During the month of April, I am sharing some brief excerpts from my new book coming out May 3 about how encountering God’s mystery actually helps us grow as human beings and followers of Jesus Christ. Today we look at living within tensions.
Dare we suggest that truth might sometimes reside within the tension created by opposing polarities? Dare we propose that the best policy choices may reside somewhere between Democrats and Republicans, left and right, MSNBC and Fox News? Have we lost our ability to live within (or even recognize) such tensions because we spend most of our time in echo chambers reverberating with the predispositions of people just like us?
In the Christian arena, can we admit tensions within our faith and risk being labeled unfaithful, unbiblical, humanistic, or secular or being told, “You think too much”? Is it possible to affirm right and wrong, moral absolutes, and biblical authority while also suggesting that truth sometimes resides between opposing absolutes? Ability to live within such tensions, polarities, and ambiguities, while not allowing them to paralyze our thinking or acting, is urgently needed today.
We tend to forget that living within such tensions is a major part of the biblical landscape. Think about some basic truths all Christians say we affirm:
- We see unseen things (2 Cor. 4:18).
- We find rest under a yoke (Matt. 11:28–30).
- We reign by serving (Mark 10:42–44).
- We are made great by becoming least (Luke 9:48).
- We are exalted by being humble (Matt. 23:12).
- We become wise by being fools for Christ’s sake (1 Cor. 1:20–21).
- We gain strength by becoming weak (2 Cor. 12:10).
- We triumph through affliction (2 Cor. 12:7–9).
- We find victory by glorying in our infirmities (2 Cor. 12:5).
- We live by dying (John 12:24–25; 2 Cor. 4:10–11).
W. Tozer writes that a real Christian is an “odd number” because a believer
“empties himself in order to be full; admits he is wrong so he can be declared right; goes down in order to get up; is strongest when he is weakest; richest when he is poorest; and happiest when he feels the worst. He dies so he can live; forsakes in order to have; gives away so he can keep; sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passeth knowledge.”
These tensions must not be resolved, for, as any church historian will attest, the major heresies of the past two millennia involve emphasizing one side of these paradoxes to the detriment of the other. Jesus just a little more divine than human, or just a tiny bit more human than divine, is heresy; the true Jesus is the grand paradox, equally and indivisibly God and human. Both practically and doctrinally, Christians must live within such tensions if we are to remain faithful to the biblical revelation, which is far more paradoxical than we sometimes admit.
As we begin, I admit that paradox can be unnerving. While our reason usually first detects paradox, our reason cannot solve it. Some fear that paradox in the Bible equals irrationality. They want clear answers with no waffling or wavering, details spelled out to the last sub-point. Others prefer to approach God’s mystery through other avenues: the emotional, the ineffable, the mystic, the charismatic—too much thinking leaves them cold.
Yes, most of us have moments when it would be far easier if someone (pastor, guru, talk radio host) spelled out for us exactly what to believe. Yes, the Christian faith can deteriorate into getting from point A to point B, mindlessly following the robotic instructions of a GPS. And yet… there is a strange sort of comfort in encountering a mysterious God who is far bigger, grander, and more awesome than we imagined. This is our goal.
Question: where have you faced living within such tensions? Please share it in a comment.
(If you’d like to learn more about my book, follow this link to Amazon)
