I love to look at the stars.
Their magnitude compared to my minuteness reminds me of the many paradoxes in God’s nature.
God is good, God is bad; God is love, God is wrath; God is sacrificial, God is jealous for His glory.
How can God be the epitome of wrath, demolishing entire nations and even His own people through fiery, sulphuric judgement and the Angel of Death; but also be perfect in love, loving us so much that He doesn’t force us to love him but instead offers His own son to die in our place?
God is not “good”, God is not “wrath”. God is all things at all times.
As a child of God, made in His image, this paradox falls upon us as well.
How can I be so small, so unworthy, so puny and disgusting in comparison to God, yet a valiant warrior coming boldly to His throne??
I am His child, yet a warrior. His ambassador, yet a consistent failure. A minister of reconciliation, when I’m the one needing reconciliation.
These paradoxes have completely confused me, and in my attempt to understand God, understand His nature, and my role in His plan, I made the massive mistake of focusing on one identity at a time. I would focus only on His love, only on His wrath; only on my identity as His child, and my identity as a warrior. I’ve been trying to solve a rubix cube by using only one block.
I’ve been pursuing this whole “Christ” thing for about 2 years now. The man I was 2 years ago was very, very different than the man I am today. I used to be militant, a physical warrior. So much so that had God not intervened, I would have been an Air Force Pararescue Jumper right now.
God has led me away from that radical warrior to this radical pacifism. For a very long time, I believed the lie that since I was pursuing God, and this was where he led me, that those who were still radical warriors were simply not pursuing God.
I recently had a discussion with one such warrior, who is infinitely more a man of God than I will ever be, and he shared some scriptures with me as to why he was a warrior.
I could not reconcile this.
I was pursuing God’s character, and this pacifism and extreme sacrifice was where He led me.
This warrior was also pursuing God’s character, and this defense of the weak and standing for justice was where God led Him.
This paradox, this unexplainable contrast in God’s character is made manifest in His children as well. Some of His children are warriors, deliberately shaped by God to defend the weak against evil both physically and spiritually. Some of His children are pacifists, deliberately shaped by God to love with an irrational peace.
None of His children are wrong or on the wrong path! God has designed each of us the way we are as a reflection of an infinitesimally small fraction of His character! No longer do I judge others, but rather I am so incredibly humbled that I, little pathetic me, looked down on my brothers as if they weren’t as spiritual because their walk didn’t look like mine.
I’m seriously so humbled. And to top it all off, this concept is so simple. The Bible says it many times, yet I never understood it till now.
Now, I realize we are all His children, paradoxical or not, and I love each and every one of them for who God designed them to be.
