The phrase “living in the tension” has its purposes, and has been given an undeserved bad name. It’s not relativism.
Roger Martin introduced to business world readers the idea of an “opposable mind.” As a human thumb allows us to pick up stuff, so leaders must hold together the irreconcilable until some new possibility emerges. Others have written about how much Martin’s description sounds like the gospel. Christians have to affirm things in tandem that the world prefers to pull apart: evangelism and social justice, piety and prophesy, tradition and innovation, biblical fidelity and engagement with the newest, sharpest ideas. Heresies, Rowan Williams argues, are always simplifying movements. They lop off part of the truth and guard it at the expense of the whole. The Arians weren’t wrong to say the Son is a creature. They just weren’t right enough: he’s also the eternal Son of God. If he weren’t divine, then he couldn’t save us creatures.
That’s Jason Byassee who happens to a fan of Rowan Williams.
Question: Does any wing of today’s Anglican Communion have an opposable mind?
Jason goes on to say his rendition shows Johnny Cash had an opposable mind:
It starts with plaintive guitar strumming as Cash bellows the familiar words of the spiritual, “There ain’t no grave can hold my body down.” Then just before “When I hear that trumpet sound, I’m gonna rise right out of the ground,” an extraordinary background sound kicks in. It’s a deep druming accompanied by what seems like an enormous, heavy chain being dropped and picked back up in rhythm. It sounds not like the accompaniment to a flighty spiritualist tune like “I’ll fly away,” and more like something that would go with a song on torture or murder or promised judgment, as with Cash’s marvelous “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” And, just so, the song works. Its tune is haunting as its words take flight, and deep roots ground soaring branches.