The Supernatural: Paradox in Religious Life and Scripture – Part 2

Structure of Scripture (John 10:27)

Your brain changes throughout your life, adapting to experiences and learnings by forming new pathways, strengthening existing pathways, and pruning unused pathways throughout its labyrinthine network of synaptic connections between and among neurons.  This phenomenon is called neuroplasticity. 

While neuroplasticity happens continuously without our awareness, we need not resign the very wiring of our brains to mere circumstance.  We can intentionally guide and focus the re-wiring of our brains in conformance to what we value.  In essence we can become what we behold, changing our hearts to desire what we value by first changing our brain chemistry to affect how we think.[1] 

We can do this through repetition, meditation, mindfulness, exercise, teaching, and prioritization of the thoughts and corresponding actions that we desire to strengthen in ourselves.  Common sense tells us this is true, and neuroscience confirms it more and more with each study.  Is it any surprise, then, that the ancient Israelites were taught by God to re-wire their brains as the first step to changing their hearts? 

Consider the following passage from Deuteronomy, which forms the foundation of the Shema Yisrael (meaning “Hear O Israel”), a prayer recited twice daily in Jewish prayer service:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”[2]

God doesn’t just command them how to love Him, but teaches them how to desire to love Him; and it all starts with neuroplasticity.  He tells them to teach it to their children, make it a daily habit, incorporate it into their activities, keep it present in the forefront of their minds, and create physical reminders associated with their work, their thoughts, and their comings and goings.  These are the very activities that result in re-wiring the brain.   

The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain where priorities are established.  The prefrontal cortex makes the final decision on what sensory data will get your brain’s attention.  All senses, thoughts, and perceptions from the environment make their way to the prefrontal cortex for evaluation.  The prefrontal cortex controls complex thinking, reasoning, and planning; it moderates behavior and regulates the limbic system. 

In short, the prefrontal cortex’s function is as gatekeeper for what will affect the brain.  And it is located precisely where the ancient Israelites were told to bind an emblem of God’s law, and where Jews still today hold their hand as they say the Shema.  We become what we behold.  Is it any wonder, then, why God in the Bible is so prescriptive about how we worship? 

God doesn’t need our worship.  He gains nothing from it.  Yet the way we worship is critically important because it will work to change our brains, helping to harmonize our bodily desires with proper spiritual desires.

This same pattern found in the Shema is found throughout Scripture, and indeed in the very structure of Scripture itself.  It’s as if Scripture was intentionally designed to work in conjunction with how the human brain works. 

The neurons in your brain form a hyperlinked network of connections and associations that are being constantly created and reinforced as well as weakened and broken.  The result is like an orchestra playing a symphony, where each neuron is an instrument. 

Or better yet, your brain is many orchestras sharing overlapping instruments and each playing its own symphony, some in synchronicity with others and some in cacophonic conflict.  Over time, the movements evolve and arrangements change as different instruments and sections come into prominence or fade into the background. 

In all, the human brain includes about 100 billion neurons forming over 100 trillion synaptic connections.  In comparison, the Bible is a collection of 73 books[3] written over perhaps thousands of years by many and various authors who worked in distinct literary styles, and yet they come together in a single cognizable and symphonic work that intricately cross-references itself across ages, authors, and artistic approaches. 

The result is a hyperlinked library of books, chapters, and verses that, like neurons in your brain, create pathways that establish patterns of transcendent meaning.  The cross-references support and elevate the story of salvation that the underlying verses are telling.  This happens regardless of the intention of the human author. 

Viewed in this way, we may consider that meaning is created in our brains and in the Bible by much the same mechanism, which is tied inextricably to the way they were constructed.  In Figure 1, the over 63,000 cross-references between verses in the King James Bible are shown in a stunning visualization that is reminiscent of the fractals that we discussed earlier in the book.

Figure 1:  Visualization of cross-references in the King James Bible

The implication of Biblical hyperlinking is that Scripture is encoded with meaning in the same way that our brains are constructed to encode meaning.  As such, it appears that Scripture was made for us and that we were made for Scripture. 

We have a Bible that works like a human brain: it is built up, strengthened, and rewired through being re-told, re-heard, re-read, and contemplated; it is massively interconnected in a network of cross-references that enhance meaning; it contains a seemingly unending number of pathways weaved throughout its narrative because the more one studies it, the more paths one finds; and it has an overwhelming and intractable complexity that somehow (and paradoxically) communicates simple and unitary messages through accounts of the human condition that rhyme more than repeat,[5] much like a fractal. 

Comparing the Bible cross-reference visualization to a representation of the Lorenz attractor that we discussed earlier (see Figure 2), it’s not a stretch to wonder whether Scripture itself is a strange attractor for our spiritual guidance.  No matter how much we are perturbed from the prescribed path, we will always be drawn back to God’s plan if we allow ourselves to be.

Figure 2:  Comparing visualizations of Bible cross-references (left) to the Lorenz attractor (right).

At this point, it should come as no shock to you, the reader, that Scripture is constructed like our brains to both enlighten and confound our brains as it tells the story of the history of the human condition and how it relates to God.  After all, Scripture was written about Jesus, who is the Word made flesh.  Everything Scripture said before it, and everything Scripture said after it, points to the Incarnation of the Word, which was the tangible expression of the fact that humanity was made in God’s image and likeness. 

Jesus confirmed as much when He chose to spend much of His first day after emerging victorious from the depths of Sheol walking with two of His followers on the road between Jerusalem and Emmaus.  On the way, Jesus explained to them how all of Scripture was written about Him, and how He came to fulfill it.[6] 

We recognize ourselves and the human condition in Scripture because we recognize the fulfillment and perfection of our story in Jesus the Christ.  But the best we can muster is to see it in a blurred reflection because our fallen nature has veiled the portal between Heaven and Earth. 

This veil is intentional.  It is God’s tool to blur our vision, not to keep us in the dark for the sake of keeping us in the dark, but to urge our growth in knowledge and wisdom in preparation for when the veil is finally lifted.  Like covering up the good eye to force the lazy eye to become strengthened, so too God lets us stumble around in the dark before He lifts the veil and reveals all. 

In the meantime, we are called to learn to recognize the voice of Christ by reading and hearing Scripture, even if we cannot always discern what it is saying.  In John 10:27 we hear Jesus say, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” 

We are to come to recognize His voice like infants learn to recognize their mother’s face.  In this sense, being reborn as spiritual infants comes with great advantage.  In those times that we struggle to recognize His voice, we can also take solace in knowing that, because He was Incarnate as the Word made flesh, we have been endowed with the same brain Christ had, even if we can’t fully know the mind of God. 

“Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.  ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’  But we have the mind of Christ.”[7] 

Teaching in Parables (Isaiah 6:9-10)

When we hear the word ‘parable’ we think of a story having a moral, like a fable, which is not far off.  The word ‘parable’ derives from the Greek word παραβολή (parabolē), which means ‘throwing’ (bolē) ‘alongside’ (para).  Thus, a parable is literally something that is ‘thrown alongside’ something else, often shrouded in mystery. 

When we encounter the parables in the Bible, we find stories that use comparison or analogy to teach a higher truth.  As Chesterton’s fictional detective, Gabriel Gale, proclaimed, “I doubt whether any truth can be told except in a parable.”[8]  A common description of a Biblical parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.  Like paradoxes, parables harness the power of juxtaposition to both elucidate and to confuse at the same time. 

Whenever Jesus teaches a lesson through parable, He reminds us what Socrates figured out – that the more we know, the more we realize how much we don’t know.  He is also reminding us that we cannot learn from Him unless we let go of our own stubborn insistences and certainties.  Seeing and accepting the truth of Christ’s parables means a part of us dies – that part that wants to draw a straight line to the truth.  That little death is critical because nothing can be resurrected without dying.

