Surprised by Paradox

Word Guild Awards Shortlist — Apologetics/Evangelism

Word Guild Award — Best Book Cover Award

Christianity Today's Book of the Year Award of Merit - The Beautiful Orthodoxy

What if certainty isn't the goal?

In a world filled with ambiguity, many of us long for a belief system that provides straightforward answers to complex questions and clarity in the face of confusion. We want faith to act like an orderly set of truth-claims designed to solve the problems and pain that life throws at us.

With signature candor and depth, Jen Pollock Michel helps readers imagine a Christian faith open to mystery. While there are certainties in Christian faith, at the heart of the Christian story is also paradox. Jesus invites us to abandon the polarities of either and or in order to embrace the difficult, wondrous dissonance of and.

The incarnation—the paradox of God made human—teaches us to look for God in the and of body and spirit, heaven and earth. In the kingdom, God often hides in plain sight and announces his triumph on the back of a donkey. In the paradox of grace, we receive life eternal by actively participating in death. And lament, with its clear-eyed appraisal of suffering alongside its commitment to finding audience with God, is a paradoxical practice of faith. Each of these themes give us certainty about God while also leading us into greater curiosity about his nature and activity in the world.

As Michel writes, "As soon as we think we have God figured out, we will have ceased to worship him as he is." With personal stories and reflection on Scripture, literature, and culture, Michel takes us deeper into mystery and into worship of the One who is Mystery and Love.



Jen Pollock Michel is the author of Teach Us to Want and Keeping Place, both published by InterVarsity Press with video curriculum available from RightNow Media. She is a regular contributor for Christianity Today and Moody Bible Institute's Today in the Word. A wife and mother of five, Jen lives in Toronto, Canada.

Foreword by Russ Ramsey


Introduction: A Little Bit of Wondering
Part One: Incarnation


1. The Great I AND


2. Annunciations


3. One Wild and Precious Life


4. A Word About Glory


Questions for Reflection and Discussion
Part Two: Kingdom


5. Hiding in Plain Sight


6. Blessed Are


7. Birds and Barns


8. The High Treason of Hallelujah


Questions for Reflection and Discussion
Part Three: Grace


9. Free Lunch


10. The Gracious Course of Rightness


11. Birds and Broken Wings


12. The Efforts of Grace


Questions for Reflection and Discussion
Part Four: Lament


13. Fluency in the Loud Groan


14. Complaints Department


15. Unfinished Business


16. A Suffering God


Questions for Reflection and Discussion


Epilogue


Acknowledgments


Notes

"What do you call a book that rattles our comfortable certainties while somehow leaving us sturdier and more joyful, a book that dances in the mysteries without going mushy or cynical, a book that stubbornly insists we find God in the kitchen as much as the cloister? I call this book a paradox. I call it a wonder."



"This book is wise and compelling. Jen Pollock Michel does what any good Bible scholar worth his or her salt does—examines the whole of Scripture, not just pet passages or doctrines. In doing so, Michel demonstrates that when it comes to God's kingdom, honesty requires we befriend paradox and the tension in the and instead of taking an immovable either/or stance. Does that mean anything goes, that truth is relative? Quite the contrary. If anything, Michel is thoroughly orthodox. She is one of the foremost public evangelical theologians and Bible teachers of our time. I for one look to her for wisdom." weniger anzeigen expand_less