Tension is good

We were awakened at two a.m. as a creek came gushing through the tent. The cozy little campsite we had chosen in the daylight turned out to be a torrent with the nightly rains. That would have been bad enough, but neither had I properly staked the lines, and when the wind picked up so did the tent. Repitching a tent in the dark, wind and rain can produce its own teachable moment. We learned the hard way (is there any other way?) the importance of tent siting to a pleasurable camp.

You can’t read very far in the Bible before you find that there are some challenging things written there, and how Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture. Recently our little group strove to reconcile Matthew 12:36 “But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken” against Romans 8:1 “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” In the heat of discussion I incautiously let go of one position and cleaved to the other, and was found flapping in the wind.

Too often I sweat to resolve issues best left in tension. The resulting theology becomes quickly convoluted and takes on a plastic man-made feel. If I could only learn to live with the tension, the mystery, I would find myself staked securely in the sweet spot, holding tightly to all the truth available to me, safe, dry and in a spacious place.