The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke all include the familiar parables (unlike the Gospel of John[9]).  Mark, Matthew, and Luke also all include similar explanations for why Jesus taught in parables, each alluding to God’s instruction to Isaiah:

“And he said, ‘Go and say to this people: Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.  Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.’”[10]

In this passage, God is calling Isaiah to be a prophet to a people whose hearts are hardened against God’s word; to sow seeds on hostile ground.  God’s truth remains true whether it is received or not, and it is often a difficult message to receive.  Because the message is difficult, we harden our hearts, predictably and monotonously. 

In the Gospels of Mark and Luke, Jesus explains to His disciples that to them has been given the secret of the Kingdom of God, but to others He speaks in parables so that in looking they may not perceive and in hearing they may not understand.[11]  This sounds like Jesus was purposefully confounding people by veiling His message behind a tapestry of parables to prevent them from receiving His message and being saved!  Is that really why He taught in parables, to prevent salvation?

Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves.  He knows that His message is difficult to receive, and that it will almost invariably be rejected if given to us without the protective cover of parable. 

His message is like the kernel of a seed that will die before it can germinate when left on hostile ground without the protection of a husk.  Parables are the protective husk around the kernel of His message, preserving it for a time when the ground becomes more fertile so that it may grow, multiply, and bear fruit.[12] 

By teaching in parables, Jesus gives us a ready-made excuse for our knee-jerk rejection; the excuse being that we simply don’t understand.  A message that is understood and yet rejected is unlikely to be considered again.  But a message that is rejected because it is not understood can remain dormant and protected for when our hearts have softened enough to receive. 

Jesus knows that our hardened hearts prevent us from seeing and hearing, but He is playing the long game.  He would rather induce the soft rejection of misunderstanding than the hard rejection of contempt.  In other words, by teaching in parables, Jesus is performing a great mercy by giving us a chance; He is literally and figuratively planting a seed.  

This perhaps comes through more clearly in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus’s explanation for why He teaches in parables seems a little less harsh than in the Gospels of Mark and Luke.

“The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive.’”[13]

Considered in this way, we realize that it’s not a parable’s analogy that makes it hard to accept.  It’s the message of the parable that causes us to wince, recoil, and gnash our teeth.  Dressing up the message in familiarity (vineyards, seeds, wedding feasts, etc.) infuses an air of truth and credulity that makes it more, not less, likely to be taken in, even though our initial reaction may be quite negative.

There is another way in which Jesus speaking in parables is a great mercy, which can be summarized in the moral of the parable of the unfaithful servant:[14] to those whom much has been given, much will be expected.  Among two servants who both failed their master, the one who knew the extent of his failing will receive greater punishment than the one who didn’t know any better. 

Because God’s justice is equitable,[15] we will be held to a standard commensurate with our understanding.  Therefore, we should not lament, but rather rejoice, in our lack of privileged knowledge.  That there remains a veil between us and God is a great mercy.  Perhaps God was performing the same great mercy when He said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people not to break through to the Lord to look; otherwise many of them will perish.”[16]

Whether Jesus teaches in parables to preserve the seed for its eventual taking root, or whether He is simply sparing us from the terrible responsibility of greater knowledge, there is no denying that parables make His teachings more memorable and come alive. 

But are those the only reasons why Jesus presented His parables in a manner so jarring to our sensibilities?  For example, when the prodigal son returns, we share the righteous indignation of the dutiful son and wonder, if this story describes the extent of God’s forgiveness and generosity, then how does God’s justice fit?  Even the prodigal is left bewildered by his father’s response. 

Perhaps our shock and awe derive not from the strangeness of the parable, but from its strange familiarity, as if we’re returning to a home that we’ve never seen but somehow recognize.  Through parables, we see that when the priorities of the world are flipped upside down, the Kingdom of God is revealed.  Every parable presents a glimpse of the Kingdom.  We find out that the Kingdom is like a mustard seed, a hidden treasure, a merchant seeking fine pearls, a fishing net, a vineyard, and leaven.  We are told that God’s Kingdom is in our midst,[17] and yet is impossible for us to reach.[18]  

So how are we called to respond to parables?  First, be ready to experience bewilderment, and to recognize that God intends our bewilderment.  Contemplating His message from the standpoint of humility is always a good starting point.  Often a deepening faith is not marked by a growing certainty so much as by frequent astonishment! 

Saying yes to God is always an exercise in accepting something we cannot understand.  Second, expect the unexpected and accept the unaccepted.  Take time to reflect on points of view that flip the world on its head.  If you tend to see yourself as the dutiful son, imagine instead what compels the father to show unreasonable generosity to the wayward.  Rather than wondering how you can prepare more fertile soil, think about why God seems to sow the seed of His word with an almost reckless abandon. 

In this way, you can train your focus on what the parable is telling you about the nature of God’s Kingdom rather than trying to apply it directly to your life as if it were an instruction manual.  “But seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”[19]

In the parable of the good Samaritan,[20] three men came across the half-dead body of a man who was robbed, beaten, and left lying in the ditch.  Two of the men, a priest and a Levite, saw him and passed by on the other side of the road.  The third man, who was a Samaritan, stopped to help, applying first aid, bringing him to an inn where he paid to have him cared for, and checking in on him again on his way back through town. 

With today’s sensibilities, we might think that the actions of the priest and the Levite are best explained by heartless self-absorption.  More likely, however, is that Jesus’s audience would have recognized that the two were attempting to diligently follow the Jewish law forbidding priests and Levites from coming into contact with a corpse,[21] apparently assuming the man in the ditch to be dead. 

The Samaritan was not so burdened by Jewish law, being a member of that ethnic group that was long-ago estranged from the Jews, and against whom they shared a mutual hostility.  Thus, the Samaritan used his “freedom” from the law to show mercy to his injured enemy.  Through this parable, Jesus demonstrated that loving God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind meant showing mercy to those in need, even in abrogation of the law. 

Although we are called to obedience, putting love of the law over love of God and love of neighbor is a violation of that greater commandment.  In God’s Kingdom, the lowliest Samaritan can demonstrate love that transcends the best intentions of the highest Jew.  The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

Jesus taught the parable of the good Samaritan in response to questioning from a lawyer, who perhaps was attempting to trip up Jesus in legalisms.  The lawyer wanted to know how he could inherit eternal life, to which Jesus replied with the question, “What is written in the law?”  The lawyer answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” 

When Jesus told him that he gave the right answer, the lawyer should have taken the win.  But he persisted, asking, “And who is my neighbor?”  In reply, Jesus told the parable.  But the parable was actually an answer to a slightly different question, namely, “How can I be a neighbor?”  In God’s Kingdom, the command is not about loving those who live in your neighborhood, but rather to love all, especially those in need; and in loving them, you become their neighbor.

While subordinating the love of law to the law of love, God’s Kingdom also challenges our notions of justice and judgment.  In teaching the parable of the weeds among the wheat, Jesus says to His disciples:

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.

And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’

He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’

The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’

But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”[22]

How frustrating for the impatient among us to hear that evil must be allowed to exist among the good until God considers His harvest to be ready!  How humbling for the arrogant among us to hear that our judgment has no role in God’s Kingdom! 

But God knows that to have any chance of reaping good wheat, there will be weeds to sift through at the harvest.  After the Great Flood that ended nearly all humanity, the weeds came back despite all efforts to eradicate them.  God thereby demonstrated that the way to end evil is not by its destruction, but by its redemption.

