.

We are like this. We encounter what we believe to be a contradiction in the Bible: How could Jesus be fully God and fully man at the same time? And we begin to worry that the Bible cannot be trusted.  And we forget that we are receiving instruction from One whose understanding is not incrementally greater than ours, but infinitely greater. On a spiritual-insight scale from zero to God, we would be pathologically prideful to rate ourselves at kindergarten level. We must be neither surprised nor discouraged to find that we, who are of yesterday and know nothing, are at a loss to reconcile the words of He who transcends yesterday, today and tomorrow.

But our questions are safe with Him. Surely the Lord looks on us with at least the same compassion and patience that a kindergarten teacher looks on her students. Surely His word to us is much the same as hers: “I know you don’t yet understand, but you will. Take me at my word until you do.” There is no contradiction in the Word of God.  We cannot expect to resolve all paradox this side of Glory, but we can try. And where our trying falls short, we can learn to marvel at the mystery of it, joyfully exchanging the wisdom of man for the foolishness of God - trusting our yesterday, today and tomorrow to the One who was, and is, and is to come.

by Daniel

Micah's Prophecy

"But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel,whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days."

Let’s stop and think about this for a minute. What this verse is saying here, is that Micah accurately predicted the birth of Jesus 700 years before it happened. If this is true, then I think we would have to agree that the Scriptures are inspired by God – who else can predict the future.

In chapter 1 Micah predicted the destruction of Samaria, which happened. As we just saw in verse 10, Micah also predicted the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon, which would not happen for over 100 years, but did in fact happen. Skeptics reject these as true predictions saying that they were added later, after these event had already happened.

However, no such objections can be made about this prophecy of Jesus’ birth. There are copies of Micah that clearly were in existence before the time of Christ. But that does not silence the critics. Instead, they say Jesus intentionally lived his life in such a way to fulfill this prediction, fooling everyone into thinking that he was the Messiah, when he really wasn’t. However, this fails because Jesus could not control where he was born – babies don’t tell moms where they’d like to be born!

But maybe Jesus was just a man, who was born in Bethlehem, and claimed to be the Messiah. The only problem with this is the Scriptures are full of prophecies about the coming Savior, that no one could intentionally or coincidentally fulfill them all.

There were also prophecies about the way the Savior would die.  Psalm 22 tells us he would be crucified and Zechariah 12:10 says his side would be pierced in his death.  Jesus could intentionally get himself killed, but he had no control over how he would die or what would happen during his death.  These are just a few of the prophecies over which Jesus had no control (i.e. Is. 53:12; 9, etc.), yet he fulfilled them all.

It you were to just take 8 of the prophecies about Jesus, the odds of one man fulfilling all of them is 10 to the 17^th power – that’s one chance in one hundred million billion.  That’s the equivalent of taking silver dollars and covering the state of Texas two-feet deep. Then marking one of the coins, blindfolding a person, dropping them in the middle of the state, where they begin to wander around and the first coin the bend over to pick up is the marked coin.[1]

by Joey