Such welcome and unwelcome things at once ’Tis hard to reconcile.1
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
In the 1500s, there lived a wealthy statesman named Michel de Montaigne. Over a short period of time, he lost his best friend and five of his six children. In 1571, he retired from public life and, during a reclusion that lasted nearly ten years, he explored and wrote about the most troubling aspects of human experience and existence. He called these short writings essays (French for “trial” or “attempt”), thereby inventing the modern writing form “essay.”
In his writings, Montaigne revived a form of skepticism from Ancient Greece that posited the apparent contradictions and inscrutability of life’s great questions. A more recent book by Sarah Bakewell—How to Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer—resurrects Montaigne’s insights.2 One age-old central question—“How should we live?”—and twenty attempts at an answer amid the messiness of life . . . all in one amusingly honest title.
Montaigne was one among many of the great thinkers and writers in history who discovered that life is fraught with paradox. And so is faith.
FAITH AS PARADOX
A paradox is an apparent contradiction, a statement about reality that seems antithetical. Some paradoxes are common and well understood. We all know what it means to speak of a memory or a victory or a relationship as “bittersweet.” And most entrepreneurs understand that “to make money, you have to spend money.”
Between ages three and six, I lived in Holland. For me, the memories of that time and place are just like the movie portrayals of the Netherlands—windmills, tulips, and frozen dikes and canals on which to skate during long, cold winters. We even had a small pond some hundred feet from our back door that froze every winter.
Because I was so young, my mom was careful to communicate time and again the danger of falling through thin ice while skating. She repeatedly taught me that if I ever fell through the ice, I should swim for the dark—not the light—spot above me. This is certainly counterintuitive, but the ice itself looks white from underneath, while the hole in the ice—the path of salvation—appears dark.
Walking by faith rather than sight requires awareness that our eyes can play tricks, reality can be deceiving, and the true path is often counterintuitive.
Life isn’t always logically grounded. Often, we’re hopelessly lost in the nuance and uncertainty of life. The result is, we’re all hungry for concrete answers to deep questions: Why am I here? What is God’s will for my life? And as we discussed in the last chapter, how do I really follow God in areas where it feels absurd?
The paradoxical nature of reality is reflected in Scripture. God’s Word doesn’t sweep the confusing nature of life under the rug, but instead frames the paradox even more explicitly.
Consider these two verses from Luke:
“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (2:14)
“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” (12:51)
This bizarre contradiction is between two verses in the same book. Jesus says something even more inflammatory later, in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” Why is one of the Ten Commandments to honor your parents if Jesus says to hate them?
Logic might lead us to simply dismiss Jesus at this point, but look at what He did in His final moments, while hanging on the cross: “When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, ‘Woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home” (John 19:26–27). If Jesus wants everyone to hate his or her mother, why did He take such loving care of His own mother?
Paul asserted in Ephesians 2:8–9 that we are saved by faith, not by works. Yet James said to a different church that without works, faith is worthless (2:26).
God asks us to draw near to Him and promises He will draw near to us (cf. James 4:8), yet the Psalms often lament the hiddenness of God (cf. Psalm 22:1–3).
What’s going on? Are these passages in conflict, or are they paradoxically pointing out different aspects of faith and obedience?
Think back to the account of Jericho. From our perspective, in hindsight, it all seems to come together and make sense. We understand the value of a memorial, and we know the time spent building one at the Jordan crossing didn’t end up costing a victory or exposing the people to an enemy attack. The Israelites won the victory over a walled city with no loss of life among them. God received the glory, and His people learned (again) not to put their trust in human leaders or their schemes, but instead to obey the will of the One who alone delivers.
But what if we were there without the benefit of hindsight? Would human logic tell us something different? When entering enemy territory, soldiers ought to be in the lead, not priests. Taking the time to lift heavy rocks out of the streambed, commemorating an event when the outcome is still very much in doubt, is just foolishness. It is the strength of armies and weapons that win battles against fortified cities, not the noise of shouting and trumpets. Spoils go to the victors, not to a spirit-deity who has no use for them.
From the perspective of the Israelites themselves, every aspect of God’s command was—at that time—counterintuitive and paradoxical.
POETIC PARADOX
Why is walking by faith better than walking by sight? Because sight alone will not convince us that living for others and trusting God’s leading will lead to life. Early on, our church adopted the motto, coined by our former college pastor Matt Smith: “Give your life away.” The foundation of our local church rests on the idea that we will only find life by losing it. Scripture and Christian faith are replete with many other life-giving paradoxes:
• Die to live.
• Serve to gain.
• Give to receive.
• Lose your life to find it.
• The first will be last.
• The weak will be strong.
• Walk by faith, not by sight.
• Suffering can be blessing.
