Whether we realize it or not, our lives are ruled by paradox, that is, by things and statements seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense but true nevertheless. We know, for instance, that we can both love and hate another person at the same moment or that, with Mary Shelley, the ’silence of midnight’ can ring in our ears. As parents, we understand that our job is to work ourselves out of a job – to raise our children to be independent of ourselves. Examples are legion.
Thoroughgoing Christians understand paradox in a more profound way still. Christian truths are regnant with paradox: that God is three yet one, that He is both with us and yet everywhere. That Christ was both God and man and that the two selves were simultaneously united and completely separate. That ‘him who would be first must be last’ and that to gain our lives we must lose them for Christ’s sake.
Christians are told not trust entirely to their own reason or common sense, but to listen to the ’still, small voice’ of God’s spirit, who speaks quietly in ways that apparently defy human reason. As the Bible and our own experience illustrate, much of divine guidance is counter-intuitive and places us in a position of willing dependence.
John Donne understood paradox. He was a man who drank deeply from life’s cup and who came to see that none of us are islands to ourselves and that our existence is bound up with others. Although something of a skeptic as a younger man, later in life he came to a profound Christian faith, fully appreciating its paradoxical nature. In his poetry – particularly his ‘Holy Sonnets’, Donne often used carnal metaphors to illustrate the seeming contradictions of our relationship to God. Here is Sonnet XIV:
Batter my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captivated and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
I submit that it’s paradox that makes much of life interesting. What do you think?
