Last week on The World and Everything in It George Grant considered “The Wisdom of paradox.” He concludes his reflection, that Christmas is “the greatest and most remarkable paradox of all is revealed: He who was infinite, was yet an infant; He who was eternal, was yet born of a woman; He who was almighty, was yet nursing at His mother’s breast; He who was upholding the universe, was yet carried in His mother’s arms. Thus, Chesterton exclaimed, ‘Outrushing the depth of the fall of man is the height of the fall of God. Glory to God in the Lowest.’”
“Glory to God in the lowest.” What a mind-bending truth.
Recently we had someone over and as the night came to a close Angel warmly offered, “Let’s do this again soon!” I wilted as I processed just how many things were on our calendar in the coming month. Just like Angel did, I wanted to be with them again and soon, but her invitation made me flinch.
My wife Angel and I are very different people. Angel brings light and life everywhere. People are drawn to her, and she is drawn to people. One of the many things I love about Angel is how she gets caught up in a moment with people. In that space, it’s not unusual that she shares hopes with those we are with of spending more time together. And she means it: there is no doubt of her genuineness.
“I don’t compare myself with anybody, but nobody is better.” Michael Jordan
“They say the sky’s the limit, but I think my potential is beyond it.” Jay-Z
“I won’t be happy until I’m as famous as God” Madonna
“I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend.” Freddie Mercury
“We’re more popular than Jesus now.” John Lennon
We tend to expect that greatest among us are also some of the most arrogant. And why wouldn’t they be? For many who make it to the top of their field, we can see how that arrogance can be a driving force for their greatness.
God became flesh.
Let that sink in. Christianity asserts that God—sovereign, immutable, omnipotent, other—the eternal God who has no beginning and end—became a human being.
Because many of us have had exposure to Christianity from our early years, it is easy to miss how massive the theological implications of the incarnation are. The incarnation lays the groundwork for a God who chooses to participate in his creation. The incarnation denies the existence of an abstract and distant God, unmuddied by his handiwork.
“God did not, as the Bible says, create man in his own image; on the contrary, man created God in his own image.” Ludwig Feuerbach dropped this theological bombshell three years before Friedrich Nietzsche’s birth. Feuerbach, a name forgotten by most, but who influenced Nietzsche, wrote these words in his book, The Essence of Christianity (1841). He argued that human beings project their own attributes and desires onto an imagined deity, creating God in their own image. This for Feuerbach, is the essence of Christianity (and indeed all religions), the deification of our human ideals. “What man wishes to be, he makes his God… God is the outward projection of a man’s inward nature.”
There is no topic we love discussing more than ourselves. The self-discovery industry has never had more pull than it does in the contemporary West.
Christians might be tempted to push back on all of the obsession of self-discovery and reject it as ungodly. John Calvin, the 16th-century French Reformer, would disagree with this assessment. In the first chapter of Calvin’s Institutes, the Reformed theologian makes a point about self-understanding and our relationship that might surprise you.
On October 17, Angel and my first book, Trading Faces: Removing the Masks that Hide Your God-Given Identity releases. Below is an excerpt. May God invite us deeper in knowing him as we discover who we are in him.
Daniel Day Lewis is known as one of the most committed method actors of our time. When he takes on a role, he embodies the character not only on camera but off camera, and he only responds to his character’s name. For the movie In the Name of the Father, Day-Lewis lost fifty pounds and spent three days in solitary confinement without water.
Sign up to get The Bee Hive delivered to your inbox and receive a free 50 Books That Changed My Life (and Might Change Yours, Too) download!
