Resting in the Paradoxes
I've just finished reading Blink, by Ted Dekker. It's fun, but I got headaches as often as his
main character did, trying to juggle all the possible futures bouncing off the
walls of his super smart brain.
The spiritual theme of the book wraps itself around the
mind-boggling concept that human beings have free will, and that, through
prayer as well as through their active choices, they can change things, even
though God is sovereign.
How can both things be true?
If we really have free choice, doesn't that rule out the possibility
that God is sovereign?
This is the kind of dilemma we run up against whenever we
try to figure out most everything about the nature and character of God.
How can He be both totally God and totally man?
How can He be three and yet only one?
How can He be holy and allow evil in the world?
The struggle is like holding onto mercury. Whenever we think we're getting close to
solving the dichotomy, we discover we've lost part of the truth down a black
hole.
In fact, I would venture to guess that every heresy that has
ever challenged the true biblical version of the Christian faith has resulted
from an attempt to reconcile one or another of these paradoxes.
But they cannot
be reconciled in this life. In the
extra-dimensions we'll inhabit as immortal beings we may find they come
together, but in the meantime, we need to be content to live with the puzzle
pieces unconnected.
That means we quit trying to figure it out and live as if
both are true. We act as if our choices
matter, about what we do and what we decide to pray for. But we trust that God, in His sovereignty,
can weave the strands of our imperfect choices into the tapestry of His perfect
will.
In doing so we acknowledge, with awesome wonder, that we
matter. We are not puppets. We can change the world. This recognition will give great incentive to
our actions and great power to our prayers.
At the same time, we are able to relax in the security of
knowing that an all-powerful and all-loving God, like a mother eagle, swoops
under us when we fall, carries us on his wings when we grow tired, and cheers
for us when we learn to soar.
We can rest in the paradoxes.
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