10 Sermon Illustrations on Paradox

The key to the mystery of strength in weakness is the Cross of Christ. We are not fatalistic. Life has a paradoxical doubleness to it.

Three varieties of weakness:

1. Weakness of being second fiddle. Servanthood.

2. Weakness of being creatures.

3. Weakness of sin and its effects. We do not have to accept the "dark side."

Strength comes from the attitude, "Thy will be done."

Living with Ambiguity

My thoughts are not your thoughts

and your ways are not my ways,

declares Yahweh.

For the heavens are as high above earth

as my ways are above your ways,

my thoughts above your thoughts.

We know only imperfectly... When I was a child, I used to

talk like a child, and see things as a child does, and think

like a child; but now that I have become an adult, I have

finished with childish ways. Now we see only reflections in

a mirror, mere riddles... Now I can know only imperfectly.

The marriage relationship is doubtless a great mystery, but

I am speaking of something deeper still - the marriage of

Christ and his Church.

So, then, where does that leave the wise? or the scholars?

or the skilful debaters of this world? God has shown that

this world's wisdom is foolishness!

How great are God's riches! How deep are his wisdom and

knowledge! Who can explain his decisions? Who can understand

his ways? As the scripture says,

'Who knows the mind of the Lord?

Who is able to give him advice?

Who has ever given him anything,

so that he had to pay it back?'

For all things were created by him, and all things exist

through him and for him. To God be the glory for ever! Amen.

(Isaiah 55:8,9, JB; 1 Corinthians 13:11, JB; Ephesians 5:32,

JBP; 1 Corinthians 1:20, GNB, Romans 11:33-36, GNB)

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God is mystery. We can never encompass him in thoughts or

words. When we talk about God we are trying to describe the

divine from the point of view of the human, the eternal from

the standpoint of the temporal, the infinite in finite

terms, the absolute from the severely limited perspective of

the relative.

Rudolf Otto describes the sacred as 'mysterium tremendum et

fascinans', the awe-inspiring mystery which fascinates us.

We are tempted to hide from the fearful majesty of God, but

also to gaze in wonder at his loveliness.

We encounter mystery in the descriptions of the ways of God

in the Bible, in the sacraments, liturgies and rites of the

church, in nature, and in the events of history. Mystery

pervades the whole of reality. Indeed true knowledge and

freedom are not possible without an experience of mystery.

In the languages of literature, art, music, we touch the hem

of God's garment and feel a little tingle of power, but God

will always remain incomprehensible.

Mystery also surrounds the human creatures who are both made

in the image of a mysterious God and who have, by their

sinning, marred that image. Pascal says this doctrine of the

fall offends us, but yet, without this mystery, the most

incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to

ourselves.

So Christianity, says Kierkegaard, is 'precisely the

paradoxical'. (Paradox - from the Greek para and doxa,

'against opinion'). The idea of mystery invites us to think

more deeply, not to abandon thinking; to reject the

superficial, and the simplistic.

Prejudice is, in essence, idolatry: the worship of my - or

my group's - ideas, even ideas of God. If I know all the

answers I would be God, and 'playing God' is the essence

of idolatry. One of my greatest dangers is to relax my

vigilance against the possibility of prejudice in my own

life, or to suffer from the delusion that I can ever be

really free from it. We human beings are more rationalizing

than rational. Thomas Merton said somewhere 'No one is so

wrong as the one who knows all the answers'. Alfred North

Whitehead says 'Religions commit suicide when they find

their inspiration in their dogmas.' 'If you understand

everything, you must be misinformed', runs a Japanese

proverb. People who are always right are always wrong. The

dilemma is summed up by W B Yeats - 'While the best lack

conviction, the worst are full of certainty and passionate

intensity.'

The key lies in distinguishing between faithless doubt and

creative doubt. Faithless doubt, as Kahlil Gibran put it,

'is a pain too lonely to realize that faith is his twin

brother'. Or it is a cop-out to save us being committed to

anything. Its accomplice, 'neutrality' is also evil: the

apathy of 'good' persons results in the triumph of evil.

The worst evils in the world are not committed by evil

people, but by good people who do not know they are not

doing good. The authentic Christian is willing to listen,

as well as to save.

