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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nEverything we have explored in this series of articles<\/a> has circled one central conviction: the truths of God usually come to us in pairs. Grace and truth. Sovereignty and responsibility. Shrewdness and innocence. Empathy and discernment. We are tempted, always, to seize one and let the other fall, and the moment we do, the swinging begins. This article gathers those threads together and names the mechanism behind so much of the church\u2019s pain. If the earlier parts examined the tensions one by one, this one shows what happens when we refuse to hold them: we do not simply land in a single error and stay there quietly. We swing. Understanding that swing, and why only a held tension can stop it, is the key to escaping it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joshua is warned by God: \u201cBe strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go<\/em>.\u201d \u2013 Joshua 1:7<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in the book of Ecclesiastes, the wisest man who ever lived gives this timeless instruction: \u201cDo not be overrighteous, neither be overwise\u2014why destroy yourself? Do not be overwicked, and do not be a fool\u2014why die before your time? It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.<\/em>\u201d \u2013 Ecclesiastes 7:16\u201318<\/p>\n\n\n\n These passages serve as divine safeguards against the human tendency to swing from pole to pole in self-righteous zeal and overcorrection. \u201cOverrighteous\u201d describes the extreme of rigid legalism that destroys joy and crushes people under humanly imposed standards. \u201cOverwicked\u201d describes the opposite swing into moral license and foolishness that leads to spiritual ruin. The wise path, Scripture says, is to \u201cgrasp the one and not let go of the other.\u201d God-fearing people refuse to live at the poles but remain grounded in the tension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet history and contemporary church life show how rarely we heed this wisdom. When we reject tension the pendulum swings, and the consequences are painful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAvoid both extremes.\u201d <\/em>\u2013 Ecclesiastes 7:18 GNB<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why do extremes draw us so powerfully? The answer lies in our fallen human nature and the cultural pressures surrounding us. Each pole offers something that feels satisfying, even if it is ultimately destructive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same pattern repeats in other biblical tensions. A hyper-emphasis on God’s sovereignty feels comforting because it removes the weight of personal responsibility. Conversely, a hyper-emphasis on human effort feels empowering because it gives us a heroic role in the story. In every case, an extreme simplifies life. It allows us to grasp one half-truth tightly while releasing the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a deeper and more sobering pattern hidden in all of this. The people most powerfully drawn to one extreme are often the ones most likely to end up at the other. This sounds backwards, but it is what we see again and again. The zealous legalist, crushed by years of impossible standards, rarely drifts into gentle balance\u2014they swing all the way into license, as though to punish the system that wounded them. The disillusioned progressive, weary of endless accommodation, rarely settles in the middle but recoils into hard certainty, hungry at last for something solid to stand on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet the swing is not always a neat 180-degree leap from pole to pole. Some who start near the center drift further toward conservative conviction when culture or church life feels unsteady. Others who begin only slightly progressive can be radicalized leftward, trading a soft discontent for an all-consuming ideology. Still others, already conservative, do not reverse direction at all: they double down and leave for tighter, more separatist communities. In each case the same appetite is at work: the hunger for a simpler, more total answer. The pendulum does not have to travel the full arc to leave the center behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why does this happen? Because the appetite that drives a person to an extreme is usually not an appetite for that particular truth at all; it is an appetite for certainty, intensity, and totality. For a single<\/em> answer big enough to swallow every question. A person with that appetite will take an all-or-nothing answer wherever it can be found. So when one pole finally fails them, and every pole eventually fails, (because half-truth cannot bear the weight of reality over time), they do not conclude that extremes are the problem. They conclude that they simply chose the wrong extreme. And so they leap to the opposite one, carrying the very same all-or-nothing temperament across with them. The same hand that shoved the pendulum hard to the right now shoves it just as hard to the left. Spirit-formed character resists these swings best, but extremists are most vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This pattern is well documented across human behavior:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the church, this explains why the loudest voice at one pole sometimes becomes the loudest voice at the opposite pole a decade later. The convert to rigid certainty and the convert to sweeping license are frequently the same kind of person at two stages of one unhealed<\/em> swing. It also explains why simply arguing someone off an extreme so rarely works. Unless the underlying craving for a simple, total, effort-free answer is healed, they will not walk calmly to the center, but sprint past it to the other side. Only the awe of God, which trains us to hold two truths at once, can catch the pendulum and bring it to rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every pendulum swing leaves casualties. Strict, high-expectation cultures wound the conscience and repel the broken. Permissive, low-expectation cultures wound the soul and leave sin unchecked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The solution is not to find a comfortable middle ground of compromise, but to fear God and stay in the tension. It means leading with both tenderness and truth-telling. It means pursuing both personal holiness and God\u2019s grace. It means making disciples and bringing them to maturity. Fortunately, we already have these tensions modelled for us in Jesus himself.\u00a0The one who is full of grace and truth, who is both Lion and Lamb, who neither breaks the bruised reed nor leaves the Pharisee unchallenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The church that embraces divine tension will look strange to a polarized world, and that is exactly as it should be. We are not called to the left swing or the right swing. We are called to the narrow way, holding both arms of God\u2019s truth tightly in faith, humility and awe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [i]<\/a> Wlezien, C. (1995). The Public as Thermostat: Dynamics of Preferences for Spending. American Journal of Political Science<\/em>, 39(4), 981\u20131000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [ii]<\/a> Zmigrod, L., Rentfrow, P. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2020). The role of cognitive rigidity in political ideologies: theory, evidence, and future directions. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences<\/em>, 34, 34\u201339. (Popular treatment: Zmigrod, L., 2025, The Ideological Brain<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe psychology of extremes: why we crave the poles<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The zealot\u2019s slide<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Living in the tension: anchored in Christ<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The fixed point: avoiding the extremes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Divine tension<\/strong><\/td> Extreme (Pole 1)<\/strong><\/td> Extreme (Pole 2)<\/strong><\/td> Held in tension (the center)<\/strong><\/td><\/tr> Grace and truth (John 1:14)<\/strong><\/td> Rigid legalism \/ performance-based acceptance<\/td> Cheap grace \/ \u201ccome as you are and stay as you are\u201d<\/td> Full of grace and truth: acceptance that transforms, truth that restores<\/td><\/tr> Sovereignty and responsibility<\/strong><\/td> Fatalism \/ \u201cGod will do it all, so I need not act\u201d<\/td> Self-reliant activism \/ \u201cIt all depends on me\u201d<\/td> Trust God\u2019s rule while working diligently as responsible stewards<\/td><\/tr> Empathy and discernment<\/strong><\/td> Uncritical affirmation \/ emotional enmeshment<\/td> Cold judgmentalism \/ harsh detachment<\/td> Compassionate presence that still names reality and calls to repentance<\/td><\/tr> High expectation and low expectation (Eccl 7:16\u201318)<\/strong><\/td> Over-righteous \/ crushing standards & measurable perfection<\/td> Over-wicked \/ permissive licence & spiritual stagnation<\/td> Grasp holiness and mercy; fear God and avoid both extremes<\/td><\/tr> Holiness and welcome<\/strong><\/td> Exclusive purity culture that repels the broken<\/td> Inclusive affirmation that leaves sin unchallenged<\/td> Holy welcome: a community that receives sinners and leads them to repentance<\/td><\/tr> Conviction and compassion<\/strong><\/td> Stern dogmatism that wounds<\/td> Sentimentality that never confronts<\/td> Tender truth-telling: love that protects the weak and guards the truth<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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