Easter Meditation

Letting go of rationales to embrace paradox

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

paradox, noun

par·​a·​dox // ˈper-ə-ˌdäks

1: one (such as a person, situation, or action) having seemingly contradictory qualities or phases

2a: a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true

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Jesus is a person. The Godhead is a person.

We don’t want that, I think. We want our faith to have bullet points condensed into Cliff Notes so that we can easily reference what we need to do to get what we want. It should make sense, the getting of righteousness, blessing, and peace. There should be a math to it, a scientific means of favor with God.

And so we have a hard time wrapping our heads around a man who claimed to be a king, but was born into pauper’s circumstances, died the death of a criminal, and then couldn’t even afford his own burial. He was a political refugee grown into a subversive religious zealot who was murdered by the Roman state at the behest of the Jewish religious state. He had no fighters, no headquarters, no crown. That’s all hard enough to grasp, and then we’re told that he is the same being as the Creator of the Cosmos, yet is also separate. And then we’re told he’s gone, but his spirit (soul? heart? presence? what?) remains here with us, but it’s not actually his spirit; it’s a distinct being from the other two beings, yet he is those self-same beings simultaneously. And he said he would return soon, but that was two thousand years ago.

Our belief system is fundamentally irrational unless Jesus actually rose from the dead, which would validate every claim he ever made, as bonkers as those claims were. But how do we trust the record of that resurrection when the four writings documenting that miracle contradict themselves at times? If they’re true, why aren’t they easily true?

Why is this hard? If God is so real, surely he’s hiding himself on purpose because this often feels about as real as a nice watch you bought online that you thought was genuine but upon further inspection is just a reasonably crafted replica, and you didn’t know any better, so now you feel swindled.

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