Creative doubt, on the other hand, is 'believing with all

your heart that your belief is true, so that it will work

for you; but then facing the possibility that it is really

false, so that you can accept the consequences of the

belief.' (John Reseck).

So faith is not about certainty (certainty makes faith

invalid and unnecessary). Its core is the mystery - and the

reality - of the Eternal coming into time: 'Our God

contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man' (Wesley).

The essence of Christianity is not dogmatic systems of

belief, but being apprehended by Christ. True faith holds

on to Christ, and for all else is uncommitted. It is about

a relationship with Christ (and all meaningful relationships

involve risk). The true God does not give us an immutable

belief-system, but himself. He became one of us to 'make

his light shine in our hearts, to bring us the knowledge of

God's glory shining in the face of Christ' (2 Corinthians

4:6). Alleluia!

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The essential difference between orthodox Christianity and

the various heretical systems is that orthodoxy is rooted in

paradox. Heretics, as Irenaeus saw, reject paradox in favour

of a false clarity and precision. But true faith can only

grow and mature if it includes the elements of paradox and

creative doubt. Hence the insistence of orthodoxy that God

cannot be known by the mind, but is known in the obscurity

of faith, in the way of ignorance, in the darkness. Such

doubt is not the enemy of faith but an essential element

within it. For faith in God does not bring the false peace

of answered questions and resolved paradoxes. Rather, it can

be seen as a process of 'unceasing interrogation'.

Kenneth Leach, True God

'Stage 5' faith involves going beyond explicit ideological

systems and clear boundaries of identity; accepting that

truth is multidimensional and organically independent than

most theories or accounts of truth can grasp; symbols,

stories, doctrines and liturgies are inevitably partial,

limited to a particular experience of God and incomplete.

This position [ie. that an appreciation of mystery and

ambiguity is the essence of maturity] implies no lack of

commitment to one's own truth tradition. Nor does it mean a

wishy-washy neutrality or mere fascination with the exotic

features of alien cultures... Rather, each genuine

perspective will augment and correct aspects of the other,

in a mutual movement toward the real and the true.

James Fowler, Stages

of Faith

I believe, because it is absurd;... it is certain, because

it is impossible.

Tertullian

Nicolas of Cusa expressed what the human heart had always

surmised: all opposites coincide in God. This insight has

weighty implications for any attempt to speak about divine

realities. The closer we come to saying something

worthwhile, the more likely that paradox will be the only

way to express it. 'When I am weak, then I am strong' (2

Corinthians 12:10). 'In losing one's life one will find it'

(Matthew 10:39). 'In spite of that, we call this Friday

good' (T.S.Eliot, Four Quartets).

David Steindl-Rast,

Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer

Most of us find it very easy to hurl an epithet or fashion a

label. We like to smooth out wrinkles, sand down rough

edges, simplify the mysteries that are threatening precisely

because they defy categorization. There is certainly enough

confusion in our lives, we reason. Shouldn't it facilitate

our day to day living if we are clear on what is good or

bad, who is left or right, what is profound or drivel? The

fact is that those who have attempted to nail down or write

off mystery end up 'undone' by the very pride which led them

to play God in the first place... the Pharisees did not rest

until they had nailed an upstart dissenter to a tree.

Donald J. Foran,

Living with Ambiguity

If you want to attempt to travel through life without

trouble, believe everything (be gullible) or believe nothing

(be cynical), and don't be committed to anything (be

'neutral').

Source Unknown

Whilst we might deplore [any] lack of openness to any new

thing God is doing, nevertheless this is the psychology of

the human creatures God has made. Those whose thinking is

rooted in 'simplicity this side of complexity' must not be

too harsh with others who enjoy 'complexity the other side

of simplicity'. Ideally, we are all moving towards

'simplicity the other side of complexity', but we must be

patient with one another on the way there.

Rowland Croucher, Recent

Trends Among Evangelicals

There's a wideness in God's mercy,

Like the wideness of the sea:

There's a kindness in his justice,

Which is more than liberty.

For the love of God is broader

Than the measures of man's mind:

And the heart of the Eternal

Is most wonderfully kind.

But we make his love too narrow

By false limits of our own;

And we magnify his strictness

With a zeal he will not own.

