The paradise paradox paradigm

Now try saying that several times fast. I admit the paradise bit wasn't strictly necessary - I just got carried away. I'd like to have included 'paradiddle' but it didn't seem to fit somehow.

Paradox is the living heart of the Christian faith

Paradox for me is the living heart of the Christian faith. Rather than being the static, systematic set of set-in-stone doctrines and beliefs beloved of fundamentalists, Christianity as presented by Christ and the Bible is more like an infinitely-complex, ever-changing kaleidoscope centred around a set of fundamental, paradoxical truths. Because they are paradoxical, they can never fully be pinned down or put in a box; they are always throwing out fresh insights and ideas.

The very nature of God in Christianity is a paradox - God is a trinity, one being yet three persons. If you can explain this you're either a genius or mistaken, yet the Trinity is an idea which gives rise to incredible riches of thought and understanding (I'll try and tackle some of these another time perhaps). And God is infinite and transcendent yet also immanent (close, personal, present within/through creation). He is just and righteous yet loving and merciful. He is utterly holy yet approachable.

Then we have Jesus who is simultaneously fully human and yet fully divine (mirroring to an extent the Bible which is understood to be 'God-breathed' while being fully humanly-authored). We have the mystery of the incarnation, when the Lord of all the universe and time became a tiny clump of cells in a human mother - and a peasant girl at that, not some great Queen. And then we have the Lord and source of all life submitting to death, the sinless punished for the sinful in God's paradoxical act of ultimate mercy, justice and love so that his death becomes the source of life for all.

Jesus' teaching is saturated with paradox - the first shall be last, lose your life to gain it, give to receive, love your enemies... His actions were paradoxical too, confounding all the expectations of what a Messiah should look like and how he should behave. He touched the untouchable and welcomed the outcast while antagonising and criticising the powerful and 'righteous'. He did impossible things - turning water into wine, walking on water, raising the dead - not as a 'conjurer of cheap tricks' but because (among other reasons) he is the Lord of the impossible and the paradoxical.

God seems to enjoy working in a topsy-turvy, upside-down, skew-whiff way

Paul comments that God's foolishness is greater than man's wisdom, and that God chooses the weak and foolish things of the world to shame the strong and wise. God just does seem to enjoy working in a topsy-turvy, upside-down, skew-whiff, expectation-confounding and ultimately paradoxical way. And I for one am very glad about it.

Because of this, we can't second-guess God. We can't ever fully understand him. We can't say that because he did or said such-and-such once, he will do so again. We can't box him or predict him. I'd like to finish with a slightly tongue-in-cheek song I wrote a few years ago to the tune of 'Our God is an awesome God' by Rich Mullins:

Our God is a paradox
He heals, yet sends the pox
Can't put him in a box
Our God is a paradox

Our God is a paradox
He comforts and he shocks
His ways aren't orthodox
Our God is a paradox