Evil is real, but it will ultimately be defeated.  We must trust in God’s plan and be patient, knowing that His justice is perfect justice, and that His judgment is the only judgment that matters.  We must also be mindful that the wheat and weeds manifest not just as good and evil nations or good and evil people, but as good and evil in each one of us. 

Because we are each a duality of wheat and weeds, God’s great wisdom to let them grow together is a great mercy.  While weeds are noxious and insidiously harmful, the wheat that grows alongside is all the stronger and heartier for surviving the battle.  Any wheat can ripen under perfect conditions, but it is the wheat that ripens under the stress and strain of battling the weeds that God wishes to bring into the barn of His eternal Kingdom.  

The parable of the wheat and the weeds serves as a direct admonition to maintain the sacred tension that we want so desperately to resolve.  For we cannot comprehend what glorious ripening God will work within us if we will simply trust His justice and His judgment over our own.

Ultimately, our Creator desires a relationship with us His creatures.  Imagine that!  The all powerful, all knowing, all loving Creator of the Universe, who is the one, true, eternal and living God, desires nothing more or less than our whole hearts given freely. 

This is the great lesson of the parable of the prodigal son,[23] which tells the story of a father of two sons, the younger one who demanded his inheritance so that he could go off into the world and squander it on wild living, and the older one who remained with his father to dutifully fulfill his obligations. 

When the younger one returns in his destitution, hoping his father will take him back not as a son but as a servant, the father greets him with overwhelming joy, as if his son had been resurrected from the dead.  The older son reacts with what appears to be justifiable anger and bitterness over the lavish treatment of his brother, whose utter betrayal caused so much pain to his father.  But more than that, the older son laments how his father never saw fit to grant him even a small reward for his loyal dedication. 

In the final analysis, what the father truly desired from each of his sons was a relationship.  Both failed.  The younger son failed by physically abandoning his father to seek the pleasures of the world.  The older son failed by emotionally abandoning his father, consumed by his own efforts to earn his due. 

Both sons viewed their relationship to their father transactionally, the younger in terms of his inheritance, and the older in terms of his earnings.  For the father, sharing everything he had with his sons was a given.  There was nothing he needed them to do or to be other than to desire a relationship with him, and to do so with their whole heart.  Hear, O Israel, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  This is the call to relationship with God that Christians inherited, and that Christ renewed.

Paradoxes in Christ’s Teachings

The Gospels are replete with paradoxes and apparent contradictions in what Jesus said.  Indeed, it seems as though Jesus could hardly say anything without being perplexing.  As we have already discovered in examining parables, paradoxes and apparent contradictions can be masterful teaching tools that jar us out of our comfort zone and force us to contemplate higher meaning. 

But what if paradox was more than just cleverness and skillful oratory technique by our Lord and Savior?  What if speaking in paradox was not so much a matter of personal style for Jesus, but instead was a necessity?  Since Jesus is Truth, He speaks only Truth, and the Truth He speaks is eternal Truth, heavenly Truth, Kingdom Truth.  Such Truth transcends our worldly priorities, wants, and needs.  Such Truth doesn’t fit neatly in a little box of our own making. 

Given how His Truth transcends our experience, it would be shocking for Jesus to not speak in paradoxes.  As Flannery O’Connor put it, “A God you understood would be less than yourself.”

If there is eternal Truth, then it transcends this world.  Truth exists apart from us, and is therefore not ours to own or control.  The fact that Jesus spoke in paradoxes is thus a portent of His transcendence; He is not ours to own or control. 

The teachings of Christ do not exist to advance anyone’s personal agenda, or even someone’s altruistic vision for a better and more just society.  The teachings of Christ exist to advance God’s Kingdom.  That is the Truth that we must embrace and learn to love, not as if it belonged to us, but as if we belonged to it.  In his Confessions, St. Augustine talked about the dangers of trying to own truth in God’s word:

“For what they say, they say not because they are godly men and have seen it in the mind of Your servant Moses, but because they are proud men: it is not that they know the opinion of Moses, but that they love their own opinion, and this not because it is true but because it is their own. Otherwise they would have as much love for the truth uttered by another; just as I love what they say when they say truth — not because it is theirs but because it is truth: from the mere fact that it is true it ceases to be theirs. But if they love it because it is true, then it is not only theirs but mine too; it is the common property of all lovers of truth.”[24]

We must do more than know the Truth, we must surrender to the Truth.  Even Satan knows the Truth and will quote Scripture for his own purposes, as he did when Jesus went into the desert to be tempted.[25] 

In this light, let us be ever thankful that in God’s great mercy He communicated His Truth in ways that confound and perplex us, so that we are not led into the temptation of wanting to claim it for our own.  May we love God’s Truth, which is the only Truth, and may we love it because it comes from Him.

Teaching in paradoxes does not produce instant results.  Instead, it necessitates the gradual maturity of understanding over time as it grows, painfully sometimes, in fits and starts from the tiniest seed to become the largest tree.  This is the process of Divine Pedagogy through which God instructs us in the ways of His Kingdom, all the while encouraging us to be active participants and not passive observers. 

Jesus began His ministry in this way, carefully selecting how and when His message would be revealed through signs, wonders, and paradoxes.  Being careful about the proliferation of His message, Jesus often asked those He healed not to tell anyone.  Perhaps He was slowing the spread so that it could be managed in the same way that a controlled burn is used to tame a wildfire. 

Perhaps He was employing some reverse psychology, knowing that the newly healed would be unable to contain their joy.  Perhaps He wanted to avoid sowing seeds on rocks and among thorns.  Or perhaps He was being more subtle, ensuring the focus remained more on the healing and less on Him, thus discouraging the percolating revolutionary fervor swirling around Him.  After all, Jesus came not to achieve fame for His own glory, but to glorify the Father and do the Father’s will. 

What the people expected was a conquering Messiah who called them to political and military action.  What they received was a redeeming Messiah who called them to faith so that they could begin to see what their eyes refused to see and to hear what their ears refused to hear.  His call to them was the single Aramaic word that He used to open the ears of the deaf man: Ephphatha![26] (meaning, “be opened!”)  To this call we would do well to heed the advice of the Father, “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him!”[27]

At the beginning of His great sermon, the Sermon on the Mount,[28] Jesus established the Beatific Vision, which is Christianity’s new way of seeing.  In God’s Kingdom, those considered pitiable by the world are exulted.  The things we try to minimize or prevent, even to the point of dedicating large parts of our lives in the attempt, things like poverty, sadness, powerlessness, discomfort, persecution, and even forgiveness, are the very things that God blesses. 

What the world sees as weakness, God’s Kingdom names as strengths.  Rejoice when the world hates you, because before it hated you it hated Jesus.[29] 

Instead of accruing for themselves the goods of this world, the disciples of Christ were being called to enhance the world by becoming its salt and light.  Salt flavors and preserves, while light dispels darkness and promotes life.  In those ways, salt and light bring blessings, but only when applied to the world and not onto themselves.  In the Beatific Vision, the deepest desire is service to God and His creation, not for the comforts of the world. 

The “poor in spirit” are those who have tapped into that great longing to be with God, a longing that cannot be fulfilled in this world.  Thus, how blessed are those who are unburdened by attachments to material things, to pleasure, to power, and to approval!  Such attachments are barriers to desiring God.  To properly love the world we must first love God, which can only be accomplished through radical detachment from the world. 

Only by separating ourselves from the world can we best love it.  When we are attached to worldly things, we use worldly things for our own benefit.  That is transactional love rather than the radical self-sacrificial love called for in the Beatific Vision.

