“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.“
1 Corinthians 13:12, NRSV-CI
Early Encounters
Like a slow-burning romance or a lifelong friendship, paradox still lingers as my constant companion, both warming and haunting my mind and soul.
At the tender age of ten, I first quaffed its smoldering embers, which permeated like incense at a Catholic mass, as the smoke poured from the pages of Madeleine L’Engle’s fantasy novel, A Wrinkle in Time. The book drew me into paradox, first mathematically through the concept of a tesseract (a space-wrinkling four-dimensional cube) and then didactically through Meg’s character arc, exemplified in the Scripture passage that L’Engle prominently quotes:
“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”
1 Corinthians 1:27, KJV
What was a boy to do other than what boys are supposed to do – be filled with awe and wonder and the sense that this work of fantasy was pointing me to something more real and true than what the real world could offer.
Fast forward to college and the moment when I found myself sitting in my mathematics advisor’s office staring up at a stick model hanging from the ceiling. It was two nested cubes, a smaller one inside a larger one, each attached to the other by eight taut strings joining the cubes at corresponding vertices. It was a model of a tesseract, or as my advisor called it, a hypercube.
We’ve all seen a three-dimensional cube represented in two dimensions by drawing squares and joining their corners (see Figure 1). In similar fashion, a tesseract (or four-dimensional “cube”) can be represented in three dimensions with that hanging model.
When you see a two-dimensional rendering of a three-dimensional cube, your mind correctly interprets that all the angles are meant to be right angles, all the edges are meant to be the same length, and all the faces are meant to be identical squares, even though the drawing on paper has angles, edges, and faces that are different.
Figure 1: Two-dimensional renderings of 2-D, 3-D, and 4-D ‘square’ objects
Taking that observation to the next level, if you can convince yourself that the tesseract model is a three-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional object, and depicts eight identically-sized cubes joined four at a time at their corners where they form right angles with each other, then congratulations, you have just learned to see in four dimensions!
While sitting there in that office, straining to see into the fourth dimension, I realized that L’Engle’s tesseract, which offered me a first, blurry glimpse at paradox as if in a dim mirror, was inviting me to step through the looking glass.
What I experienced when I did was the dream-like sensation of landing on unrecognizable terrain and yet knowing, somehow, that I had returned home.
Alien Adventures
Exploring this alien-but-familiar landscape, I bumped into a fellow explorer who arrived long before I did, indeed long enough to write a book about it. The book was called Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, and the explorer was Douglas Hofstadter.
The book whimsically styles itself as “a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll,” and the reader soon discovers themselves to be Alice. It is a wonderland of strange loops, where you begin to see how paradox and recursion make complex things simple and simple things intricate. And the most wonderful thing of all is Kurt Gödel’s proof that consistent systems of logic necessarily contain truths that cannot be proven. But more on that here.
Still developing my sea legs in this intellectual adventure, I tacked into the prevailing winds in search of forgotten treasures at the confluence of artificial intelligence, philosophy, quantum physics, and chaos theory. I ached to find something original to say about the nature of human consciousness, but found mostly murky waters.
The best I could muster was to speculate that free will and determinism could be resolved despite their contradictory natures, and that the resolution had something to do with strange loops. While I formalized these thoughts and submitted them as my undergraduate honors project, I never actually resolved the paradox.
What I appreciate now is that failing to resolve the contradiction saved me from potential heresy. You see, attempts to resolve a paradox almost always result in diluting the meaning, breaking the rules, or denying the truth.
Star Trek fans will appreciate that, as with Captain Kirk’s solution to the Kobayashi Maru test, cheating paradox doesn’t resolve it, it merely leaves the higher lesson unlearned. Perhaps Mr. Spock was exhibiting Gödel-like logic in his understanding that, just as some truths are unprovable, some scenarios are unwinnable, and it is only due to our willingness to embrace the paradox that the meaning is revealed.
Fascinating.
Search for Meaning
Along the way, law school stunted my intellectual growth. Eventually, I emerged from the fog of ‘lawfare’ and relearned how to think like a human being. One habit that came back particularly slowly was reading for pleasure, much less for enlightenment. I discovered with time that the habit of reading quality books is a virtuous circle that attunes your radar to finding more quality books.
It was in a particularly attuned state when I found myself directed to Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning (which should be on everyone’s list to read before they die, and preferably much sooner than that). Frankl retold his experiences in concentration camps during the Holocaust, offering a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the importance of finding purpose in life.
He observed with equal parts hope and detachment that the antidote for suffering involves finding meaning, like a sacrifice. Frankl clearly articulated the benefits of pursuing purpose instead of success or happiness.
