There's a lie I believed for too long: that mature faith resolves tension. I thought that as I grew in my walk with Christ, things would get clearer. Questions would get answered. The tensions would resolve. The wobble would decrease until eventually I'd be sailing smoothly on a straight course toward the cross. It was a comforting lie. It was also completely false.
Maturing faith doesn't eliminate tension, it learns to navigate tension well.
The three core tensions, conviction and compromise, certainty and doubt, zeal and wisdom, haven't disappeared as I mature. If anything, they have intensified. The more deeply I followed Christ, the more acutely I felt the pull of competing goods, the more clearly I saw the complexity of living faithfully in a broken world, the more I recognized how little I actually understood. The difference wasn't the absence of tension, it was how I learned to hold it.
I used to equate tension with failure, believing that good Christians shouldn't struggle with competing convictions. Tension felt like evidence of inadequacy, if I'd just studied enough, prayed enough, grown enough, it would disappear. I was wrong. Tension is often evidence of growth, not its absence. You feel tension precisely because you're taking both poles seriously, not dismissing one in favor of the other.
I learned this through concrete experience. I have a conviction about simplicity and generosity that followers of Jesus should live with open hands, trusting God's provision rather than accumulating security. But I also have responsibilities: a wife whose sense of security differs from mine, aging parents who might need care, an economy where certain forms of planning are wise stewardship, not lack of faith. I could have collapsed this tension toward conviction. "We're giving everything away and living radically, trusting God for daily provision." That might sound spiritual, but it would violate my responsibility to my wife and potentially to my parents. Or I could have collapsed it toward compromise. "We live in the real world. We need to save for retirement. Radical generosity isn't realistic." That might sound practical, but it would rationalize away the conviction God had given me.
Instead, I learned to navigate the tension. We give significantly even more than is "wise" by conventional standards. But we also maintain some savings for legitimate needs. We regularly revisit our financial decisions, asking: "Are we holding our resources with open hands? Are we trusting God or our bank account?" Sometimes I lean more toward conviction, giving in ways that feel risky. Sometimes I lean more toward wisdom, making choices that feel like compromise but that I believe are actually responsible. The point isn't that I've found the perfect balance. The point is that I'm holding the tension, not collapsing it by choosing one pole and dismissing the other.
I discovered this pattern across all three tensions. With certainty and doubt, I learned to say "I believe deeply, I have questions I can't answer and both are true." Like the father who brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus: "I believe; help my unbelief!" Both in the same breath, not one or the other but both.
With zeal and wisdom, I learned to feel strong conviction while still counting the cost, to move with urgency while moving thoughtfully. When we joined a church plant that required selling our house, leaving jobs, uprooting our lives that required both zeal ("This is what God is calling us to") and wisdom ("Let's make sure we're hearing clearly. Let's count the actual costs"). I learned to name tensions instead of just feeling their discomfort. To resist the demand for immediate resolution. To seek perspective from community when I was collapsing toward one pole. To navigate practically even while holding complexity. To revisit regularly rather than making one-time decisions.
A realization I needed to come to is that the tension isn't punishment. It's not evidence of failure, it's not a problem to be solved. The tension is the territory of mature faith. It's where you learn to trust God when you can't see clearly. Where you develop wisdom through practice. Where you discover that faithfulness isn't about having all the answers -it's about following Jesus even when the path is complex.
If faith were simple, if every decision were obvious, if every tension resolved cleanly, you wouldn't need faith. You'd just need a map. But God hasn't given you a map with every turn marked. He's given you a compass pointing to Jesus, principles that orient you, tools to navigate, community to support you, and the Holy Spirit to guide you. The wobble happens in the tension. The course corrections happen because you're navigating competing goods, holding multiple truths, responding to dynamic conditions. So don't fight the tension. Don't collapse in it. Embrace it. Navigate it. Let it form you.
Because learning to hold tension is learning to navigate faithfully through whatever conditions God has you sailing in.