The Kingdom of God is not a far away place.  The Kingdom of God is all around.  But it takes the Beatific Vision, it takes the Christian lens, to be able to see it.  The Beatific Vision is marked by hopeful trust in God’s unknowable plan.  Worldly vision is marked by fearful pride in egoistic need of control.  By heeding the call of ‘Ephphatha,’ our eyes and ears are opened to the truth of His Kingdom. 

When Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel and heard that she was to bear God’s son, her ‘yes’ was given with all her heart, mind, soul, and strength.  Thus, Mary’s acceptance of the conception of Jesus within her was the ultimate fulfillment of the Shema, and through it she saw with the Beatific Vision. 

Just as she carried the unborn Christ in her womb, so also she carried His yet unspoken words on her lips – words that expressed the Beatific Vision of scattering the proud while gathering servants, casting down the powerful while lifting up the lowly, and filling the hungry while sending the rich away empty.[30] 

As strange and foreign as the Beatific Vision seemed when first taught, it was not, strictly speaking, new.  It was always there, obscured by a thin veil.  Jesus brought this into crystal clarity when He announced that He came to fulfill the law and not to abolish it. 

While seeming to turn everything upside down, He was finally setting things right.  He was the new Moses – the prophet brought forth out of the remnant of Israel to whom the people should heed.[31]  Jesus revealed that the law of Moses was established to prepare the way, and, astonishingly, that He was the way. 

In fulfilling the law, He perfected the law, demonstrating how we are to be perfected in Him.  Where once we were told “do not murder,” now we are told to avoid anger.  Where once we were told “do not commit adultery,” now we are told to avoid lust.  Where once we were told that justice demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, now we are told to offer the other cheek to those who strike us. 

Where the law of Moses was difficult to keep, the fulfillment that Jesus described seems impossible to keep.  Indeed, it is impossible in the same way that a camel passing through a needle’s eye is impossible; that is to say, it is entirely possible for God.[32]

Christ taught that following the law of Moses was just the first step, and not the end goal.  Through the law we learn who God is and we learn who we are.  We learn that we are the kinds of creatures who thrive when we keep the commands of our Creator. 

But Christ shows us that we are meant for more; that we are meant for transcendence and for perfection.  “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”[33]  The law cannot make us perfect.  Only through Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of the law, can we be made perfect.  Jesus demonstrated that in small ways. 

He made it a point to “violate” the Sabbath by performing healings, and even picking grain with His disciples.  Through these actions He demonstrated that the Sabbath was made for mankind, not mankind for the Sabbath.[34]  He let His disciples eat without observing ritual washing.  Through this He demonstrated that it’s not what we put into our bodies that defiles us, but what comes out, because what comes out reveals the condition of our hearts.[35]  

It may not have been startling for the Pharisees to hear Jesus say that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, or even that the next greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself, but it was surely startling for them to hear that all the law of Moses and the words of the prophets hang on these two.[36]  Faithful adherence to these two greatest commandments guarantees that the rest of the law is observed.  That is Kingdom law.

The fulfillment of the law opened up its observance to everyone, not just the Jewish people.  As it was for the Israelites who were freed from captivity in Egypt only to wander in the desert, it seemed the promised land was meant for the generation to come and not for them.  They were old wineskins, and Jesus was pouring new wine.[37] 

As the prophet Ezekiel foretold, the glory of God had returned to the Temple, but now the Temple was Christ Himself, and everyone was invited to worship and partake in His sacrifice.  With this fulfillment of the law came a fulfillment of righteousness, inviting all people to be consecrated to Christ.  Thus, Jesus was baptized in the waters of the Jordan to sanctify the waters of baptism for all time and for all people.  

Our baptism in water and spirit, in imitation of Him, is what initiates us into the Kingdom of God, rather than brute force adherence to Mosaic law.[38]  Through baptism our hearts become new wineskins that are able to receive the wine of the New Covenant and expand without bursting.

By welcoming all into the Kingdom, Jesus introduced the chosen people to the harrowing prospect of the first being last and the last being first.  Unfathomably, the descendants of the ancient Israelites who endured so much over so many centuries of waiting for the promised Messiah were told that the Gentiles were being offered the same salvation. 

This is illustrated by the parable of the laborers in the vineyard who were called to work for only the final hour of the day and yet still received the same full day’s wage as those who worked since the morning.[39]  As seen through the Beatific Vision, God desires mercy, not sacrifice, because, through the sacrifice of His Son, He called not the righteous but the sinners, thus demonstrating His mercy. 

The truth is that we are all sinners in need of God’s mercy.  Those who hold themselves to be righteous, and therefore deserving, are blind and deaf.  That is why it was easier for tax collectors and prostitutes to hear the voice of John the Baptist echoing in the wilderness, because they knew their sin. 

As Chesterton said, “a saint only means a man who knows he is a sinner.”  This is another way of describing what it means to be poor in spirit.  In comparison, the Pharisees and the self-righteous could not recognize that Jesus was the cornerstone upon which Kingdom of God was built, and so they rejected Him.

When asked by His disciples who was the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven, Jesus called a child over to Him and told them (essentially) to forget about being the greatest and instead concentrate on just getting in, which can only be done by becoming like a child.[40] 

According to the world, children have no seat at the table when the adults are discussing important topics.  And yet, as Jesus illustrates, children by their very powerlessness have something that adults lack – humility.  A seat at the table gives a false sense of importance to many. 

One’s influence over the affairs of God’s Kingdom is exactly the same as a child’s influence among the elders arguing over interpretations of the Torah.  The only child who could hold the attention of the teachers in the Temple was the Christ child,[41] further elucidating the point by contradistinction.  We adults become so distracted by our duties and so puffed up by our responsibilities that we are unable to focus on the only thing that is important. 

When Jesus visited the home of the sisters Martha and Mary, Martha’s attention was occupied in trying to make their guest feel welcome, and so much so that she neglected to simply sit and listen to Him as Mary did.  Thinking herself to be the more dutiful sister, Martha complained about Mary’s lack of help.  Jesus gently rebuked Martha, saying that Mary had chosen the better part.[42]  It was Mary’s humility that allowed her to keep her attention trained on Jesus.  When attending to the distractions is all that we can control, it takes an act of humility to let go. 

The Jews expected their Messiah to deliver them from political oppression.  Instead, their Messiah told them to love their enemies and pray for their persecutors,[43] by which He meant to desire their good.  If that wasn’t enough, He called for radical forgiveness along with severe consequences for failing to forgive.  “[I]f you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”[44] 

Jesus taught that forgiveness was not the reward for love, but that forgiveness precedes love.  By loving your persecutors, you will desire their good and want to see their capacity for love increase.  Forgiveness does that.  The greater the sin, the greater the forgiveness, and the greater the resultant capacity to love.[45] 

Jesus illustrated this by the parable of the moneylender who forgave the debts of two debtors who were unable to repay, one owing ten times as much as the other.  The one forgiven more responded with greater love and gratitude in proportion to his debt. 

Christ’s sacrifice on the cross paid our infinite debt that we cannot repay.  By implication, the forgiveness won by Christ’s death produces in us an infinite capacity for love.  That is the deliverance that the Lord accomplishes for us today, and every day; we need only set aside our fear and anxiety, and remain still.[46]

Ultimately, God is able to use death and destruction to bring new life; the greatest evil brings forth the greatest good.[47]  Don’t ever mistake this for meaning that that God needs evil to produce good; rather, it means that God can accomplish His will no matter what obstacles we throw in His way. 