“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Not contented with just talking the talk, Frankl walked the walk by developing a school of psychotherapy known as logotherapy that embraces paradox as technique. For example, anxiety may be treated anxiety by repeatedly rehearsing the anxiety-triggering thoughts or behaviors, often employing exaggeration and humor in the process.
A Fledgling Philosophy
My encounter with Frankl spurred me to revisit my past studies of the Danish philosopher and theologian, Søren Kierkegaard, and specifically his paradox of faith. Kierkegaard described faith as a two-step movement that begins by recognizing through devotion to God that we are nothing, thus allowing us to renounce the finite world and our finite selves.
In self-subordination and renouncing of the finite, we gain an eternal consciousness and a sense of the universal. In this state, we are able to take the second step, courageously following God’s will in a way that elevates individual action above the universal.
Abraham of the Book of Genesis was who Kierkegaard identified as the archetypal ‘Knight of Faith.’ Abraham’s obedience to God was a paradoxical act of faith in which he both trusted in God’s promise to make him the father of many nations while being willing to carry out God’s command to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
As we know, God stayed Abraham’s hand at the last moment, both saving Isaac and providing an alternative sacrifice (which in turn foreshadowed when God would do Himself what He stopped Abraham from doing – by providing His only begotten Son as the sacrificial lamb).
The paradox of faith is that, without any expectation of personal gain, resigning everything in complete surrender to God ultimately results in receiving everything back in return.
With the shock of a season’s first snow (that is to say, fully expected yet still startling), I realized that a fledgling life philosophy had hatched. And for me it seemed to lend new color to all life’s drabness.
I saw it even in my professional life working with inventors, which often elucidated how alike were the courage to challenge convention and the willingness to step into the paradox. Innovation involves overcoming the fear of failure and having faith that a solution exists even when nothing seems to be working.
This philosophical view taking root in me was not urging that paradox be avoided, but instead that it be sought out; and sought out not to resolve, but to embrace; and to embrace as if salvation itself depended on finding peace with the paradox.
The Paradox Project
Let us pause for a moment to consider what is meant by paradox. The word ‘paradox’ derives from the ancient Greek words ‘para’ (meaning ‘beyond’ or ‘contrary to’) and ‘doxa’ (meaning ‘thinking’ or ‘expectation’), and thus it refers to something that is beyond our ability to understand by reason or logic and that is contrary to expectations.
If you pay attention, you will encounter many things in everyday life that seem contrary to the expectations of logic, only to find that those things are fully in line with what we would call ‘common sense.’ What you’re experiencing when this happens is the intuitive sense that something is true despite it sounding illogical.
For example, the statement “the more you get what you want, the less satisfied you are” defies logic even though it rings true. I was starting to understand that what lies beyond our ability to fully articulate can often seem the most clearly true. And those truths become blurrier the harder we try to focus on them through the lenses of reason and logic.
This is the paradox of paradox.
To explore this “philosophy of paradox,” I considered keeping a journal to record examples of paradoxical yet meaningful truths, along with my musings. My intentions remained dormant for a couple of years due to lack of opportunity when the ideas occurred to me, lack of motivation when the opportunity arose, and overabundance of ideas when I had the motivation.
Then along came COVID, which presented an environment conducive to reflection along with a motivation to make the most of the situation. In June of 2020, I picked out a spiral notebook, wrote “Omnia Vera Sunt Paradoxa” on the front cover (Latin for “all truths are paradoxes,” at least according to Google Translate), and jotted my first entry, which is reproduced faithfully below.
6/22/20
my personal journal
Prosperity vs. Virtue
Considering a democratic republic based on limited government where human rights are unalienable and endowed by a higher power, and in which government has only those powers bestowed on it by the people via written Constitution…
The success of such a society depends on the virtue of its citizens (see John Adams), and yet success brings freedom and prosperity to such a degree that citizens can cultivate their vices and need not exercise their virtues. This results in a citizenry unable to maintain the freedom that supports their vices.
Honing virtue requires that it be exercised, and exercised dispassionately. Such is difficult in a free society in the absence of external existential threats, which tend to focus and clarify. But fighting such threats means sacrifice, which strains society. Those fighting yearn for days when fighting and sacrifice are no longer needed so their progeny can enjoy hard-won freedoms. But enjoyment of freedom and prosperity without sacrifice breeds the kind of complacency that eats away at the virtue needed to keep society free.
I intended to continue adding similar entries, and then to let the project take me where it will. However, the pandemic added work pressures, and so I found that my essays became a mere list of items saved as placeholders to explore later.
