Tension is a Blessing

Recently I've read the book, The Life of Pi, and seen the film version of it.  It's the story of a boy who is shipwrecked in the Pacific ocean and who is forced to share a lifeboat with an adult Bengal tiger.  The do not form some kind of a Disney-esque bond; the tiger is a tiger, who sees Pi as a threat, a competitor for food and territory, and as potential prey if needed.  Pi has to find ways to mark and protect his own section of the boat, and he has to keep the tiger fed, so that he himself won't become the tiger's next meal.  They exist on the lifeboat in an odd tension of mutual support and wariness.  Pi realizes that it is the very tension between the tiger and him that keeps them both alive and that gives them a reason to press on.

We tend to assume that all tension is bad.  We work hard to reduce or eliminate tension.  To be sure, many tensions are outright destructive:  muscle tension that creates headaches, life tensions that create high blood pressure, political tensions that erupt into war, etc.  However, do we overlook ways in which tension can be a good thing, as it was for Pi and the tiger in the lifeboat?  Christian leader Andy Stanley says that some tensions should not be eliminated, but should be leveraged as a power source for the purpose of the overall mission.  In physics, tension can break things, but it is also an energy source, as in the tension of a bow that is leverage to release an arrow with power.  What if we saw the tensions in human existence the way Pi saw the tension between him and a predator in an environment they had to share?  In personal relationships, what if an introvert and an extrovert saw their personalities not as incompatible, but as something powerful and greater than each of them when combined?   In national politics, what if Democrats and Republican in Congress saw their different philosophies not as mutually exclusive where one of the other has to come out on top?  Instead, what if they saw their viewpoints as a healthy tension in which neither should sacrifice their convictions, but in which both could contribute to a good which is greater than either?   In Christian churches, what if differences in worship style were seen as a creative tension in which all could be fed and could learn in order to strengthen and deepen the overall capacity to changes lives and transform the world?

Tension is not always a bad thing.  It's in the tension between despair and hope that many people find faith.  For followers of Jesus, it's in the tension between our longing for God and giving up on God that we are surprised by the reality of the Resurrection.  I'll see you around the next bend in the river.