In many ways, the Christian life is full of tension. This is seen most acutely in the internal war between the flesh and the spirit. When presented with sin, sometimes parts of us want to sin and we don’t, but sometimes we do. Most of the time we don’t want to sin, we want to do good, but we still sin anyways ( Romans 7:7-25 ). We live in this world, but we’re not of this world ( John 15:18-19 ). We fight against multi-cultural pluralism, but we must also ward off arrogant ethno-centrism( 1 John 2:15-17 ). We’re not fatalists, but neither are we emotionalists. God’s in control, but we’re still held responsible for our lives. We must communicate the Gospel well, yet we must never ever lost the message of the Truth of Jesus Christ ( 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 ). We plead with men to turn to Jesus and be saved, yet we know that we ultimately have not the ability to save them; we must leave the saving up to God ( Ephesians 1-2 ). We love our spouses, but we don’t love them the most. We care for our families, yet we understand that eternity will be spent with a much bigger, global family ( Luke 20:34-36 ). We love our unbelieving friends, but we know that we can never have real, brotherly communion so long as they are apart from Christ ( 2 Corinthians 6:14-15 ). We strive to be sanctified, but we know we do not ultimately have the power ( John 17:18-23 ). We preach to the lost and trust God to do His work, but we don’t really know what that might look like; some might believe, but some might also be hardened even further (we thus become God’s tool for a worse condemnation) ( Isaiah 6). We live on this planet, in nations, societies, clans, cultures and families, yet we know in our heart, in our core, that this world is not our home ( 1 Peter 2:11-12 ).
Why the tension? Why is the Christian pulled into so many different directions? Is it a perspective thing? Some might say that the Christian life could be thought of as an attempt to balance on that wire of tension between any number of extremes. Yet, is this the reality? Is life in Christ about balancing between vastly different (and wrong) ideas, or should it be about standing on the Standard? Is the balance dictated by the extremes, or are the extremes defined by the balance? Is right defined by all the wrong in the world, or is the wrong understood to be wrong by what is right? Is holiness defined by sin or is sin defined by holiness? Is Truth defined as being non-false, or is False thought of as being non-True? Are such distinctions even appropriate?