The list quickly grew to dozens, most items no more than a few words, such as, “obligation is freedom,” and “if salvation was easy, no one would achieve it.”
As my erstwhile journal sat stewing in its own juices, I picked up the habit of daily Scripture reading that, while a blessing, presented an unending flood of more ideas for my project (and that’s just the Sermon on the Mount!).
I was back to square one with too many ideas and not enough synthesis. I realized I needed more perspectives than my own to help, just as many hands are needed to compress a balloon without it expanding uncontrollably somewhere else.
So I went on a book-buying-and-reading binge, gathering up and devouring resources offering perspectives from math and science, logic and reason, and philosophy and religion.
It was in the midst of this flurry that I encountered G.K. Chesterton.
Caught in a Web
I received Chesterton’s book, Orthdoxy (a masterpiece of Christian apologetics), as a Father’s Day present from my loving wife. I promptly parked it on my nightstand where it sat, unread and unnoticed, for months.
When I finally broke the seal, I experienced for the second time in my life the sensation of expecting to set foot in a foreign land only to realize that I had arrived back home. Eerily, this was the exact sensation that Chesterton described having as he wrote the book.
Orthodoxy recounts Chesterton’s adventuresome attempt to articulate the meaning of existence as if it was some newly-invented heresy, only to find that what he managed to voice was already fully formed in Christianity.
Reading Orthodoxy was like watching words appear on the page in perfect unison with similar thoughts as they appeared in my head. This Chesterton fellow wrote the way I think, and I couldn’t get enough. I found my muse. But, alas, it was calling me ever inwards when I sought to go onwards.
The peril now was the prospect of getting stuck in Chesterton’s web. But not only that. The peril was also in becoming content with that fate, and in being so contented ceasing the struggle to get out. As Chesterton famously commented:
“[A]ll roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
He meant that the sheer multitude of paths by which Orthodox Christianity draws us to itself can lull us into complacency or even paralyze us in indecisiveness (akin to Kierkegaard’s observations about anxiety arising from the possibilities of freedom). For my part, all roads led back to Chesterton, and I couldn’t seem to escape.
Arriving Home
Funnily enough, what saved me from Chesterton’s ensnarement was Chesterton himself (who, like a spider, is apparently immune to his own web). While digging into the Biblical book of Job, I discovered among Chesterton’s voluminous writings that he had penned an introduction to Job.
Examining Chesterton’s thoughts on Job not only illuminated my study, it provided the answer to a question I didn’t even know I was asking; namely, how to synthesize my thoughts on paradox, even to the point of providing the title of this blog, “The Riddles of God.” To wit:
“The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.”
G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to the Book of Job
This short statement presented itself as a key – a key that unlocked the cage holding fast my agonizing cogitations about paradox.
We are meant to see Job as the most righteous man of his time, always doing God’s will. And yet Job was inflicted with great suffering. Why would a good and just God allow this? Job’s ordeals, and his friends’ misguided attempts to help, led to Job brazenly questioning God and demanding from Him an explanation.
Ultimately, the sum of God’s exposition from the whirlwind amounted to this: a refusal to explain Himself.
Beyond reason, Job embraced the non-answer, taking comfort in the realization that the secret nature of God’s plan revealed something important. The incomprehensibility of it all indicated something eternal and infinite by which Job himself was swaddled.
Job trusted God’s plan, even though he could not yet fathom how that plan called for God to humble Himself by becoming human and suffering for the sake of our salvation – and Job’s.
I now saw that I had come full circle without turning back, as if I’d been walking on the surface of a mobius strip. And in the process, I rediscovered the breadcrumbs I’d been leaving myself all along, which included this fuzzy notion that paradox is a window into what lies beyond, even if it’s a smudged window with distorted glass.
I also found breadcrumbs left by others, which we will examine throughout this blog. Their message was consistent – that comfort eludes those who try to solve the riddle, and somehow reveals itself to those who embrace the mystery of mystery.
In this blog, we will continue the paradoxical journey that always leads us home no matter how far we walk away.
My prayer for you, dear reader, is that you will learn to embrace paradox, and in so doing will let go of the need for certainty, thereby understanding much more than you have ever understood and discovering the fullness of meaning, joy, and wonder.
Fortunately, we won’t be alone on the journey. Along the way, we will be guided by Kurt Gödel the logic-destroying logician who will show us the path to meaning, Søren Kierkegaard the melancholy knight of faith who will show us the path to joy, and Gilbert Keith Chesterton the prince of paradox who will show us the path to wonder.
“It is the lesson of the whole work that man is most comforted by paradoxes; and it is by all human testimony the most reassuring.”
G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to the Book of Job