Understanding this is equal measures horrifying and hopeful.  No matter what mess we make of the world, God’s plan of salvation remains undeterred; in the meantime, what a mess we are allowed to make!  In the midst of all this forgiveness of debts that we cannot repay, how can we demonstrate our love and appreciation for the one who paid the price?  Jesus gave us the answer:  whatever you do to the least of my people, you do unto me.[48] 

Are we Christ’s sheep who follow His example by putting the last among us first, and the first among us last?  Or are we goats who do what’s best according to our own designs.  This is the division that Christ came to bring; this is the division that can pit father against daughter and mother against son.[49]  Loving according to God’s Kingdom is bound to produce resentment among those who love according to the kingdom of the world.

Jesus calls us to love with a heart fashioned for God’s Kingdom, which sounds rather pleasant until you realize what it entails.  In entails denying yourself and taking up your cross.[50]  In entails giving up your life for the sake of Christ.[51]  Loving according to God’s Kingdom means being sent out like lambs in a world filled with wolves.[52] 

This is not possible unless we first surrender to God and trust that He will provide in a manner that will allow us to do His will.  Scripture tells us over and over again, “Do not be afraid.”  When paired with the call to take up our cross, we understand that “do not be afraid” is not a comforting salve, but rather a weighty command. 

It is a command to surrender our rebellion against God so that we can take up arms in the battle for His Kingdom.  Do not be afraid to lose what the world offers, for what will it profit you to gain the whole world only to forfeit your life in God’s Kingdom?[53]

Jesus provides the example for everything God commands, and so too with the command to not be afraid.  While in a boat with His disciples, a storm began to rage with winds so great that the waves threatened to swamp the boat.  The disciples were terrified for their lives, while Jesus slept calmly in the bow. 

They woke Him, screaming out in terror, “Save us!”  Jesus awoke and asked, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?”  And then He calmed the sea.[54]  In this vignette, faith and fear are set at odds.  We cannot both be afraid and have faith. 

Fear is the reaction to a harsh world that seems set against us, and to the exhausting task of suffering and surviving.  Faith is the response of trusting God, resting in the knowledge that He will lighten our burden.[55] 

It is one of Christ’s great paradoxes (aren’t they all) that He promises His followers condemnation and persecution while at the same time insisting that His yoke is easy and burden light.  Perhaps this is because existence in His Kingdom transforms everything, including the past, making it as if one who resides there has always resided there, transforming all temporal persecution into eternal exultation.[56]  

Seek first the Kingdom of God, and everything else will come along for the ride; seek first the world, and receive nothing.

As Jesus teaches, accepting one’s cross does not mean desiring one’s cross.  When His disciples James and John asked to be seated at His right and left hand in His Kingdom, Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking.  Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?”[57]  They were looking past their awaiting persecution in their desire for personal glorification. 

Jesus knew all too well the suffering He was to endure, and prayed in the garden of Gethsemane for the cup to be taken away, while at the same time surrendering His will to the will of the Father.[58]  This choice of the Father’s will over His own negated the opposite choice that Adam and Eve made in that other garden. 

Just as Jesus was given this cup to drink by the Father, so Jesus gave to His disciples the cup of the new and everlasting covenant, which by drinking joined their suffering (past, present, and future) to the sacrifice that was about to signal the re-Creation of the world.

During what was perhaps the most excruciating of His suffering, Jesus in His final moments on the cross experienced a complete separation from the Father so that we never have to be separated from Him.  Just before His death, He cried out, quoting Psalm 22, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?” meaning “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” 

Chesterton described this moment in one of the most devastatingly beautiful passages I have ever read:

“And if there be any sound that can produce a silence, we may surely be silent about the end and the extremity; when a cry was driven out of that darkness in words dreadfully distinct and dreadfully unintelligible, which man shall never understand in all the eternity they have purchased for him; and for one annihilating instant an abyss that is not for our thoughts had opened even in the unity of the absolute; and God had been forsaken of God.”[59]

What mankind continually got wrong starting from the Garden of Eden was now set right.  Somehow, what was broken by Man forsaking Man was fixed by God forsaking God.  By embracing this paradox, you understand what victory Jesus came to accomplish.

Paul’s Example of Living the Christian Paradox

The reign of King David, who was often described as a man after God’s own heart, was bookended by the reign of two kings who would both start strong and finish poorly. 

The king who came after was David’s son, Solomon, whose great wisdom and wealth had no equal either before or since.  Although he built the Temple as God instructed, Solomon ultimately succumbed to self-indulgence and servicing the gods of his many wives, thus sowing the seeds of destruction of that same Temple many generations later. 

The king who came before was David’s mentor, Saul, a Benjaminite whose gallantry and charisma should have won the hearts and minds of all Israel.  Instead, Saul turned away from God’s guidance, consumed with bitterness and jealousy toward the upstart David of whom it was sung, “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands.”[60] 

Shackled by consolidating their own power and burdened by seeking their own success, Saul and Solomon alike averted their heart’s gaze from God, choosing instead to follow the folly of their own wisdom.  David, while far from perfect, kept his heart trained on God’s will, continuing to seek God’s direction in all things. 

In many ways, Paul the Apostle would serve as a counterpoint to the examples of King Saul and King Solomon.  Whereas King Saul sought to thwart the coming of David’s Kingdom, Paul won souls for God’s Kingdom by the tens of thousands.  Whereas King Solomon sunk deeper into luxury, Paul emptied himself to become the earthen vessel for the treasures of God’s Kingdom. 

Though a Jew, Paul was born into Roman citizenship in Tarsus.  In Jewish circles he went by the name Saul, likely after his fellow Benjaminite King Saul.  Saul of Tarsus studied under the great teacher Gamaliel the Elder, and emerged as an influential Pharisee.  

In his zeal to persecute the followers of the resurrected Christ, Saul relentlessly pursued them, and famously to Damascus.  On the way, Jesus showed himself to Saul, but in order for Saul to see Him, he was blinded.  Perhaps recalling this experience, Paul would later write, “[F]or what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”[61] 

After three days in darkness, Saul’s physical sight was resurrected, but more importantly he now possessed a new spiritual sight, the Beatific Vision, which was created within him by the Holy Spirit.  He was being prepared to go forth and proclaim Christ’s gospel.  

In his evangelization, he would teach both Jews and Gentiles, but primarily the Gentiles, and so he started exclusively using the Roman form of his name, Paul, which has Latin roots meaning “small” or “humble.”  This was fitting since Paul dedicated himself to personal diminishment, becoming a “little Christ” for all those he taught.  In this way, Paul was literally the exemplar for what was to become known as “Christianity,” which means the act of becoming little Christs.

In the experience of his blinding and restoration, Paul came to understand that the Good News was about transformation.  By His death and resurrection, Jesus made it possible for those who followed Him to have their inner nature renewed each day. 

We creatures of God were not made for this earth, but instead we were made for eternal transcendence, living in and through God’s perfection.  As Paul said, “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”[62] 

We were fashioned from the earth by our Creator who, like a potter, formed us from humble clay and breathed into us His divine spirit.  Our Creator then did the unthinkable; the potter clothed Himself in this same earthen vessel so that through His death and resurrection, we would not simply return to the earth, ashes to ashes and dust to dust.[63] 

Through Christ, what was corruptible becomes incorruptible because it becomes part of the Christ’s body.  The Son of God took on the nature of a man so that Men could take on the nature of God. 

Paul did not merely embrace the Christian paradox, nor did he merely live the Christian paradox; Paul became the Christian paradox.  As Paul himself said:

“For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.  To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews.  To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law.  To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law.  To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.  I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.”[64] 

Paul’s privileged spiritual sight allowed him to see what Chesterton would come to observe, which was, “In that sense only the Church was many-sided enough to fit the world.  The six sides of the Mediterranean world faced each other across the sea and waited for something that should look all ways at once.”[65] 

Somehow, the message of Christ’s gospel was the paradox that fit all the opposing contradictions of the world.  For him to properly proclaim that gospel, Paul became the message he was sent to proclaim – Paul became kerygma itself.  And like the Christian Church, Paul found himself “attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons.”[66]  

But God catches the so-called wise of the world in their craftiness, who find themselves ensnared by their own cunning.[67]  The paradox that fits all the contradictions of the world cannot be grasped by any of them.  For his part, Paul was not trying to become the paradox that he was preaching, he was simply allowing himself to be God’s instrument.

