The Paradox of Some Christian Teachings

The Paradox of Some Christian Teachings

"Personalities" in God

From Reason to Faith, to "Amen" and Eternity

Important Note. An elucidation of this essay may be seen at: My Name is Existence; The Meaning of God; Eternal "Ideas" in God; and Schema about... The "presentnes" of God. Click to see them.

Explanation required. Christian teachings demand an explanation. It is easy to make statements of faith, but to explain how they are or could be is a different thing. Many Christian teachings remain unexplained paradoxes.

Thus the dilemma is, either to blindly believe the teachings, or to look for an explanation or possible alternatives. Later on this essay I want to reflect on some of these unexplained paradoxes.

Talking about Faith. Faith by itself, in a broad sense, is the belief in an unproven proposition. In this sense we may say, for instance, that we believe or have faith in a God, creator of the universe, as a rational consequence of a metaphysical reflection on the cause of the universe. This is a kind of natural faith, which is common in many aspects of human life.

This natural faith is different from a religious faith (that some people consider to be supernatural), which is based in the belief that something is true because it has been revealed by God. In this case we may wonder, faith in whom? in what? why? how do we know that something has been revealed by God? Even the teachings and miracles of Jesus have been disputed.

Many religious beliefs are unproven assumptions or presuppositions, sometimes founded on traditions or myths created by human imagination. This kind of faith is to follow somebody else's beliefs without any proof, just because he said. Is this reasonable? We must use reason and wonder what is reasonable. Reason is a gift of God given to us to use it reasonably. God is pleased when we use our reason that way!

Sometimes religious beliefs are also just pious "inventions" created by the will of men, when they hope that things are the way they want them to be, and to which the category of revelation (by God) is given later, without any solid reason or proof.

There are some religious beliefs, too, based in an old mentality of magic, or in ignorance of some laws or facts of nature that were unknown in the past, but that we already know.