While in seminary, I ran across the author Henri Nouwen, who articulated the tension—or paradox—of faith as well as anyone I have read. His answer, unlike most I have heard, does not whitewash the messiness of life or explain away the mystery of God. Rather, Nouwen wrote that an essential part of life is learning to “live the questions” faith engenders.3
To wait on the Lord.
To pray our pain.
To accept confusion.
Nouwen’s answer resonates with the honest picture of faith I see in Scripture. Life is, as stated by my Old Testament professor, relentlessly difficult. Jesus promised suffering in Matthew 16:24, and as testified in Scripture, those most clearly called by God and most definitively used by God often are given the most challenging circumstances.
Life is messy. God is mysterious. And accepting this tension-filled truth, no matter the circumstances, is the pathway to peace.
LOST IN THE CLOUDS
My dad was an exchange pilot with the Dutch Navy f lying the P-3 Orion back when we lived in Holland. He was forced to rely on instruments many times in order to get back to his base. On one occasion, he was returning from a long ocean surveillance mission to an airfield at Land’s End in England, where the weather had deteriorated into heavy fog. With less than an eighth of a mile of visibility, he had to make several landing attempts until finally the copilot saw the runway lights emerge at only a hundred feet above the ground. When they finally landed, the fog was so thick that my dad couldn’t see where he was or where to turn. The tower helped them by sending a “follow-me” truck to guide the airplane to the ramp.
When my dad told me his zero visibility stories, he explained how, without sight, one’s equilibrium can be thrown off. Vertigo, he told me, is thinking you are turning when you are actually level, or thinking you are actually level when you are turning. Because you can’t see, your inner ear begins sending your brain false signals. When experiencing vertigo a pilot must be disciplined and rely on his or her instruments, otherwise they might steer the aircraft into the ground while mistakenly believing they are flying straight and level.
Sooner or later, Dad said, a pilot will find himself in a cloud, or fog, or haze and will have to rely solely on instruments. The instrument panel provides an artificial horizon that pilots must trust regardless of what their senses are telling them. It requires training to develop the confidence to overcome our natural instincts and trust what the instruments are saying.
Zero visibility landings can only be accomplished when you have total faith and trust in what your instruments are telling you, even when your senses contradict what you see plainly before you.
The paradoxical nature of the Christian life can give us an awkward sense of not knowing up from down. But I have learned that God’s commands, our trust in His promises, and our reliance on His guidance are the instruments by which we fly.
The temptation when we’re living in the midst of the paradox is to pull back, recoil, lean more on our own understanding, and resist entering into God’s plan for us. In times of uncertainty, we can begin to steer ourselves away from God and toward our own sense of reason. But Proverbs 3:5–7 says:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD and shun evil.
The secret to understanding where to go in life is found not in navigating our way to safety, but rather simply trusting in God’s leading. Trusting that He is good. Trusting that even if we don’t like where He takes us, He’s taking us there for a reason.
CATCH-22
The idea of the catch-22 came into our collective vocabulary from the Joseph Heller novel of the same name. The story involved a fictional World War II air force squadron. The rigors of air combat—the continual need to kill or be killed—could drive a pilot crazy. Recognizing this hazard and not wanting its ranks filled with crazy airmen, the air force instituted a voluntary process for identifying such men. Pilots in the squadron were given the option of taking a psychological evaluation; if they were declared insane, they would be released from further combat.
But there was a catch, referred to in the relevant manual as “Catch-22.” Requesting a psychological evaluation was deemed proof of an airman’s sanity, since it would be crazy not to seek a release from further combat duty.
A catch-22 is not a paradox. Instead, it is a hopeless trap of frustrating, inescapable circularity.
Our tendency is to think that the paradox of faith is a catch-22: if I act selfishly, I’ll be unhappy, but if I act selflessly, I’ll lose all the things that make me happy. But the catch-22 isn’t the whole story: the contradiction is broken by the presence of God.
Walking by sight doesn’t bring the control or sense of satisfaction we desire, and, over time, it guarantees a measure of suffering. Walking by faith, on the other hand, can feel like walking blind—an even more dangerous idea—and we know that it, too, will involve suffering. Both alternatives seem undesirable.
It is the faithfulness, the promise, and the presence of God that give us a way out of the catch-22. He promises a path of life through the paradox:
• Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:39).
• It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35).
• Givers prosper; misers lose everything (Proverbs 11:24).
• Blessed are the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3).
• Refresh others and you will be refreshed (Proverbs 11:25).
Walking in the paradox is only possible if God’s view is bigger than the human view. We have a limited view of reality. God, we’re told, has an all-knowing perspective.
Even so, the questions are relentless: Is this all just a bunch of Christian spiritual talk? Should I really risk everything and bank on God? How do I know that God will catch me if I take the leap off the cliff?
Faith is the art of living forward in obedience, not in the absence of questions like these, but in the face of them.
Faith marches through the paradox.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
—PROVERBS 3:5–6