Post by Josh on May 23, 2011 20:53:17 GMT -8
The following is based on my notes for my Intro to Embracing Christian Paradoxes lesson. You can find the audio of the original teaching here: Embracing Christian Paradoxes Forgive the unpolished format, but please respond with questions or flaws you notice 
In Ecclesiastes 7:18, Solomon (or whoever the author was), makes this statement:
It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.a
Taking Ecclesiastes as a whole, the author may have made some dubious or incomplete observations about life, but I think there is a nugget here in 7:18. Let’s pull this wisdom out of its immediate context of righteousness/ wickedness (in the preceding verses) and see if it bears up as a good maxim.
Solomon was talking about two extremes. Let’s use another set of what appear at least at first to be opposites: firmness and tenderness.
Is it good for a parent to be both firm and tender? Of course.
What would happen if a parent was only one or the other/ if one went to extremes? The result would be a child who has difficulty loving or setting healthy boundaries.
Are these two qualities (firmness and tenderness) really contradictory? No- they can be experienced alternately or even simultaneously.
Solomon's wisdom, as translated above, would seem to be "don't go to extremes on either tenderness or firmness". But is that really the best solution?
And if we think about it, as Christians, are we really to avoid all extremes?
Did Jesus ever go to extremes or exhort us to take an extreme view on anything? Well, "extreme" may be partly in the eye of the beholder, but, yeah, I'd say some of the things Jesus did, said, and encouraged could be classified as extreme- you know, things like driving out the moneychangers instead of reasoning with them, or over and over again using hyperbole to make extreme points, such as in Luke 14:26 (hating your parents), Matthew 5:29-30 (the lengths to which we should go to avoid sin), or Luke 9:62 (not looking back).
Jesus feared God (duh) and yet he seems to not have avoided all extremes.
Furthermore, aren't there some things which we can never take too far? Things like the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace....etc.), which, against such things, Paul says, there is no law (presumably no limit?)
Perhaps, though, one could make the argument (as C.S. Lewis does in many places) that individual virtues taken to extremes and in opposition to the other virtues can lead us astray. And this is, of course, an important warning.
Maybe love is the only safe extreme? That might be true of genuine agape love, but our ability to corrupt and subtly redefine love has no limit, so an extreme and even subtly corrupted love could be quite a dangerous thing after all.
Hold that thought and let's shift gears slightly:
One has only to read the Bible or try living the life of a Christian or attend a church for a brief time to discover that our faith is full of apparently extreme contradictions. And wherever there is an apparent contradiction, there are two extremists ready to go to extremes.
I’ve been compiling a list of apparent contradictions in our faith. I call them Paradoxes of our Faith because I don’t think ultimately they are real contradictions.
Look over the list. Are there any tensions here that you have ever struggled to understand? In our own "truth quest" have you ever come up with some satisfying solutions to the tension between some of these paradoxical concepts.
Has your solution ever been preferring one extreme over the other? How often has it been making a compromise between the two extremes?
I’m going to suggest it is, or shouldn't be at least, neither.
Perhaps there’s another way of looking at this, and it is suggested by the alternate reading of Eccelsiastes 7:18, which I will now unveil (and you may have noticed in your NIV footnotes)
It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will follow them both.
There is no one I know from Church history who seems to have understood or appreciated the paradoxes of our faith than G.K. Chesterton. I think he would have wholeheartedly preffered this reading of Ecclesiastes 7:18, and I'm going to tell you why.
First, however, let’s get a clearer definition of the word “paradox”:
Paradox is normally defined as an apparent contradiction, but it might be better construed as an emphasis on two truths at the same time – a way of combining them without distorting or diluting them. - Karl Schmude
Chesterton said it this way:
"Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites by keeping them both and keeping them both furious."- G.K. Chesterton
You see, the answer to the tension of paradoxical concepts in our faith isn't to pit one pole against the other or make some kind of lukewarm compromise between the two, but to embrace the fullest of both sides of the paradox.
Chesterton pointed out that most heresies in the history of the church come from espousing one opposite at the expense of the other. Uncomfortable with paradox, Christians tend to tilt in one direction or the other, usually with disastrous consequences.
Go through a few apparent contradictions on the list and see what might happen if only one extreme is espoused.
Karl Schmude again:
Read the theologians of the first few centuries as they try to fathom Jesus, the center of our faith, who was somehow fully God and fully man. Read the theologians of the Reformation as they discover the majestic implications of God's sovereignty, then strive to keep their followers from settling into a resigned fatalism. Read the theologians of today as they debate the intricacies of written revelation: a Bible that expresses God's words to us that is nonetheless
authored by individuals of widely varying intelligence, personality, and writing style.
The first shall be last; find your life by losing it; work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you; he who stoops lowest climbs highest; where sin abounds grace abounds more—all these profound principles of life appear in the New Testament and none easily reduces to logical consistency.
In regard to Christian paradoxes, we can agree with 19th Century British Pastor Charles Simeon, who said,
"Truth is not in the middle, and not in one extreme, but in both extremes."
Lastly, one disclaimer that is important to point out: there are such things are real contradictions that can be demonstrated logically without a doubt. For instance, the statements "there is One God" and "there are three Gods" is a flat-out contradiction, not a paradox. The statement "killing is always wrong" and "killing is not always wrong" is a contradiction if "wrong" is used in the same sense in both statements (and both statements assume the same subject and object). Embracing paradoxes doesn't mean issuing a license to accept anything contradictory.