One of the Pauline paradoxes is that God’s victory looks to the world an awful lot like defeat.  In particular, the victory of the cross seems like foolishness to those who do not accept the salvation it offers.[68]  The world cannot know God through its own self-proclaimed wisdom.  To the world, the existence of evil and suffering is proof that God cannot exist.  They can only see the cross as defeat; they cannot fathom its victory. 

Like the Israelites dying from poisonous snake bites, the world demands that God remove the snakes before it can believe.  But God does not remove the snakes.  God does something much more wonderful.  God provides a remedy.  God provides a remedy that not only restores but redeems; a remedy that not only redeems but transforms.  For God’s remedy to work its grace in us, we must look upon the curse, we must behold the suffering, sin, and death, and we must regard it as victory. 

Just like beauty cannot be appreciated without ugliness, we cannot know what justice means without injustice, nor can we live a life without death.  Thus, God’s victory does not seek to abolish suffering and death, but instead uses them so that they may be transformed, and so that we may be transformed in the process. 

As Paul observed, our injustice serves to bring God’s saving justice into view, but that does not mean we are excused for our injustice.[69]  Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.[70]  That does not mean that we should keep sinning so that grace can abound, like a cynical bartender mockingly ringing the cash register as if distributing wings to angels.[71]  Instead, it means that there is always more than enough grace to accomplish our resurrection once we die to sin.[72]

We conquer by yielding.  When Paul complained about a thorn in his flesh and Satan’s torment, God’s responded that His grace was enough.[73]  Finding peace when under attack by the enemy is another form of trusting God.  We trust in His perfect justice, and leave the vengeance to Him.[74] 

Paul came to see his weakness as his greatest strength.  The only thing he could truly boast about was his weakness, because the weak must rely on Christ, and reliance on Christ is the most powerful weapon imaginable.  

“So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.  Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”[75]

God is delighted to save believers through the folly of the gospel.  After all, we know that all things work together for good for those who love God.[76]

Another of the Pauline paradoxes is that we cannot truly live without first dying to ourselves.  By dying to ourselves, Paul means dying to sin, which is to say dying to the desires of the flesh.

“We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.  For whoever has died is freed from sin.  But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”[77]

In the modern world, we equate freedom with the ability to pursue our desires.  Paul calls that slavery to sin.  True freedom means choosing sacrifice, because through that sacrifice we are transformed from a mortal life of this earth to a heavenly life with Christ. 

Choosing sacrifice is freedom when it is the sacrifice that is the object of our desire, in imitation of Christ.  As Chesterton put it,  “We are meant to feel that Death was the bride of Christ as Poverty was the bride of St. Francis. We are meant to feel that his life was in that sense a sort of love affair with death, a romance of the pursuit of the ultimate sacrifice.”[78]  

Christ’s story was a journey to death, and recognizing that our story is a journey to death is understanding that our story is a sacrifice.  What we sacrifice in dying to ourselves is the same thing that Abraham and Isaac were willing to sacrifice, which is to say that we sacrifice everything, but that everything ultimately means nothing compared to the infinite and eternal everything we receive in return.

In the taking up of our cross, the sacrifice we are called to live is not a grin-and-bear-it type of suffering.  We are called to find joy in that suffering because of that suffering, and not in spite of that suffering.  As Paul wrote, “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.”[79] 

We are called to seek the good of others and the good of Christ’s Body, that is to say the Church, without any regard for our own bodily pleasure or comfort.  In short, we are called to sacrifice and suffer. 

Paul says that in his suffering he is completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.  Make no mistake, Paul is NOT saying that Christ’s sacrifice was anything less than fully sufficient to win salvation, once and for all.  What Paul is saying is that Christ calls for our participation, which we can only give through our free will. 

Thus, what Christ’s afflictions lack without our assent is simply this: us.  That is why the ultimate movement of freedom is the choice to become a slave to Christ, and the refusal to become a slave to sin.

Whenever we choose to follow something below God, we make ourselves slaves of something that is less than ourselves, thus becoming debased in the process and corruptible unto death.  When we choose to follow God, we become His slaves, thus becoming qualified for sanctification into the incorruptibility of eternal life.

“For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.  When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death.  But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification.  The end is eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[80]

This entails embracing all forms of humility, including seeking no social standing,[81] submitting to governing authorities,[82] eschewing personal ambition in favor of the interests of others,[83] avoiding building yourself up by tearing others down,[84] and so forth.

It also means treating yourself, and your body, like temples, which are holy places suitable for God to dwell. 

“But the body is not for sexual immorality; it is for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.  God raised up the Lord and he will raise us up too by his power.  Do you not realize that your bodies are members of Christ’s body?”[85]  

Throughout the Bible, it is made clear that God pursues us like a groom pursues a bride, and therefore turning to other gods is akin to sexual sin – idolatry is adultery.  There is no room in the temple of our bodies for God and for false gods at the same time.  That is why God is described as a jealous God. 

“What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’”[86] 

When we die to sin, we allow Christ to dwell in the temple of our bodies.  When Christ is in you, the spirit is alive, but the flesh is dead.  This is restoration of the divine economy; this is the transformation where flesh serves spirit rather than trying to dominate it.

Yet another of the Pauline paradoxes may be playfully referred to as “the lawlessness of the law.”  In just six verses, Romans 7:7-12, Paul goes from saying the law makes us sin to saying that the law is holy.  A similar line of seemingly contradictory rhetoric regarding the law is repeated throughout Paul’s letters, most notably in Romans, Galatians, and 1 Timothy.  What are we to make of this? 

What Paul is essentially saying is that the law, in its function of guiding people toward righteousness, exposes and highlights human sinfulness, revealing how true righteousness cannot be achieved through obedience to the law.  We must be transformed through the grace of Jesus Christ to become truly righteous.  

No, the law is not sin, but the law reveals our sin.  The law was made for people of the flesh.  The eternal life that Christ offers is beyond the world of the flesh, and therefore also beyond the law.

It is not our adherence to the law that makes us righteous, but rather it is righteousness through Christ that elevates us above the law.  The righteous don’t need the law. 

“Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it legitimately. This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane.”[87]

This is reminiscent of Kierkegaard’s movement of faith, as exemplified through Abraham.  Recall that the movement of faith is infinite resignation, which opens us up to transcendence, even to the point of transcending the law.  Abraham’s actions toward sacrificing Isaac were justified by the faith he accepted from God, thereby transcending the laws of the flesh.  

Indeed, Paul himself compared being elevated over the law to Abraham being saved by his faith:

“Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham.  And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.’  For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.”[88]

Jesus said He did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law.  In the same way, Paul is impressing on us that, by dying to the flesh and giving ourselves over to Christ in faith, we will no longer be trying to live the law through the effort of obedience, but instead the law will be living in us as evidenced by the fruits of our faith.  In this way, our relationship to the law is linked to our relationship with sin.  Just as sin enslaves only the flesh, so too the law is binding on us only in this life. 

