Making Sense of Christian Paradoxes

The film Catch Me If You Can tells the real-life story of Frank Abagnale, Jr., a teenager who impersonates an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer and extorts more than $4 million – all before his 20^th birthday. If I were to write a movie with such a plot line, I’d be laughed out of Hollywood for coming up with such an unrealistic story. Indeed, truth is often stranger than fiction. 

The Christian faith is strange like this, because so many of its teachings are so contrary to human expectations. It’s true: Christianity is filled with paradoxes that go against the grain of your natural line of thinking – you expect one thing, you get blindsided by another. Consider the following examples: 

God is love, but he requires justice. The Christian God is all-loving, but he still will punish those who don’t come to him. 

God is one God, but three “persons.” Talk about confusing – the idea of the Trinity is surely the most difficult concept to grasp in all of Christianity. God is one God, but reveals himself in three “persons” – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Chapter 7 explores this mind-bending topic. 

God is fully in control, but humans have free choice. The Bible makes it clear that God is all-powerful and is actively engaged in this world, but at the same time, allows people to have the freedom to make their own decisions and be responsible for the decisions they make. 

Jesus was fully God and fully man. Core to the Christian belief is that Jesus was a man who walked on the earth and who was both fully God and fully man. Confused? Flip to Chapter 5. 

God is all-powerful, but he died for humans. Because Jesus was fully God, it follows then that God – in the person of Jesus Christ – literally died for humanity. How can an infinite, eternal God die? And why did he do it? See Chapter 3 for more on this paradox. 

Humans can’t earn their way to heaven by being good. A key Christian belief goes against the rugged individualistic fabric of culture today. It says that you can’t pull yourself up by your own bootstraps (go on over to Chapter 15 for more). In other words, being a good person or keeping the Ten Commandments (see Exodus 34) won’t help you earn God’s favour and get you into heaven. Instead, it’s God’s grace alone that saves you, not yourself (go to Chapter 3 for the lowdown on grace). 

The Church is full of sinners. To some, the fact that Christians can’t seem to live out their faith consistently is grounds for dismissing the truth of the Christian faith. Yet, ironically, the sin in a Christian’s life only serves to underscore a core part of the Christian teaching – that all people have and will continue to sin as long as they live on this earth. See Chapter 15 for a full discussion on this subject. 

Ironically, these paradoxes of the Christian faith serve to underscore its truth. As C.S. Lewis once said, “Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons why I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed” (Mere Christianity, Harper san Francisco, 2001). 

Understanding How the Branches of the Church Came About

Most every human organization has groupings within it. Corporations have divisions and branches. Pro football divides its teams into two conferences, while professional baseball has two separate leagues. Professional wrestling probably has some kind of division to it as well, but I was too scared to ask. 

The Christian Church is no different. Although it started out as a unified entity and remained so for a thousand years, geography and doctrinal differences eventually caused a split in A.D. 1054 between the Western Church (Catholic) centred in Rome and the Eastern Church (Orthodox) centred in Constantinople. Then, nearly five hundred years later, the Protestant Reformation caused a new group, called the Protestants, to emerge from the Catholic Church. These three major divisions of the Church – Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox – remain to this day. 

Protestants further divide into many different denominations; some of the most notable are Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Anglican. Although these denominations agree on the major issues of the Protestant Reformation, they’ve tended to divide based on differences in doctrine and perspectives on how churches should be structured and governed.

 

The Catholic Church is the largest of the three major branches in the world, while the Protestant Church is the largest segment in North America (though it too is dispersed throughout the world). The Orthodox (Eastern) Church is more geographically oriented, being dominant in Greece, Russia, and parts of Eastern Europe and less elsewhere. You find out all about the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in Chapter 10 and about the Protestants in Chapter 11.