So, I hope to follow up this introductory lesson with some future lesson on some of the paradoxes of most interest to our generation. I polled the church on their top items of interest, but if you're following along on the forums, chime in with your own Christian paradoxes to suggest or let me know which ones you're interested in discussing further.
In Ecclesiastes 7:18, Solomon (or whoever the author was), makes this statement:
It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.a
Taking Ecclesiastes as a whole, the author may have made some dubious or incomplete observations about life, but I think there is a nugget here in 7:18. Let’s pull this wisdom out of its immediate context of righteousness/ wickedness (in the preceding verses) and see if it bears up as a good maxim.
Solomon was talking about two extremes. Let’s use another set of what appear at least at first to be opposites: firmness and tenderness.
Is it good for a parent to be both firm and tender? Of course.
What would happen if a parent was only one or the other/ if one went to extremes? The result would be a child who has difficulty loving or setting healthy boundaries.
Are these two qualities (firmness and tenderness) really contradictory? No- they can be experienced alternately or even simultaneously.
Solomon's wisdom, as translated above, would seem to be "don't go to extremes on either tenderness or firmness". But is that really the best solution?
And if we think about it, as Christians, are we really to avoid all extremes?
Did Jesus ever go to extremes or exhort us to take an extreme view on anything? Well, "extreme" may be partly in the eye of the beholder, but, yeah, I'd say some of the things Jesus did, said, and encouraged could be classified as extreme- you know, things like driving out the moneychangers instead of reasoning with them, or over and over again using hyperbole to make extreme points, such as in Luke 14:26 (hating your parents), Matthew 5:29-30 (the lengths to which we should go to avoid sin), or Luke 9:62 (not looking back).
Jesus feared God (duh) and yet he seems to not have avoided all extremes.
Furthermore, aren't there some things which we can never take too far? Things like the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace....etc.), which, against such things, Paul says, there is no law (presumably no limit?)
Perhaps, though, one could make the argument (as C.S. Lewis does in many places) that individual virtues taken to extremes and in opposition to the other virtues can lead us astray. And this is, of course, an important warning.
Maybe love is the only safe extreme? That might be true of genuine agape love, but our ability to corrupt and subtly redefine love has no limit, so an extreme and even subtly corrupted love could be quite a dangerous thing after all.
Hold that thought and let's shift gears slightly:
One has only to read the Bible or try living the life of a Christian or attend a church for a brief time to discover that our faith is full of apparently extreme contradictions. And wherever there is an apparent contradiction, there are two extremists ready to go to extremes.
I’ve been compiling a list of apparent contradictions in our faith. I call them Paradoxes of our Faith because I don’t think ultimately they are real contradictions.
Look over the list. Are there any tensions here that you have ever struggled to understand? In our own "truth quest" have you ever come up with some satisfying solutions to the tension between some of these paradoxical concepts.
Has your solution ever been preferring one extreme over the other? How often has it been making a compromise between the two extremes?
I’m going to suggest it is, or shouldn't be at least, neither.
Perhaps there’s another way of looking at this, and it is suggested by the alternate reading of Eccelsiastes 7:18, which I will now unveil (and you may have noticed in your NIV footnotes)
It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will follow them both.
There is no one I know from Church history who seems to have understood or appreciated the paradoxes of our faith than G.K. Chesterton. I think he would have wholeheartedly preffered this reading of Ecclesiastes 7:18, and I'm going to tell you why.
First, however, let’s get a clearer definition of the word “paradox”:
Paradox is normally defined as an apparent contradiction, but it might be better construed as an emphasis on two truths at the same time – a way of combining them without distorting or diluting them. - Karl Schmude
Chesterton said it this way:
"Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites by keeping them both and keeping them both furious."- G.K. Chesterton
You see, the answer to the tension of paradoxical concepts in our faith isn't to pit one pole against the other or make some kind of lukewarm compromise between the two, but to embrace the fullest of both sides of the paradox.
Chesterton pointed out that most heresies in the history of the church come from espousing one opposite at the expense of the other. Uncomfortable with paradox, Christians tend to tilt in one direction or the other, usually with disastrous consequences.
Go through a few apparent contradictions on the list and see what might happen if only one extreme is espoused.
Karl Schmude again:
Read the theologians of the first few centuries as they try to fathom Jesus, the center of our faith, who was somehow fully God and fully man. Read the theologians of the Reformation as they discover the majestic implications of God's sovereignty, then strive to keep their followers from settling into a resigned fatalism. Read the theologians of today as they debate the intricacies of written revelation: a Bible that expresses God's words to us that is nonetheless
authored by individuals of widely varying intelligence, personality, and writing style.
The first shall be last; find your life by losing it; work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you; he who stoops lowest climbs highest; where sin abounds grace abounds more—all these profound principles of life appear in the New Testament and none easily reduces to logical consistency.
In regard to Christian paradoxes, we can agree with 19th Century British Pastor Charles Simeon, who said,
"Truth is not in the middle, and not in one extreme, but in both extremes."
Lastly, one disclaimer that is important to point out: there are such things are real contradictions that can be demonstrated logically without a doubt. For instance, the statements "there is One God" and "there are three Gods" is a flat-out contradiction, not a paradox. The statement "killing is always wrong" and "killing is not always wrong" is a contradiction if "wrong" is used in the same sense in both statements (and both statements assume the same subject and object). Embracing paradoxes doesn't mean issuing a license to accept anything contradictory.
So, I hope to follow up this introductory lesson with some future lesson on some of the paradoxes of most interest to our generation. I polled the church on their top items of interest, but if you're following along on the forums, chime in with your own Christian paradoxes to suggest or let me know which ones you're interested in discussing further.