“In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.  While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.  But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.”[89]

We were given the law in this world for several purposes, including for our own good, to better know God and His justice, for guidance in holiness, for revealing our shortcomings, and so forth.  Both Satan and God use the law to test.[90]  

Satan tests us to sow doubt and discouragement so that we turn away from God.  God tests us to reveal the truth about ourselves and about what is keeping us apart from Him.  God uses the law to reveal the sin to the sinner so that the sinner may become a saint.  Satan perverts the law and its existence to sow discord and division between us and God.  Ultimately, Creation was put under the law in the hope that it would be redeemed into its final glory. 

“The creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”[91] 

In other words, the law serves God’s purpose, and God’s purpose turns everything to good.  In the meantime, those who live by the flesh will be held to the laws of the flesh, and those who live in the spirit of Christ will live out Christ’s love.

“Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.”[92]

The fourth, and final, Pauline paradox that we will explore is how the invisible is more real than the visible.  In other words, what lies beyond the universe as we know it represents reality, and the world in which we live and breathe is just a flat projection of reality, like a shadow. 

One of the philosophical consequences of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems is that the existence of our universe necessarily dictates that there is a higher dimension of truth and meaning in which our universe resides.  There must be an existence that transcends and contains our existence. 

Just like a three-dimensional cube forms one “side” of a four-dimensional tesseract, so our universe must represent some flattened aspect of a higher dimensional space.  As three-dimensional beings, we are confined to move within the three-dimensional space of our universe, and therefore we are unable to access the higher dimensions that exist. 

Nonetheless, the fact of our existence indicates that higher dimensional space exists, and the existence of higher dimensional space means that there is an infinite reality beyond our own that operates under a set of rules not subject to ours. 

All of this is to say that, whatever “reality” in which we perceive ourselves to be living, it is but a shadow of what exists beyond.  It is from this perspective that the notion of the invisible being more real than the visible comes into focus.

Scripture hints at the reality of transcendence beyond the dimensions of our universe.  In Ecclesiastes, we are told about the existence of things that are inaccessible to us. 

“Then I saw all the work of God, that no one can find out what is happening under the sun. However much they may toil in seeking, they will not find it out; even though those who are wise claim to know, they cannot find it out.”[93]

Paul echoes that theme when he speaks of a “third heaven.”

“I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows.  And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.”[94]

Whatever this third heaven may be, it seems to provide access to things that are inaccessible to us, and is somehow related to Paradise.  As such, we perhaps can understand this third heaven as representing the higher dimensions in which God resides and in which our eternal existence will be contained. 

Indeed, these dimensions beyond our access and understanding appear to have an eternal element that exists beyond time as we know it, to wit, “He has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”[95] 

The idea of transcendent dimensions beyond ours, along with a clue about how to access them, is planted in Scripture as early as Deuteronomy.

“Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer.”[96]

Thus, there is a heaven of heavens, which perhaps is the third heaven of which Paul speaks, that lies beyond our world.  And despite His transcendence over us, the God who hails from that heaven of heavens has set His heart on us lowly creatures, calling us into a relationship with Him. 

What that requires from us is a circumcision of heart, meaning that we are to cut ourselves off from attachments to world, to this dimension, and consecrate our desires to the transcendent; we are to love what God loves and to hate what God hates.  Paul confirms this when he says, “Real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal.  Such a person receives praise not from others but from God.”[97] 

What we learn from this is that true reality, the reality of the transcendent, is relational and not physical.  The “physical” things we can observe, measure, and interact with are but shadows. 

The only thing that is real is the relationship of love shared by the Father and the Son as manifest by the Holy Spirit, to which we are called to join in a covenant relationship.  After all, what is a covenant other than a mutual belonging; I belong to you, and you belong to me. 

The term “physical reality” might be the ultimate oxymoron, because reality is not defined by what we can observe, and what is physical is not in fact what is most real.  To believe otherwise is to fall into the trap of scientism, which limits truth to only what can be observed and scientifically verified. 

Gödel proved that to be a false belief, and did so using only the tools of science.  The paradox is that matter doesn’t matter.  We must break out of the flat circle of the ouroboros so that, through the cross, we may pursue the transcendent, which is a relationship with God.

Paul pointed out this very issue, saying that through the wonders of creation, God has given us enough evidence of His existence, but that we put the advancement of mankind ahead of the glory of God.[98]  In other words, we put our collective wisdom – law, science, order, and so forth – ahead of Him. 

We worship creation and deny the Creator.  When we put our trust in man, our minds become darkened; yet the world calls it enlightenment, without any awareness of the irony.  Paul said that a follower of Christ must have the mind of Christ.[99] 

Make your own mind into the mind of Christ through humility and worldly detachment, which involves putting other’s needs ahead of your own.  In this way, we value the relational above the physical, and therefore acknowledge the higher reality of the transcendent. 

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”[100] 

In what could have been said by Socrates or Nikolas of Cusa, Paul instructed that anyone who thinks himself to be wise must learn to be a fool.[101]  By learning to be a fool, Paul was referring to being a fool for Christ.  This means turning away from the world and turning to Christ, allowing Him to transform your heart into a temple, lifting the veil that separates you from a relationship with Him. 

This is more than intellectual pursuit of God, which so often results in resisting His paradoxes.  This is seeking to desire God as much as God desires you.  As Paul warned, “Whenever Moses is read, their hearts are covered with a veil, and this veil will not be taken away till they turn to the Lord.”[102]

Paradoxical Themas[103]

Exploring the paradoxes encountered in Scripture and Christianity has made for a long section, and yet it seems we only barely scratched the surface.  Nonetheless, it is worth summarizing a few of the nuggets that we dug up, even if not fully refined.

Christ’s Incarnation teaches us that what ascends must first descend.  According to Paul, “When it says, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.”[104] 

Chesterton viewed this as the paradox of the whole Christian position, “that henceforth the highest thing can only work from below.”[105]  God gave us heaven, we chose hell, and the only way to fix that was for Him to get below us and lift us up.

The Trinity teaches us that three persons in a single unified God is the simplest formation possible for a God who loves and creates.  The Trinity acts only in Unity, and that Unity of action necessitates the Triune nature. 

While we cannot truly understand this, we can grasp from God’s Triune nature that reality emanates from relationship to God, and not from our ability to sense, observed, or measure.  This flips the terminology of Aristotle on its head, turning substance into accident, and turning relationship into real substance. 

Anyone who embraces this paradox should have no problem embracing the real presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ in a wafer and some wine whose accidental substance has not changed but whose real substantial relationship to Christ has. 

How better for God to effect His covenantal promise of “I belong to you and you belong to Me” than to, through the Eucharist, remove the veil that otherwise exists between us and Him, allowing Him to dwell in us and us in Him.[106]

What Christ came to accomplish was nothing short of inverting everything that mankind messed up, and not to merely restore things to the way they were, but to transform and perfect them.  Where Eve’s “no” plunged humanity into darkness, Mary’s “yes” brought the light.  

The temptation of the Original Sin was man wanting to be like God.  In the re-Creation, God became a man.  In so doing, God chose the common and contemptible, the foolish, the weak, and the poor to bring down the wise, powerful, and the rich.  This was prefigured in Hannah’s prayer,[107] fulfilled in Mary’s song of praise,[108] preached by Jesus in the Beatitudes,[109] and memorialized by Paul’s evangelism.[110] 

This was the story of the Israelites, God’s chosen people.  This was the story of the Christ’s disciples, the chosen twelve.  This was the story of Mary and Joseph, the chosen two.  This is the continuing story of Christianity.  This is the story of humanity. 

Christ’s sacrifice on the cross accomplished for man what man could not do.  In the process, a new Creation was born.  The death of Christ was a cosmic event of God forsaking God.  It was a singularity, a division by zero, that produced the infinite inversion necessary to spark re-Creation, just as the singularity of the Big Bang sparked the original Creation.  

