Quotes about Tension

There is only one way for any of us to resolve the tension between the high ideals of the gospel and the grim reality of ourselves: to accept that we will never measure up, but that we do not have to. We are judged by the righteousness of the Christ who lives within, not our own.

AS ANDREW GREELEY SAID, If one wishes to eliminate uncertainty, tension, confusion and disorder from one's life, there is no point  in getting mixed up either with Yahweh or with Jesus of Nazareth.7-9 I grew up expecting that a relationship with God would bring order, certainty, and a calm rationality to life. Instead, I have discovered that living in faith involves much dynamic tension.

As a Southerner, coming of age for me included a dawning awareness that we were living with a story that was self-deceiving, a lie. The resulting tension planted something deep in my soul, a nagging sense of betrayal.

The Arab world has no peer when it comes to hatred - of the Western world generally, and especially of Israel. Israel-hatred and its twin, Jew-hatred, are the oxygen that the Arab world breathes.

A life filled with tension can be a deeply happy one. A life filled with aggravation or stress cannot.

My mom's whole side of the family, they're all Packers fans. My mom's a Bears fan. My stepdad is a Vikings guy. So that gets ugly. My mom sits upstairs watching the Bears game; he sits in the basement. They can't watch it together. Football's a violent anger in our family dynamic.

The heart responds to the conflict within a story.

Most of us struggle with the opposite. We don't bring up the negative stakes enough and so the story we're telling falls flat. Remember, if there are no stakes, there is no story.

And stories are all about conflict.

God allows us to face the tension whether we like it or not.

A story doesn't really pick up until the hero needs to disarm a bomb, win someone's heart, defeat a villain, or fight for their emotional or physical survival.

Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact.