Since the days of earliest man, we’ve known the value of dynamic tension in life. And whether you call it opposition, resistance, or by any other name, it all boils down to tension.
To build strong muscles, you need tension. To build a strong bridge, you need tension. And to build character, you need tension. Tension is the stuff that makes life interesting. Without it, if everything was easy and no tension was present, well then, you’d have the modern Western world.
In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl said it best:
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
From personal experience, I’ve learned that one should always be hungry for something, or sore from overexertion. If there is no opposition, no pain or ache in one form or another, we can’t grow and develop individually or as a species. We’d just be a bunch of bloated codfish lying on a deserted beach, baking in the sun. And then, finally, we’d have tension.
It is during the times of stress and trial that we grow, not during the sunshine of mild summer mornings. Our bodies were meant to be pounded, tested, and tried. The same applies to our minds. We’re supposed to think, to strategize and figure things out. And none of this is meant to be easy.
Within each of us, there is a soul. And that soul, like our mind and body, needs to be exercised. We can’t expect to glide placidly along in life with the shallow idea that just because we’ve had one born again experience, we’re good for all eternity. We need to exercise faith, repent, change and try again. And gradually, like the first caveman to hoist a barbell over his head, we will discover what we’re made of and who we really are.