Through this re-Creation, Christ accomplished the paradoxes that continue to manifest His salvation: He united Man to God, grafted Gentile to Jew, fulfilled the Law through Love, restored Life through Death, and redeemed the worst Evil to produce the greatest Good. 

---

[1] Of course, as with all good things, this happens by our cooperation with grace, and not from our own initiative. “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” 2 Corinthians 3:18 NRSV-CI.

[2] Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NRSV-CI.

[3] The 73 book canon of the Catholic Bible was established at the Council of Rome in 382 AD.  The Bible remained 73 books for substantially all Christians until the Protestant reformation in or around 1517 AD, when Martin Luther removed 7 books (and some parts of others), resulting in a 66 book Bible.  While the reasons for this are outside the scope of this book, all of the observations made about the structure of Scripture apply equally to both canons.

[4] From https://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/BibleViz.

[5] Mark Twain is often credited with saying that, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.”  I believe this is due to the frailties that are common to the human condition across all of history, culture, and social strata.

[6] “Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” Luke 24:44-45 NRSV-CI.

[7] 1 Corinthians 2:15-16 NRSV-CI.

[8] G.K. Chesterton, “The Crime of Gabriel Gale.”

[9] The Gospel of John, however, does describe many instances where Jesus used metaphors, figures of speech, and riddles in a manner that was integrated into His ongoing teachings, even if such instances cannot properly be considered as parables. 

[10] Isaiah 6:9-10 NRSV-CI.

[11] See Mark 4:11-12 and Luke 8:9-10.

[12] “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  John 12:24 NRSV-CI.

[13] Matthew 13:13-14 NRSV-CI.

[14] Luke 12:41-48.

[15] See Psalms 67:4 for one of myriad examples of how God judges with equity.  We, however, must mete out justice blindly and without out bias, giving no special advantages to the rich and powerful, and granting no special latitude to the poor and needy.  See Leviticus 19:15.

[16] Exodus 19:21 NRSV-CI.

[17] Luke 17:21.

[18] Luke 18:27.

[19] Matthew 6:33 KJV.

[20] Luke 10:29-37.

[21] “He shall not go where there is a dead body; he shall not defile himself even for his father or mother.” Leviticus 19:11 NRSV-CI.

[22] Matthew 13:24-30 NRSV-CI.

[23] Luke 15:11-32.

[24] Augustine’s Confessions, Book 12, part XXV.

[25] For example, Satan tries to tempt Jesus to demonstrate God’s power, reciting part of Psalm 91 in the process: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”  Matthew 4:6.  To this, Jesus answers from Deuteronomy 6:16, saying, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

[26] See Mark 7:34-36.

[27] Mark 9:7.

[28] See Matthew chapter 5.  Another version is set forth in Luke chapter 6.

[29] See John 15:18.

[30] See Luke 1:46-55.  Mary’s song of praise, which we call the Magnificat, echoes the prayer of Hannah, who in her infertility was given a son, Samuel, whom she dedicated to a life of serving God.  Samuel would become a prophet and the one who anointed David, son of Jesse, as king.  Hannah’s prayer is found at 1 Samuel 2:1-10.

[31] See Deuteronomy 18:15.

[32] See Matthew 19:23-26.

[33] Matthew 5:48 NRSV-CI.

[34] See Mark 2:27.

[35] See Matthew 15:11.

[36] See Matthew 22:34-40.

[37] See Mark 2:22.

[38] In Luke 16:16, it is said that people will try to enter the Kingdom of God with violence or force.  Some argue that is a warning, and others argue it is an encouragement.

[39] See Matthew 20:1-16.

[40] See Matthew 18:1-5.

[41] See Luke 2:46-47.

[42] See Luke 10:38-42.

[43] See Matthew 5:44.

[44] Matthew 6:15.

[45] “Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”  Luke 7:47 NRSV-CI.

[46] See Exodus 14:13.

[47] “From the greatest moral evil ever committed, the rejection and murder of God’s only Son, caused by the sins of all men — God, by his grace that ‘abounded all the more,’ brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption.”  Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, paragraph 312.

[48] See Matthew 25:40.

[49] See Matthew 10:34-37.

[50] See Matthew 10:38.

[51] See Matthew 10:39.

[52] See Luke 10:3.

[53] See Mark 8:36, Matthew 16:26, Luke 9:25.

[54] See Matthew 8:23-27.

[55] See Matthew 11:30.

[56] This idea comes from C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce:  that Heaven works backwards to transform one’s past so that one realizes that one has always been there.

[57] Matthew 20:22 NRSV-CI.

[58] See Mark 14:36.

[59] The Everlasting Man, “The Strangest Story in the World.”

[60] 1 Samuel 18:7.

[61] 2 Corinthians 4:16 NRSV-CI.

[62] 2 Corinthians 4:7 NRSV-CI.

[63] See Ecclesiastes 3:20.

[64] 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 NRSV-CI.

[65] The Everlasting Man, “The Witness of the Heretics.”

[66] As G.K. Chesterton said of Christianity in Orthodoxy, and continued, “No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too far to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it was much too far to the west.”

[67] See 1 Corinthians 3:19-20, in which Paul references Psalms 94:11.

[68] See 1 Corinthians 1:18.

[69] See Romans 3:5-8.

[70] See Romans 5:20.

[71] Referring to Nick the bartender in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life.

[72] See Romans 6:1-2.

[73] See 2 Corinthians 12:7-9.

[74] “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today.”  Exodus 14:13 NRSV-CI.

[75] 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 NRSV-CI.

[76] See Romans 8:28.

[77] Romans 6:6-8 NRSV-CI.

[78] The Everlasting Man, “The Strangest Story in the World.” 

[79] Colossians 1:24 NRSV-CI.

[80] Romans 6:19-23 NRSV-CI.

[81] See Romans 12:16, saying to pay no regard to social standing.

[82] See Romans 13:1-7.

[83] See Philippians 2:3-4.

[84] See 1 Corinthians 4:6.

[85] 1 Corinthians 6:13-15 NRSV-CI.

[86] 2 Corinthians 6:16 NRSV-CI (recalling Leviticus 26:12 and Ezekiel 37:27).

[87] 1 Timothy 1:8-9 NRSV-CI.

[88] Galatians 3:6-9 NRSV-CI.

[89] Romans 7:4-6 NRSV-CI.

[90] See 1 Thessalonians 3:5, calling Satan the “tester” or “tempter.”  See 1 Thessalonians 2:4, saying that it is God who tests our hearts.

[91] Romans 8:20-21 NRSV-CI.

[92] Galatians 5:16-18 NRSV-CI.

[93] Ecclesiastes 8:17 NRSV-CI.

[94] 2 Cor. 12:2-4 NRSV-CI.

[95] Ecclesiastes 3:11 NRSV-CI.

[96] Deuteronomy 10:14-16 NRSV-CI.

[97] Romans 2:29 NRSV-CI.

[98] See Romans 1:18-23.

[99] See 1 Corinthians 2:16.

[100] Philippians 2:3-8 NRSV-CI.

[101] See 1 Corinthians 3:18.

[102] 2 Corinthians 3:15-16 NRSV-CI.

[103] Section heading inspired by Douglas Hofstadter’s book Metamagical Themas, which is a collection of columns and essays he wrote relating to the patterns and paradoxes encountered in the quest to understand the essence of the mind.

[104] Ephesians 4:9-10 NRSV-CI.

[105] The Everlasting Man, “The God in the Cave.”

[106] See 1 John 4:13.

[107] See 1 Samuel 2:1-10.

[108] See Luke 1:46-55.

[109] See Matthew 5:1-12.

[110] See 1 Corinthians 1:20-25.