Christianity and paradox

Suppose we have a religion whose central tenets are paradoxical, verging on the contradictory. What would we expect? We might predict that the religion would be unsuccessful. But that would be too quick. The religion could be successful by adopting strategies like the following:

1. Hiding the central tenets from the bulk of the members.
2. Obscuring the paradoxical nature of the central tenets from the bulk of the members.
3. Downplaying the central tenets as unimportant.
4. Appealing almost only to the uneducated and ignorant.
5. Denigrating reason, and thus appealing to anti-intellectual impulses among uneducated and anti-rational impulses among the educated.

But now consider Christianity. It has central paradoxical doctrines, including Trinity, Incarnation and Real Presence. It does not hide them from the members. Nor is there any attempt to hide the paradoxical nature of these doctrines: that paradoxicality is plain to see, and if anything it is gloried in. Through much of the history of Christianity, the central tenets have been insisted on very publicly and are central to the liturgy. While Christianity has always had a special love for the downtrodden, its appeal has always also included many men and women of very high intellectual stature. Finally, while there are occasional instances of Christians denigrating reasons in history, the main thread of Christianity has been a defender of the importance of reason, even to the point of a significant part of the tradition embracing the Greek idea of humans as distinctively rational animals. How did it do it? Well, in addition to the five strategies above (and perhaps some others) there is also a sixth possibility:

6. Having true central tenets and having God work in the hearts and minds of members and nonmembers.

Ridiculous laws

We are clearly not morally required to obey laws that tell us to do something immoral. But what about laws that, while not requiring anything immoral, nonetheless have ridiculous consequences?

Here is a fun Texas example. According to Chapter 1702.104 of the Texas Occupations Code:

(a) A person acts as an investigations company for the purposes of this chapter if the person:
(1) engages in the business of obtaining or furnishing, or accepts employment to obtain or furnish, information related to: [...]
(D) the cause or responsibility for a fire, libel, loss, accident, damage, or injury to a person or to property; [...]

And according to 1702.101,

Unless the person holds a license as an investigations company, a person may not:
(1) act as an investigations company;
(2) offer to perform the services of an investigations company;

Consequence: Without a PI license, a historian may not apply for or accept a postdoc at a Texas university to work on a book on the causes of the Great Fire of Rome of 64AD.