In our Easter celebrations last weekend, we started what will be a several week conversation called An Invitation to the Upside Down…because Jesus was inviting all of us to follow him in living what can only be called an upside down, inside out, counter intuitive, counter cultural life.
Anyone who genuinely follows him will live a life that can best be described as The Paradoxical Life. There is no Christianity without paradoxes because Christianity itself is one huge paradox. The truth of Christmas or the incarnation, is housed in the paradox of God becoming a man. The crucifixion paradoxically satisfies both…the mercy of God and the justice of God. The crucifixion eventually gives way to resurrection laying the foundation for the greatest paradox of all…God brings life from death.
A paradox is truth disguised as contradiction…and in some of Jesus’ most prominent teachings…he lays down the principles of his kingdom and gives us insight on what the upside down life looks like…by using the tension between two competing or paradoxical ideas.
