The Christian Paradox
Abstract
This essay disputes a certain idea that is making its way in Christianity, that of the supposed incomprehensibility of God.
Article Topics
[ The Doctrine of God » God the Son ] :: [ The Doctrine of God » God the Father ] :: [ The Doctrine of God » God the Holy Spirit ] :: [ The Doctrine of God » The Godhead ] :: [ The Doctrine of the Christian Life » Christian Behavior ] :: [ The Doctrine of the Christian Life » The Law of God ] ::
One of the ideas that arise out of the bewildering mass of non-Christian religions is that God is something incomprehensible, an entity that encompasses everything in the universe. It is the force that powers life yet it can be found whole or in its essence in any part of that universe, say a flower, or a human being. A natural extension of such a line of thought leads one to conclude that he or she is a god.
Furthermore, the desire to know God and to love Him is characterized as a foolish attempt at omnipotence and omniscience in such religions. A truly “righteous person” is supposedly one who has accepted the idea that he knows nothing nor will he ever know anything about God. Such a man should not talk about God, and should not even mention His name, yet he should live the truth and justice that God embodies. The ultimate purpose of such a man is to pursue the most perfect development of his human powers. That is the only reality that matters to him.
Let’s take a look at similar ideas:
“Tao [the force that is supposedly God] normally does nothing, so there’s nothing that it cannot do”, Lao-tse (Eastern mystic and philosopher).
“My words are very easy to understand and very easy to follow; yet there is nobody in this world that can understand them and follow them”, Lao-tse.
“The Tao that can be followed is not the everlasting, unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the everlasting, unchanging name”, Lao-tse.
“We look at it and we don’t see it so we call it Invisible. We listen for it and we cannot hear it so we call it That Which Cannot Be Heard. We try to catch it and we cannot, so we call it the Intangible. It cannot be described with any of these three attributes. So we put them together and we obtain The One [again, refers to the force that is supposedly God]”, Lao-tse.
These quotes are what they call paradoxes, ideas that are supposed to start unlocking your potential if you meditate on them. Okay, but speaking as a Christian, do you want any of the following:
- Do you want a God that “normally does nothing”?
- Do you want a God whose words cannot be understood and cannot be followed?
- Do you want a God that cannot be seen, heard or described?
In the Christian religion, the Bible is given to new followers with the express desire that they might search it and know God. The Bible itself encourages self-study! Here are a few verses:
- “The heart of the righteous studieth to answer”, Proverbs 15:28.
- “Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read”, Isaiah 34:16.
- “Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ”, Ephesians 3:4.
- “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.” Revelations 1:3.
- “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me.” John 5:39.
So which would you rather have as a Christian? A god that lives somewhere within you and you cannot ever expect to understand or communicate with, or a logical, loving God who created you for the express purpose of spending eternity with Him so you may know Him better?
1st Christian Paradox: “Know God, and you shall have true power.”
Such power does not reside within you. If it did, why are you sick sometimes? Why do you get old? Why is your mind so filled with bad thoughts at times? Why do people lie, cheat, steal, rape, murder and give themselves up completely to hedonism when they get the chance? Because they are gods inside? No. It’s because without God, we are left to the mercy of the devil and his minions. And they know exactly what to do to get us to deprave ourselves completely.
But you might say, “Wait a minute, I know of non-Christian people who are the embodiment of what Christian people ought to be! They are kind, gentle, honest people! How do you explain that?” There are three explanations that occur to me:
- None of us knows what lies in the minds of others. We are not mind readers. We can only assume, based on appearances, and appearances often deceive.
- The Bible itself states that many non-Christians will be saved for the sake of their good lives. In other words, some people just have the willpower and innate sense of morality to keep themselves free of sin without guidance, without having ever heard of Jesus Christ or the Bible.
- I believe that once we become Christians, we are put through trials. Many of us fail at the first sign of temptation, and although we remain Christians in name, our deeds speak differently. Again, don’t judge by appearances alone. Jesus Christ said: “by their fruits you shall know them.”
