Rational Dreaming
One of the aspects of Christianity (at least the more fundamentalist version thereof) that has long puzzled me, is the way it claims that the human race, is both the pinnacle of God’s creation, worthy of God’s love and total devotion, and the vilest thing to have ever walk the face of the Earth, the lowest of the low, worthy only of the cruelest of fates and eternal damnation.
I am not alone in noticing this paradox. As Christopher Hitchens says, at the beginning of chapter six of his book “God Is Not Great,”
There is a central paradox at the core of religion. The three great monotheisms teach people to think abjectly of themselves, as miserable and guilty sinners prostrate before an angry and jealous god who, according to discrepant accounts, fashioned them either out of dust and clay or a clot of blood. [...] On the other hand, and as if by way of compensation, religion teaches people to be extremely self-centered and conceited. It assures them that god cares for them individually, and it claims that the cosmos was created with them specifically in mind.
Of course, religion’s paradoxical view of humankind’s position in the universe is extremely useful to its adherents. It allows them to assume the aura of extreme abasement and modesty when claiming to be doing things in “God’s name,” while simultaneously allowing them to attack naturalism and atheism as concepts which reduce human beings to nothing better than unthinking farmyard animals.
Since, as unsaved human beings, non-Christians are supposedly deserving to a fate far worse than the one the lowliest of farmyard animals will suffer, it’s hard no to laugh when non-believers are attacked in this manner. I guess using their twisted logic, a special place in Hell is a step up in importance from simple oblivion… somehow.
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One Response to The Convenience of Paradoxical Thinking
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There is no paradox. Man was initially created in the image of God, for fellowship with God. Man had free-will and disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit. With this disobedience, sin entered man’s very nature, thus separating him from a Holy God.
Yet God formed himself a people from this world, that would be set apart in holiness for Him, the Jews. It was prophesied over thousands of years, that the Messiah would come, who would restore the Jews to a fuller relationship with God, not of the letter (Mosaic Law), by of the Spirit.
The Messiah/Jesus Christ came fulfilling many many amazing prophecies that had been made over thousands of years. He was God and Man, the most significant person ever, so significant he changed the very calendar of the world(BC to AD).
Jesus Christ came firstly for the Jews, he came to be the payment for sin, to reconcile man to his Creator, that we might be new creatures in Christ (2 Cor 5:21), but also that we might have the victory over sin by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ as the perfect spotless Lamb of God satisfied the wrath of a just God, as God the Father poured out his wrath on His only begotten Son, for the sin of a fallen and lost humanity, that we Gentiles might be saved from the wrath of God, saved from the Hell we deserve.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16
So, there is no current paradox, there was the initial rebellion against God and the subsequent daily rebellion of man created by God. Man WAS (past tense!) worthy of God’s love etc. devotion, but now is worthy of damnation. Yet God, in His mercy, is so longsuffering and merciful to even let us man exist and in His great love poured out his wrath on His own Son, so that we can be reconciled to a living relationship with him.
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. John 14:6