Christianity doesn’t make sense. It’s not supposed to.

It is nearly impossible to enter a university in America these days and not be bombarded by the lack of belief in the Christian God. Students leave the protective womb that is their childhood home, and eagerly embark on a journey of self-discovery and newfound freedom. In that journey, many students make the choice to forsake much of what they were raised on. If Christianity was a part of their lives, it is often dropped during school, in favor of another life where there are no moral absolutes.

I know. I did it myself.

Being a Christian is hard. Perhaps the most difficult thing a person can do. It requires what appears to be the suspension of a certain amount of logic, and the acceptance of certain paradoxes inherent in the faith.

Perhaps this is the whole point though. Kierkegaard thought so. He believed that faith is the most important thing a human being can achieve, but it is also the most difficult. It can’t be given to us by a pastor or parents or friends – it’s a matter of individual subjectivism. Such an idea places a tremendous responsibility on the shoulders of the person, because their spititual choices determine their ultimate fate. Kierkegaard believed that this choice produces anxiety, and that anxiety provides two equal and opposite feelings – the dread associated with choosing your eternal fate, and the exhileration associated with the freedom of choice.

The concept of Christianity is one of paradoxes, and Kierkegaard believed these paradoxes result in a belief system that is offensive to the human mind. He believed that left us with only two choices – have faith or take offense. You have to make a choice – by choosing faith you suspend reason, thereby believing in something higher than reason.

Christian faith actually embraces the absurd – the absurdity that an eternal being would have the temporal, human attributes of love, kindness, anger, etc. The absurdity that such an eternal being could possibly have become temporal in nature, taking on a human body in the form of Christ. The absurdity that an all-loving, all-just God could command Abraham to take his son to the top of a mountain and kill him.

Yes, Christianity is absurd – it’s offensive to us. Many of us go to school and decide to reject it, and often further decide to take become offended when someone else still believes it. But maybe that’s the whole point. Faith isn’t supposed to easy.