Quotes about Paradox

I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.

his biggest problem was his need for a problem.

Here is suffering's paradox: the very things we would do anything to avoid, the very things that confront our understanding of who we are, and the very things that cause us the most pain become the very things that usher into our lives the blessings of the help, hope, peace, and rest that we all long to experience.

It contradicts our normal thinking, but the doorway to freedom is submission. When I acknowledge that I am a danger to myself and submit to the authority, wisdom, and grace of God, I am not killing any hope I have for freedom. The opposite is true.

The law of love is the ultimate law because it is the negation of law; it is absolute because it concerns everything concrete. The paradox of final revelation, overcoming the conflict between absolutism and relativism, is love.

Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

In other words, I believe that faith in the Creator is necessarily transrational (not antirational) and mystical. I try to remember that as I work through intellectual challenges—and I mean work through, not avoid.

Christianity is a setup for letting go of certainty. The two pillars of the Christian faith express the mystery of faith: incarnation and resurrection. Of course, there's more to the Christian faith, but two elements make Christianity what it is, and both dodge our powers of thought and speech.

We should feel free to see a tension in Paul's thinking, a paradox as I mentioned earlier: what God has done in Jesus is deeply connected to Israel's story while at the same time breaking out of the confines of that story. As soon as we try to resolve that paradox in Paul we will misunderstand him.

But doubt is not the enemy of faith, a solely destructive force that rips us away from God, a dark cloud that blocks the bright warm sun of faith. Doubt is only the enemy of faith when we equate faith with certainty in our thinking.

Paradoxically, the challenges of our day-to-day existence are sustained reminders that our life of faith simply must have its center somewhere other than in our ability to hold it together in our minds.

Trust like this is an affront to reason, the control our egos crave. Which is precisely the point. Trust does not work because we have captured God in our minds. It works regardless of the fact that, at the end of the day, we finally learn that we can't.