The Paradox of Man

Blasie Pascal (Pensées, #164):

What a figment of the imagination human beings are!

What a novelty, what monsters!

Chaotic,

contradictory,

prodigious,

judging everything,

mindless worm of the earth,

storehouse of truth,

cesspool of uncertainty and error,

glory and reject of the universe.

Who will unravel this tangle?

D.A. Carson (Holy Sonnets, #7):

A paradox, this man: both son of God

And rebel, stellar powers bursting out

Through spirit mean and shoddy, cloaked about

With fine creative genius, yet a clod

Of dirt, compounded equally of sod

And everlasting consciousness, a lout

With moral aspirations, clutching clout

In empty power scrambles, sordid, odd.

Reflecting the Creator, given high

Preferment, ever served by angel hosts,

This son of wrath, preferring darkness, died,

His true paternity a barren boast.

God spoke: in his own image he made man;

And blemished though that image be, it stands.