PARADOXES OF BELEIVING

Parker Palmer, author, educator and activist for social change, wrote,

“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 must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.”

Palmer also speaks of a belief he calls “functional atheism,” the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us. This is the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, we are the ones who must make it happen.”

To me it is a very paradoxical situation when secular humanism and scripture are believed to be the same thing or the same message. Scary Larry and Scary Mary.

“You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” Jesus