Surprised By ParadoxSample

The Humility of Paradox

Kendra Adachi is the host of the popular podcast, “The Lazy Genius.” She promises her listeners tricks for helping them to be “genius about the things that matter, lazy about the things that don’t.” In each weekly episode, Kendra offers a shortcut for household tasks like meal planning, grocery shopping, and monthly budgeting.

As “The Lazy Genius” illustrates, sometimes things can be made easier. But sometimes they can’t—especially in the life of faith. The apostle Paul reminds us that there is a “depth” to the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. In Psalm 131, the psalmist, encountering that “depth,” surrendered to it as a young child. “I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”

Paradox is one way to talk about the more complicated aspects of faith, and it requires us to affirm truths that seem self-contradictory. How, for example, can Jesus be both God and man? To affirm paradox is to necessarily assume a certain kind of childlike posture. It’s to admit that mystery is inherent to the nature of God. 

As soon as we think we have God figured out, we will have ceased to worship him as he is. God, in his very being, is inscrutable and unsearchable. We do not approach God with the powers of logic, and should we try, we’re sure to stumble over the rock that is the crucified Christ. 

Mystery is inherent to the nature of the gospel, whose wisdom confounds more than assists. God’s project of salvation, in sending a suffering Servant to wash the feet of the world in his very blood, is foolishness to the world. Even faith—biblical faith—leaves us with a great deal of partial understanding. As the apostle Paul has written, faith is like seeing through a glass darkly. Just because we walk by faith doesn’t mean the room is always flooded with light.

On Mount Horeb, Moses discovered paradox in a bush that burned and was not consumed. “I will turn aside and see this great sight,” Moses said. And as he discovered that day, life-changing encounters with God can begin with something as unremarkable as this: the unheroic decision to turn aside and pay paradox a little bit of attention.

Adapted from Surprised by Paradox by Jen Pollock Michel.