Why I Adore Paradox
When I was a wee baby Christian, in my early adolescence, I learned that even Christian kids had cool things. You could flex your good little Christian muscles by carrying around the beefiest Bible, with sticky notes hanging out of it. A sure sign you were diligently studying the word of God. You also had to have a W.W.J.D bracelet. The real cool Christian kids played guitar and were invited on stage to play with the adult worship band on Sunday. Guess who asked for a guitar for Christmas at age 12?
Then I became a progressive Christian, and soon what was cool changed. What was the biggest hallmark of a hip borderline heretic Christian? You knew your Enneagram number, and could fluently diagnose your peers with their number.
For those who may not be familiar, the enneagram, “is a model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types…it can aid in self-awareness, self-understanding, and self-development.” The nine types are in order are: The Reformer/Perfectionist, The Helper/Giver, The Achiever/Performer, The Individualist/Romantic, The Investigator/Observer, The Loyalist/Loyal Skeptic, The Enthusiast, The Challenger/Protector, The Peacemaker/Mediator.
I wanted to be a cool progressive Christian like all my peers, and so I jumped into discovering my type. After taking an online test, I was given the result…I was a 6. I was the loyalist. The test told me that my basic fear was being without support or guidance. I was told that I was like Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Princess Diana, Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Aniston, George W Bush, and Ellen Degeneres.
There was one problem though. When I read the descriptions of all the other types, I started seeing myself in all of them. When I told a seasoned Enneagram fanatic about this they chuckled, “ha! that is SOOOOOO 6 of you. Sixes always have a hard time settling on their type.”
What followed were years of me re-entering the enneagram process, determined as ever to find the number that truly spoke to me. Sometimes I would take the test and get the number four, a year later the number 9. I realized I wanted to know my number so desperately because you know what I desired more than anything? I needed a category. I wanted to sew the title “The Loyalist” on my chest. I craved that identity because more than anything I desired the purpose that came from the clarity of a role in the world.
But you know what. It never worked.
The famous Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung said, “Oddly enough, the paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions, only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.”
“Paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions.” Forget sewing an enneagram label on my chest, slap that Jung on me baby. My oh my. Fundamentally, it seems like paradox is the number one enemy of the three-pound processing machine in each of our skulls. The brain thrives on categorization. It has to. Is that lion running at me with its jaws open bad? Probably bad. Probably should run.
Paradox might also be the number one enemy of certain expressions of Christianity. Is shaking ones hips in the dance hall bad? Yes. Don’t do that. Is going to Church every Sunday good? Yes. Do that. Framing morality often requires absolutes, it wants to erase paradox.
But I think Jung is on to something. Paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions, and it is perhaps one of the most compelling things about the Divine.
This week, as we get ever closer to the mystery of Christmas I was thinking about Mary and Joseph. I did some research about the town they lived in. Archeologists have studied the area of Nazareth, and have made some guesses about what it was like. They think the population of Nazareth was about 400 people. I decided to look up towns in Oregon with around 400 people. Seventh Mountain, Crabtree, Bonanza, Holley, Adams, Dillard, Idaville, Haines, Moro. Maybe it’s because I’ve only lived here eleven years, but I’d have a better chance of throwing a dart at an Oregon map than pointing to where these places are.
Bonanza, Oregon from Google Street View in 2017
So in Mary and Joseph’s day, Nazareth was like Bonanza, Oregon. Well, maybe not, depending on adjustments for the global population, but you get the idea. Two people of 400. We know that Joseph was a carpenter. We know very little about Mary. Folks, that is about all we know of two of the most infamous people in all of human history. I looked up Bonanza, Oregon. There are a few places a fella named Joe might work in that town of 400. One would be the FastBreak Convenience Store. I imagined Joe pumping gas at the ol’ FastBreak and getting a call from his partner Mary with some remarkable news. God had picked her to give birth to a baby that would end up being worshipped and followed by billions of people.
Joseph and Mary had to live with the paradox that they were chosen to be the parents of such an important child. Imagine going from the expected duties and responsibilities of carpentry, and all that this role entailed, to being the father of the savior of the entire world. Geeze. But I think in this grand selection of Mary and Joseph God sets us with the reality that “only paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.” Should we feel constrained to the roles we assume, we may miss out on the fullness of life, both our personal and communal life.
It is partly why I no longer feel so guilty about having never settled on an enneagram number. I’m not comfortable with assuming the role of the loyalist. There are parts of me that love to reform, to help, to be successful, to be investigative, enthusiastic, and easygoing. Do these personality tests help us navigate the world from time to time, of course, they do, but they can confine us, and make us struggle with one of the most challenging but beautiful realities of life, which is that it is paradoxical.
We desperately long for safety while simultaneously seeking out adventure and novelty. We crave connection and spaciousness. We want commitment and freedom. Often we seek out comfort in categorization when it comes to our personality. We say things like, “I am always a measured and analytical person” or someone else says “I have always had a hard time with order, I am just so impulsive.” These descriptors fill in the story of who we are, and communicate to those in our community “this is the role I fulfill here.” But just as Joseph had the expectation that his role was to be a carpenter in the middle of nowhere, we might be surprised when we are called outside of our expected role.
In the life of a community like ours, we often make space for the presumed roles of those in the community. So and so, we know, will be the pragmatic one during meeting for business and so we assume that this role has been filled, so either there is little room for me to inhabit that place, or only the polar opposite of that person should speak next. And yet our intention, when we gather for worship, is to be in loving presence with God, who may speak into the wild complexity and paradoxical nature of our hearts. Truly opening ourselves to receiving the remarkable nudges of Spirit, much like Mary and Joseph did to the Holy invitation of God, opens us and our community up to the wild potential of God’s leading in our personal and corporate lives.
This is hard because we find so much meaning in our assumed roles and the story that it helps us write about ourselves. If we are able to embrace that we contain multitudes we may find that in this openness we are led into the same potential of Mary and Joseph, to carry and birth a living light into a world so desperate for it.
When have you had an encounter with paradox? What happened? What happened after this encounter?
Have you cultivated an appreciation of paradox in your spiritual life? If so, what has that meant for your journey?
As you think about the work of being a spiritual community together, how might embracing paradox impact the health of our interactions?