F. W. Faber

The ultimate gift of conscious life is a sense of the

mystery that encompasses it.

Lewis Mumford

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.

It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of

true art and true science.

Albert Einstein

If they [the ministers of the church] had no doubts, they

would hardly be very good Christians, because the

intellectual life is as ambiguous as the moral life... The

element of doubt is an element of faith itself... What the

church should do is to accept someone who says that the

faith for which the church stands is a matter of one's

ultimate concern... Dogma should not be abolished but

interpreted in such a way that it is no longer a suppressive

power which produces dishonesty or flight.

Paul Tillich, A History

of Christian Thought

At ebb tide I wrote

A line upon the sand

And gave it all my heart

And all my soul.

At flood tide I returned

To read what I had inscribed

And found my ignorance upon the

shore

Kahlil Gibran

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Lord God, the God of security and the enemy of security too;

I come to you, confused, needing the reassurance of your

gracious acceptance; broken, needing your healing - or else

the promise of your presence; thirsting for reality, to the

Fountain of life; desolate, yearning for a loving touch as

from a Parent.

Help me to love you above everything else; to trust your

goodness when I do not understand your ways; to affirm your

constancy in spite of my fickleness; my times are in your

hands.

Eternal God, the light of the minds that know you, the joy

of the hearts that love you, and the strength of the wills

that serve you; grant that I may know you, that I may

truly love you, and so to love you that I may fully serve

you, whom to serve is perfect freedom, in Jesus Christ our

Lord. Amen. (St. Augustine of Hippo)

In this day, may my thoughts, words and deeds betray a

little more of your image in me, less of the influence of

the world, the flesh and the devil, so that all I meet I

shall treat as Christ and be as Christ to them.

Amen.

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A Benediction

Knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge, [may]

you be filled with the utter fullness of God. (Ephesians

3:19, JB)

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St. Augustine of Hippo, adapted from a prayer in Tony Castle

(comp.), The Hodder Book of Christian Prayers, Hodder and

Stoughton, 1986, p.18

Rowland Croucher, Recent Trends Among Evangelicals,

Albatross, 1986, p.40

Albert Einstein, 'The World As I See It', quoted in Melvin

Konner, The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the

Human Spirit, Heinemann, 1982, p.431

F.W. Faber, 'There's a wideness in God's mercy', The Baptist

Hymn Book, London: Psalms and Hymns Trust, 1964, no. 419

Donald J. Foran, Living With Ambiguity: Discerning God in a

Complex Society, Alba House, 1971, p. xvi

James Fowler, Stages of Faith, Dove, 1981, pp. 186-7

Kahlil Gibran, quoted in James L. Christian, Philosophy: An

Introduction to the Art of Wondering, Hold Rinehart, 1981,

p.203

Kenneth Leech, True God: An exploration in spiritual

theology, Sheldon Publishers, 1987, p. 25

Lewis Mumford, 'Orientation to Life', The Conduct of Life,

1951, quoted in The International Thesaurus of Quotations,

comp. R.T.Tripp, Harper & Row, 1970, p.105

Blaise Pascal, Pensees, Brunschwig ed., # 434.

John Reseck, quoted in James L. Christian, Philosophy: An

Introduction to the Art of Wondering, Hold Rinehart, 1981,

p. 195

David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer,

Paulist, 1984, p.210

Tertullian, quoted in Stanley Romaine Hopper, 'Paradox' in

Arthur Cohen and Marvin Halverson, (eds.), A Handbook of

Christian Theology, Abingdon, 1958, p.261.

Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, SCM, 1968,

p.xvi.

Rowland Croucher

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In a company of literary gentle-men, Daniel Webster was asked if he could comprehend how Jesus Christ could be both God and man. "No, sir," he replied, and added, "I should be ashamed to acknowledge Him as my Savior if I could comprehend Him. If I could comprehend Him, He could be no greater than myself. Such is my sense of sin, and consciousness of my inability to save myself, that I feel I need a superhuman Savior, one so great and glorious that I cannot comprehend Him."

G.K. Chesterton took the word prolific to a level that, as a writer, simply makes me feel tired. In his lifetime, Chesterton authored over 100 books and contributed to 200 others. He penned hundreds of poems, five plays, five novels, and some 200 short stories, including the popular Father Brown detective series. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.'s Weekly.

