The Paradox of the Christian Faith

I have been reading A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God.  It's a fabulous Christian classic on prayer and spiritual formation.  I came across this quote:

To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.  St. Bernard stated this holy paradox in a musical quatraing that will be instantly understood by every worshipping soul:

We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still:
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill

(A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, Kindle Version, Location 114)

I pondered these words deeply and reflected upon the truth of them.  Christians indeed are caught in a paradox of knowing and unknowing.  We are fully known by God, and this brings both a great comfort and a great fear.  Comfort in understanding that God knows us.  Fear in that He knows every single part of us including those thoughts we keep hidden from others because they reflect poorly upon us.  We live in this tension.

We also live in the tension of knowing God and the mystery of God.  I happen to believe those who say God is fully mystery and cannot be known are wrong.  God has indeed revealed Himself to humankind.  Christians believe that God Himself entered into humanity by taking on flesh in the person of Jesus.  As such, we received the revelation of God.  We received knowledge of Him.  We received His teaching.  He continues to reveal Himself to us if our ears, eyes, and hearts are attuned to Him.  Yet, despite His revelation to us; despite the fact we can know God, we can never know Him fully.  He is still a mystery to us.  Therefore, I also believe those who say we can absolutely know God are wrong as well.  We live in the paradox.

We also take heart in knowing the loving, forgiving nature of God.  We know we have been condemned by our failure to live up to God's commands.  We read His statutes as revealed in Scripture, and we know we would be in trouble if it were not for Christ's taking our sins upon Him to the cross!  Knowing of His sacrifice, we rest assured that we are forgiven.  Our conscience is eased.  Yet, at the same time our conscience is eased, there is a flicker that desires to do better.  There is a spur that urges us to seek to fulfill the commands of Christ.  There is a longing to be the person God wants us to be--to achieve His Will in our lives.  The longing leads us to try the impossible once again--to achieve perfection.  But our eventual failure leads us right back to the foot of the cross once more to be comforted.  We never break out of this cycle.  It's the paradox of being comforted and forgiven for our inability to achieve perfection and our desire to attain it as we seek to be God's children.

We are also affected by the paradox of the Kingdom of God.  We know that God's Kingdom is an ever present reality.  We know it is in the world breaking in at times and places often unlooked for or unexpected.  But we also know it is not fully manifest.  We know we only get glimpses.  Here but not here.  Another paradox.

And as we seek to live the life of faith, we find at times an overwhelming peace that passes all understanding.  In the midst of the storms of life, our hearts remain calm for we know who is in charge.  Yet, strangely enough this peace does not allow us to be still.  It propels us to go into the world where there is not peace.  It unsettles us enough to where we are not content with the way things are, but we hunger for that which should be.  The peace in our hearts makes us unsettled when we see injustice, hunger, pain, and suffering.  The peace in our hearts becomes unsettling when we realize many have not touched that peace and that God wishes that peace to be held by all people.  Quite the paradox that the Christian faith leads to both peace and discomfort at the same time.

And so we see that as we live in this paradox: of knowing God and not knowing God, of saint and sinner, of knowing our imperfections and striving to be perfect, of seeing the Kingdom but not seeing the Kingdom, we find ourselves seeing that we are both inside and outside, full and hungry, satisfied and longing all at the same time. 

Perhaps the secret to living the full Christian life is to embrace the tension and live it fully.