Jesus Christ: The Great Paradox

I came across a blog recently that begrudged Christians for not coming up with reasonable explanations for the many paradoxes of the Christian faith. These sorts of attacks give me great joy. I'm not insensitive to the rationalistic knee-jerk that wants everything to be fully explainable in logical and systematic language, regardless of the subject matter. It is natural to want knowledge of all things - it makes us feel powerful, like gods.

The paradox of the incarnation of Christ is the greatest example of God taking the wisdom of the world and making it foolishness; of giving of sight to the blind and blindness to those who claim to see. If you're unaware of the paradox, let me explain it in simple terms: If God is eternal, meaning He never came into existence but has existed eternally without the confines of the time-space continuum, then how could God have 'come into existence' at a point of time in world history in the Person of Jesus Christ? Either Jesus Christ was not God in the flesh, or we're stuck with a logical absurdity.

The fact that Christianity is founded on this logical absurdity - the incarnation - is not a recent discovery. The Church has gotten by just fine for 2000 years despite this fact. It has always been a stumbling block for the Jews (symbolic of religion) and for the Greeks (symbolic of philosophy/rational inquiry and explanation). The Church has always understood that the incarnation is the only way that God could have redeemed humankind; this logical absurdity is the only way humankind could ever be reconciled to God. For those who work better with a flow chart or steps, as I do, I offer the following reasons why the great paradox of Christianity is paramount to authentic Christianity:

1. If God is Spirit then He is forever a subject and not an object within the framework of the material world. He must be approached as a subject - subjectively/relationally. He is not an object that can be studied as if one can come to 'know' Him by simply studying his attributes. In short, faith (the relationship God calls humankind into) is not attained through mental assent to a set of divine propositions about God. This is not to say mental assent is not important, but it is important to separate it from one's understanding of how faith is attained. One must recognize that God is not discovered through science for the simple fact that He is not an object in the material universe, yet God became material in the Person of Jesus Christ but was still undetectable as God through natural means of investigation. He will always be elusive to scientific inquiry.

2. If God came to mankind in all His glory He would have robbed humankind of any ability for them to come to Him through love and subjectivity. Why? Because seeing God in His glory would overwhelm a person's physical senses and forever relegate them to a sense attraction to God rather than a inward, love attraction.

2/b. Imagine a king who secretly fell in love with a common girl. How could the king ever capture the common girl's heart? If he approached her wearing the royal crown, the royal robe, and surrounded with the royal court he would rob the girl of her coming to love the king from her heart. His 'glory' would overwhelm the girl's natural senses, all she would see before her was the majestic king who demanded worship due to his position. The king decides to enter the city in a form that would not give away his 'kingness,' he would leave behind all his royal trappings and attempt to lure the girl with his love rather than his power. Likewise, God came to humankind in the form of a man, no, less than a man - a servant; in complete cognito, longing to enter through the HEART of His would-be Bride, rather than through her eyes.

Christian, take joy in the great paradox! Christ is not available to an exclusive group of intellectuals, he is available to babes and sages alike. The Paradox IS your faith - Emmanuel: God with us.

Atheists, take joy in the great paradox! You can forever justify your lack of belief using your keen intellect to rise above the foolishness of the cross. Feel no urgency to come to the Lord as your life slowly draws to a close with each passing hour. Know that nothing awaits you on the other side; mindless nature birthed you for no particular reason. Come to your last breath with the assurance that your rational deconstruction of Christ has served you well, feel confident that the torment of eternal separation from your Creator does not await you. Know that your existence was the result of the mindless natural order which somehow gave you the ability to think, and somehow made you believe that paradoxes even exist, causing you to be far too smart to fall for the Great Paradox. You are much too intelligent to love the Lord who died for you.

Cheers.