Why Does Jesus Use Paradox So Often?
Unpacking Our Resistance to the Upside Down Kingdom of God
A paradox is a self contradictory statement (or contradictory ideas held together) that reveal a deeper meaning or hidden truth. For example, “less is more” or “life is short but the day is long.”
Life is full of paradox and so is the Bible, especially Jesus’s teachings. Here are a few examples:
You must die to live
You must lose your self to find your self
The last will be first and the first will be last
You are strong when you are weak
God, who cannot die, died on the cross (in Jesus)
Jesus is the lamb that was slain and the lion of Judah who conquered the world
God is sovereign and humans have free will.
The key to accessing the deeper insight of a paradox, is to accept both sides of the paradox as true, even though they seem irreconcilable on the surface. The meaning of a paradox is not found in resolving the contradiction because the only way to logically resolve a paradox is to diminish one side of it. When we do that, we lose the paradox.
For example, it is a paradox to say Jesus is 100% God and 100% human. To resolve this, we could say he is 50% God and 50% human. That would be logical - it literally adds up. But that loses the paradox. Another example: the Bible says salvation is the result of grace alone AND the Bible says salvation is the result of faith and doing God’s will (Matt 7:21, 25:31-46, James 2:24-26, 1 John 2:3-4, to name a few). To resolve this we could pick one side or the other as the only truth. But again, we would lose the paradox. The key to unleashing the transformative power of paradox in our lives, spiritually speaking, is by holding both sides of the paradox as equally true.
The tension that is created when we hold these opposites together, opens us up to the mysterious work of the Spirit to renew our minds and hearts. The paradoxical teachings of Jesus are not intended to help us figure everything out. (Most of the answers to life’s BIG questions are above our pay grade.) They are intended to move us deeper into the mystery of life. To free us from our mental attachments to our limited, finite, human understanding (our old wineskins, in Jesus words) and open us up to new ways of thinking and experiencing reality.
Jesus uses paradox to open us up to the Kingdom of God - the Divine Reality here and now - which is beyond our capacity to logically analyze and comprehend. As Scripture reminds us, “God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts and God’s ways are higher than our ways.” The Divine Reality (what I call the kingdom of God) can only be accessed via modes that transcend our limited, finite, dualistic thinking. One such mode is paradox.
If this sounds confusing, it is. It’s not only confusing, it’s unsettling. This is why most of us prefer a faith rooted in logical doctrines over a faith that is grounded in the paradoxical tension of the kingdom of God.
Here is an excerpt from my book Get A Hold of Yourself that unpacks our tendency to resist Jesus’ invitation into paradox.
Many Christian denominations and sects have devised their own doctrinal particularities, with the goal (sometimes intentionally, sometimes unwittingly) of eliminating or diminishing the paradoxical nature of Christianity. They do this by overemphasizing one aspect of the message over its opposite. For example, some elevate Jesus’ divinity at the expense of his humanity. Others overemphasize God’s grace over God’s justice, or God’s sovereignty over the free will of humanity.
Our drive to resolve contradictions and force paradoxes to be rational stems from our need for things to make sense. We experience discomfort, anxiety, fear, and meaninglessness when they don’t. For instance, when we encounter contradictions in our faith, or between our faith and reality, we’re compelled to rationalize away the paradox. If we pray for the healing of a loved one, for example, and they aren’t healed, this doesn’t make sense if we believe God cares, prayer works, and Jesus meant it when he said, “I will do whatever you ask in my name.” When something like this happens, we do whatever we need to do, and believe whatever we need to believe, to make our world make sense again. We might conclude we didn’t pray with enough faith or that God had a good reason for allowing this to happen, that we can’t understand. Or perhaps the only way we can resolve this contradiction is to conclude the God we believed in doesn’t exist.
We strive to eliminate paradoxes because it’s easier to cling to a rationalized version of our faith, or reject our faith as irrational, than allow paradox to break apart our assumptions and beliefs about who God is and how God works in the world. Unfortunately, when we refuse to hold on to these contradictions, we negate the paradoxical nature of Christ’s message and miss out on its transformative power to reveal deeper hidden truths.
…The reason paradox was and is so important to Christianity is simple: it’s embedded in nearly every aspect of Jesus and his teachings. The early church recognized that this paradoxical tension was essential to the gospel message, because it flips the script of our theology in a powerful way. Instead of us attempting to grasp Christ and his message, paradox insists we allow Christ and his message to grasp us.