As one can easily imagine after such an inventory, G.K. Chesterton was always writing — wherever he found himself, and with whatever he could find to write on. So in the tearoom he scribbled on napkins. On the train, in front of a bank teller, or in the middle of a lecture he was known to jot hurriedly in a notebook, or perhaps on the cuff of his sleeve.

Chesterton's eccentric approach to writing, in fact, matched his eccentric approach to life in general. His public image was one out of a Shakespearean comedy. If he were not recognized in the streets of London by the flowing black cape and the wide brimmed top hat he always wore, he was given away instantly by the clamoring of the swordstick he always carried — for nothing more than the romantic notion that he might one day find himself caught up in some adventure where defending himself might become necessary.

He rarely knew, from hour to hour, where he was or where he was supposed to be, what appointment he was to be keeping, or lecture he was to be giving. The story is often told of the time he telegraphed his wife with the note, “Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?” His faithful wife, Frances, wired back, “Home”, knowing it would be most promising for all involved if she could physically point him in the right direction. Chesterton seemed to live out one of his own clever paradoxes: “One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.”

In fact, paradox, in more ways than one, is an ample word for G.K. Chesterton. It was one of his favorite things to point out, stir up, and call to mind. He described paradox as “truth standing on its head to gain attention,” and often evoked the jestering truisms throughout his dialog. With declarations bizarre enough to escape defensive mindsets, but with a substance that could blow holes in fortresses of skepticism, G.K. Chesterton, as absentminded as he may have appeared to be, challenged the world to think. With humility, wonder, and genius, Chesterton taught us, in the words of Father Brown, that often it isn't that we can't see the solution; it's that we can't see the problem.

In his disarming manner, such that even his opponents regarded him with affection, Chesterton exposed the inconsistencies of the modern mindset, the unfounded and unnoticed dogmatism of the unbeliever, and the misguided guidance of the cults of comfort and progress. He marveled that religious liberty now meant that we were no longer allowed to mention the subject, and that “there are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.” To the convicted agnostic he said, “We don't know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.” To the social Darwinist he said, “It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”

And to all who would listen, Chesterton pled the case for Christ: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

To everyone his life affected, and continues to affect, G.K. Chesterton, with and without words, made a boisterous point about delighting in life to the fullest; life that is fullest, first and foremost, because there is someone to thank. He writes:

You say grace before meals.

All right.

But I say grace before the play and the opera,

And grace before the concert and the pantomime,

And grace before I open a book,

And grace before sketching, painting,

swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;

And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

G.K. Chesterton was a man alive with the gusto of resurrection, the marvel of truth, and the thankful foresight of the coming King among us.

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Copyright © 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but less solutions; more medicine, but less wellness.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We have higher incomes, but lower morals; we've become long on quantity, but short on quality. These are the times of tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships.

These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes.

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Another version by Rev. Gillmartin (formerly #4896):

Have we not built taller buildings, but developed shallower views; built wider roads, only to gain shorter tempers; purchased more, but possess little; spent more, only to enjoy it less.

We’ve bigger houses, smaller families, and more conveniences, but less time to enjoy them; acquired degrees, with less wisdom; procured more knowledge, but abandoned commonsense; groomed many experts, yet we’ve more problems; developed better pharmaceuticals, resulting in manifold health-phobias.

We’ve increased our possessions, but lowered values. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, but not life to years. We love too little and hate too much.

We've been to the moon, but not to our neighbors.

We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we clean the air, but pollute the soul; we've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice; we’ve higher incomes, but lower morals; we're long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are times of tall men, with short character; Mt. Everest profits, and Dead Sea relations.

We now have two parent incomes, giving us single parent children; elegant houses, but pathetic homes.

This is a time when man has much in his catalogue, but nothing in his distribution center.

Comments: A paradox is a contradiction which retains its truthfulness. Relativism has brought the world to the brink of global government yet with an "emperor has no clothes" mentality.

We go ahead and buy what looks or sounds good even though we suspect in advance it’s a facade. We receive God’s abundant blessings, yet discover we are poor managers of them; we credit ourselves for the gain, then receive God’s chastisement doing so.

Source/Attribution: © Sermon-Illustrations-Each-Week 1999

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