If you start playing the comparison game, let me ask you this: shouldn’t your salvation be more important to you than the lives/beliefs of others? Should you be concerned about what other people are doing to get saved, or should you devote your time to making sure you’re saved first?The Bible also states that everyone will be judged according to the light that they have received. The mere fact that you are a Christian and are reading this article makes you responsible for living up to the knowledge that you have gained. Other people who were not as lucky as you and never heard of Christ made the best of it and lived up to all of the light that they had. If God finds them righteous in the final balance, they will go to heaven. But your concern should be whether God would find you righteous in the final balance.
As Christians, we must be careful, because erroneus ideas are slowly seeping onto our religion and are adopted by some of us without careful consideration. Why? Because many of us do not try to know God. We do not read His Word. We are content to simply go to church once a week or less, and we think that’s enough. When we do that, we set ourselves up to fail.
We do not realize that the idea of an incomprehensible God attacks the very foundation of our Christianity: Jesus Himself. The main purpose of Christ’s ministry here on Earth was for us to know Him, our Creator. He didn’t spend his days and nights roaming the land of Israel for His pleasure or for the pleasure of his disciples. He did it so that people may know His nature, His expectations, that we may come to know Him and understand Him, that we may begin to grasp the nature of His love for us.
Yet these new ideas are saying that we cannot comprehend God and we shouldn’t even try. What’s worse, they say that Jesus isn’t the Son of God, that he is only a human being. What divine guide do we then have for our daily living? What Godly example? Read on and find out what they’re saying.
Virtually all new age religions predicate that all adepts must first read through certain texts and devote time each and every day to continual study, which in itself is a paradox considering their God’s supposed incomprehensibility.
Let’s follow a hypothetical question and answer session:
Q: “On the one hand, you say that God cannot be comprehended or known, yet on the other hand, a new follower of such a religion must study entire books before they are admitted into the faith. To what purpose?”
A: “To acquaint yourself with the principles and philosophy of such a religion, of course.”
Q: “To what end is it necessary to acquaint myself with the philosophy and principles of this religion since I am already a god and possess all of the power and knowledge that I need?”
A: “Because you need to learn how to unlock the potential within you.”
Q: “How can you teach me to unlock something incomprehensible and inexpressible through mere words, written or not?”
A: “Because these are not just any words. They’re inspired words, written by the Great Masters before you, who are now immortal and ready to assist you in your quest to unleash your hidden powers and reach your true potential.”
Q: “So what you are saying is that instead of being able to know God, I cannot know God, but I must get to know these Masters, who have written these “sacred” writings and have achieved immortality?”
A: “Yes.”
Q: “How did they achieve immortality?”
A: “By living by the principles outlined in these books that they wrote.”
Q: “But how did they know these principles?”
A: “They were told to them by other Masters.”
Q: “And how did these other Masters get their knowledge and become immortal themselves?”
A: “[Pause]…God helped them do that.”
Q: “I thought you said God was not a person and not a thing. You said he’s incomprehensible and one cannot communicate with him or know him. How then did he communicate with these people?”
A: “[Pause]… I don’t know, but he must have, or else these books and the Masters wouldn’t exist.”
Q: “I thought you said God was a force, living in all of us, including me, and this force must be unleashed.”
A: “Yes, that’s what I said.”
Q: “Well then these first Masters must have unleashed their own powers somehow. How did they do it without guidance? Freak accident? Were they more talented than me? Was it fate? How did it happen?”
A: “[Pause]… I don’t know. Probably fate. It was their destiny. It was bound to happen.”
Q: “So basically, you can’t tell me what your religion is really based on, I can’t understand God, I supposedly possess the knowledge and power to “pull myself up by my own bootstraps”, yet I am a slave to fate/destiny and I need to read the “sacred”, “inspired” writings of some Masters in order to do unleash my powers. Furthermore, I don’t know who inspired them when they wrote these books, since you’ve just told me that neither they nor I can communicate with God because he’s only a force, an immovable, incomprehensible something that powers the Universe, a fuel, so to speak. That’s some pretty shaky ground for the foundation of a religion.”
