Word Play: The wisdom of paradox

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: Word Play for December.

The word “paradox” means a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement that when explained proves to be true.

WORLD commentator George Grant describes that word in his unique way.

GEORGE GRANT: A paradox is the art of combining seemingly contradictory prepositions to declare a profound yet overlooked truth. It is a statement the seems to be opposed to common sense and yet is uncommonly true. Its purpose is to reveal the wonder of truths that have been hidden from view.

The word comes to us from the Greek paradoxos, an adjective meaning “contrary to expectation,” combining the prefix para, meaning “beyond” with the verb dokein, meaning “to think.”

Carl Sandburg declared that paradox is “the secret doorway to truth.” It is most often used to startle us, to awaken us, to stir afresh our sense of wonder in a world where the most extraordinary things are the most common, mundane, and ordinary things: the engineering of elbows and knees, a baby’s laugh, a puppy’s breath, the morning fog, the smell of bacon, old love, the foolishness of worldly wisdom, the power of a simple word of encouragement, and the pealing of church bells on a Lord’s Day morn. The world is full of incongruous juxtapositions, that point to deeper, enduring truths.

Paradoxes abound in the Bible: “The first shall be last and the last shall be first;” “He who loves his life, shall lose it;” “He who humbles himself shall be exalted;” “Blessed is the meek for he shall inherit the earth;” We are called to be “in the world but not of it;” If we wish to see Heaven we must “become as little children;” We are to “delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships in persecutions, and in difficulties,” for when we are weak, only then are we strong.

G.K. Chesterton has been called the “Prince of Paradox.” He was a prolific 20th century journalist, novelist, poet, and reformer widely recognized as one of the most epigrammatic prose stylists in the entire literary canon. He was one of the chief inspirations for C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, T.S. Eliot, Dorothy Sayers, and a host of other writers. According to Google stats, next to Shakespeare he is the most frequently quoted writer in the English language. The reason is simple: in nearly every paragraph he wrote was a jaw-dropping paradox that left readers shaking their heads in bemusement and wonder. For instance, he asserted, “We do not live in the best of all possible worlds.” Instead, it is “the best of all impossible worlds.” After all, our existence and the existence of everything we see is an “astonishing miracle.” He quipped, “It takes a big man to know how small he is.” At the same time, he observed, “Pride is the sin of a small man who thinks he is big.” He said, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly,” meaning that if a thing is worth doing, it is simply worth doing.

Maisie Ward, Chesterton’s biographer and friend asserted, “Some men are most moved to reform by hate, but Chesterton was most moved by love and nowhere does that love shine more clearly than in all that he wrote about Christmas.” Indeed, in Christmas reveals , the greatest and most remarkable paradox of all is revealed: He who was infinite, was yet an infant; He who was eternal, was yet born of a woman; He who was almighty, was yet nursing at His mother’s breast; He who was upholding the universe, was yet carried in His mother’s arms. Thus, Chesterton exclaimed, “Outrushing the depth of the fall of man is the height of the fall of God. Glory to God in the Lowest.”

During this Yuletide season, may we all exult in the wondrous paradox of the incarnation.

I’m George Grant.

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