Tensions are largely considered a negative thing. In this teaching, George explores the vitality and necessity of some dynamic tensions that, when held together, are good and reveal to us a new and larger truth.
SLIDES GEORGE READ
“Any time you take a dynamic tension at the heart of human vitality and ask people to pick one or the other, you are going to have absolute madness.” —Rob Bell, Congressively Proservative
We are encouraged to hold the tension of apparently contradictory viewpoints-and we often find ourselves happily surprised at the new and larger truth that emerges as a result. That is the promise of paradox. Community can remind us that we are called to love, for community is a product of love in action and not of simple self-interest. For in community, one learns that the solitary self is not an adequate measure of reality, that we can begin to know the fullness of truth only through multiple visions. Community can teach us that our grip on truth is fragile and incomplete, that we need many ears to hear the fullness of God's word for our lives.
—Parker Palmer, The Promise of Paradox