A: “You’re twisting my words!”
Q: “Am I really?”
When such religions are put through the litmus test, one quickly runs into lots of walls. As freeing as they say they are, they become very restricting once one really gets to know them from the inside. One must devote time every day to meditation and prayer to such Masters, must donate increasingly larger sums of money or efforts to their causes, and finds himself not empowered, but a literal slave to the voices of the Masters, which after a certain point, can always be heard, taunting, pushing, torturing the person, until the poor man is forced to do what they ask of him.
Yet when one becomes a true Christian, peace reigns within his heart. Life becomes pleasurable once more. Love for one’s family and friends increases, and more love is gotten in return. The law of God doesn’t weigh heavily on one’s shoulders. Jesus Christ said it Himself: “My burden is light.” The Christian believer cherishes respecting the Law, because he has embraced God’s will. He lives through God and is thus freed from the world and its snares. He discovers the freedom within the laws that now define his existence. Sounds like a paradox? Maybe, but you’re much better off trying to figure out this paradox than thinking about others.
2nd Christian Paradox: “Enslave yourself to God, and you shall gain freedom.”
Don’t believe me? Here are just a few verses from the Bible:
- “O Lord, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds. I will offer to thee sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord.” Psalms 116:16.
- “And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.” Mark 9:35.
- “The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants: and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate.” Psalms 34:22.
Another erroneous idea is that of the immortality of the soul. This is a big issue, and I cannot go into it in detail here. But throughout the ages, it has led to some rather ridiculous notions and popular fears, such as ghosts, goblins, vampires, and the notion of hell as an everlasting fire with devils and pitchforks and what not. The whole thing is outlandish if one really stops to examine the Bible and what it says about death. I won’t do that in this article, because here I am only interested in the reactions that these notions produce in people. It makes them afraid, it makes them fear death, ghosts, dead people, etc. The list goes on and on. The fear of death further extends into other areas of life, such as one’s fear of other people because they might hurt or even kill you.
Once one gets deeper into the new age religions, depending on which he or she might go into, they are either afraid of the masters, or afraid of the spirits that might harm them if they don’t do their bidding. It is a chain reaction that leads one down the path of enslavement to a self-sustaining ideology from which there is no seeming escape.
This kind of problem doesn’t exist with true Christianity. Even if you were a misguided Christian and you were to believe that there are spirits floating around after death, here is what the Bible says you should do:
- “Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 25:17.
- “Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land… the Lord is with us: fear them not.” Numbers 14:9.
- “Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.” Deuteronomy 6:13.
- “Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” Deuteronomy 31:6.
- “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7.
So you see, you have no reason to fear anything if you fear the Lord. Not only will he guard you against any harm, but he will also allow you to get to know him, as it is written in Proverbs 1:7. This brings the article around full circle, and certainly puts to shame the idea that God is incomprehensible and unknowable.
We as Christians have access to God like no one else does. We know Him through Jesus Christ, his Son and our Savior. We know he is a kind, loving, gentle God who understands each of us completely and forgives us. He also defends us from the attacks of the world and of the devils. No thing can happen to us unless he ordains it.
3rd Christian Paradox: “Fear God with all your heart, and you will be courageous.”
If ever any philosopher should confront you about your faith, you just give them these three paradoxes to think about. Because that’s really what the Christian religion is to an outsider: a paradox. It’s a paradox that it ever got started and spread like wildfire in an age when paganism was at an all time high, and it’s a paradox that it has not only survived, but also flourished through the ages.
But we know better, don’t we? We know why it’s still here. Because it is the fulfillment of the Bible prophecies regarding the Messiah. Just as Judaism was God’s shining light in the darkness of the BC world, Christianity is God’s shining light in the AD world. It points the way to Christ’s glorious second coming and the erasure of all that is sin in this world.
Footnotes:
i. Fromm, Erich (1956). Art of loving. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.
ii. Ibid.
iii. Ibid.
iv. Ibid.
v. Ibid.
vi. Baron, Will (1991). Deceived by the New Age.
vii. Ibid.
