All of our lives we are faced with what we find in paradox and contradiction. This is referred to several times in these Pages. Taken together they are main factors in understanding the contexts of the world and our functioning both personally and socially. They, paradox and contradiction, are worthy of study in that for some persons they seem to point away from faith, and for others they nudge toward faith. If there be God, why is there so much contradiction/paradox; why so many poor and so few rich; why so many in illness and so many in health; why so many in ignorance and so many educated? The questions of opposites are long. True equality and opportunity seem far away. The matter aggravates us and we seek to understand what seems to be the cursing and blessing we experience in both personal and social contexts. Israel, on the cusp of entry into the Promised Land stopped for a cultural extravaganza at Mounts Ebal and Gerizim. Half the tribes from one mountain shouted Amen (heard and understood) to the curses announced and half from the other mountain Amen to the blessings announced. (Deuteronomy 27:11-28:68 and 30:19) The curses were indicative of death: the blessings of life. Moses told the people to choose life. The contradictions and paradoxes offer choice. Here was evidence that mankind is set free. God and his children choose blessing to life, but some persons choose cursing to death. Although God does not approve the curses of human life, he takes on grace responsibility because he could surely prevent whatever mankind chooses to happen. He makes a way so to rescue us from the curses and maintain the gift of freedom. All persons choosing the faith of God must freely choose him as the father of their lives. God woos us for protection of God’s image in us. He permits us to make choices so to protect human freedom – a freedom that is part of the nature of God so must appear in the children of God. All genuine freedom, like all genuine love, extends from God’s nature – often emotional in common grace but cerebral in divine.
Again – because God can, at will, remove anything in the creation that violates his nature and does not remove it, he makes a way of escape. That escape is sometimes found in natural grace, and sometimes in divine grace. He is the author of both. Natural grace is largely found in the laws of nature, and much of our lives in discovering what that is for family, health, peace, love, work, with human responsibilities and graces that may be cultivated in us. Spiritual grace offers a way of forgiveness for error, and standards characterizing God’s kingdom, with offers for citizenship in God’s kingdom, a heavenly citizenship that adds to the earth citizenship, an ambassadorial role for the Christian. (2 Corinthians 5:20) Scripture does not make the above explanation a clever contrivance. It comes from the mountain of blessing so to avoid, or reduce, the cursing from yonder mountain. We may prefer a different plan, one that we presume to be better and more suitable to human limitations. The human is not the one to make the rules of anything that relates to God, but for him to inform us about that so making us acceptable to him. He doesn’t have to be accountable to anyone other than himself. He cannot deny himself, which is to say he cannot do anything that defies his nature. So there are some matters that he does not will to approve. Ultimately that unapproved must be disposed of in some way. If we acquiesce he takes on the matter.
There are several things that have bothered me in the contradiction/paradox understanding relating to earth experience and God’s holy and loving sovereignty and life affirmation. These include the human treatment of children (innocence), of the horrors of warfare, of the failures of the gifted of the world (especially those with the gifts of wealth and knowledge to aid the needy), and several other issues that seem to overcome society. At the end of search I conclude that God will make up the wrongs of mankind in his own way. (Some theoreticians believed that God will permit every innocent child to return to earth during the final millennium to live out the life that would have been theirs had justice been served.) We are even wiser to believe that the loving God of our creation and spiritual recovery is quite in control of all that brings justice to all that emanates from him. He will sift it out well. For Christians the paradoxes and contradictions are folded into the mystery of faith so become part of lives. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020