Thursday, June 21, 2007

Paradoxes In Christianity

Paradoxes shape the face of Christianity. A few examples:
We can't do anything to merit salvation, but if we do nothing we won't be saved. 
We have not because we ask not, but once we get, God wants us to let it go. 
Healing was provided in the the finished work of Christ, but we still get old and die. 
The person who punches us in the nose for telling him about Jesus isn't our enemy. 
There are signs of the time we should be able to read, yet no one knows, nor can they know, the day and hour of his return.
Who knows why God governs things this way? I do know it does keep us humble, it does call for us to submit. It requires us to live by faith.

Faith always has been, and will always be the prime issue in our existence. Life is for coming to faith. Since God sees faith as such a precious commodity, it behooves us to cherish it too. In light of that, it seems I'm going to have to find a way to accept the counterintuitive and the non-mutually exclusive. I'm going to have to learn to live in faith, with paradox.