The Bible loves to use seeming contradictions for the emphasis of certain ideas. A perfect example is how God appears to Moses in a bush that is burning but never burns up.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

Matthew 16:25

Christians are told we must die in order to live forever and must be born a second time. These seeming impossibilities are intended to teach us by creating tension between the natural assumptions we make about the world and the supernatural truth that God wants to teach us. So when those truths come to us, the emotions that are connected with them are deeper and more impactful. We don’t just know about the facts of Jesus’ resurrection, we die to our old selves, we feel that process take place emotionally so when we encounter the story of Jesus return, we know at least a part of what that feels like. The narrative tension of scripture has pulled us out of the mundane and into the divine experience, if even just a little.

Ethan Kirl