worldview and perspective on Contradictions

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am...

Contradictions can bring us into touch with a deeper longing, for the fulfillment of a desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy. Contradictions, thus understood, create the ...

Contradiction, paradox, the tension of opposites: these have always been at the heart of my experience, and I think I am not alone. I am tugged one way and then the other. My beliefs and my actions of...

I have had to accept the fact that my life is almost totally paradoxical. I have also had to learn gradually to get along without apologizing for the fact, even to myself. And perhaps this preface is ...

An important representative of the pluralist position has been the British Protestant theologian John Hick, an unusually prolific and articulate writer. Hick has hit on a very graphic metaphor: He cal...

Creeds must disagree: it is the whole fun of the thing. If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue h...

Truth enjoys but a short time of triumph between two long eras — in the first of them it is condemned as paradoxical, in the last is despised as trivial..

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die.

Paradox has been defined as “Truth standing on her head to attract attention."

Error, by force of contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth.

The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we ...

We might say that convictions are firmly held moral or religious beliefs that guide our beliefs, actions, or choices…[M]ost Christians attach their convictions to Christ personally. In other words, we...

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest...

Paradox...comes from two ancient Greek words, para meaning “beyond” and doxa meaning “opinion.” Literally, it means “beyond opinion,” but it originally conveyed the sense of “being beyond the pale of ...

Put light against light - you have nothing. Put dark against dark - you have nothing. It's the contrast of light and dark that each give the other one meaning.

Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves.

Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.

Disagreement is refreshing when two men lovingly desire to compare their views to find out truth. Controversy is wretched when it is only an attempt to prove another wrong. Religious controversy does ...

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.

Dissonance theory predicts that we will eventually (and conveniently) forget good arguments made by opponents just as we forget silly arguments we made ourselves. . . . It’s motivated by our need to b...

Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment a...

The word [oxymoron], which appears in English for the first time in 1640, has an interesting etymology. In ancient Greek oxus means “sharp or pointed” and moros means “dull, stupid, or foolish.” So ox...

It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.

Occasionally we talk about our Christianity as something that solves problems, and there is a sense in which it does. Long before it does so, however, it increases both the number and the intensity of...

Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction . . . For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.

The root of our English term doubt has to do with duplicity. It is being divided or doubled up in our thinking. But this isn’t a matter of simply being confused or unable to make up our mind or ...

Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later.

Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.

When you’re in the intersection between the promises of God and the details of your situation, what you do with your mind is very important. In this intersection, God will never ask you to deny realit...