You can’t push a rope

There is this pithy phrase, “you can’t push a rope”.  It means we can’t force something to do what it was not designed to do. 

It is futile to try to push a rope. A rope is only useful when pulled from both ends. This creates the tension needed to move a thing or hold a thing up. That is what a rope is designed to do.

It’s human to resist tension. Especially if you’re a bona fide peacekeeper like me. “I’ll have the daily special with no tension, please!” At least give it to me on the side. Because when tension is the main thing, I go into anaphylaxis. Tension restricts all of my airways—creative, spiritual, relational, etc.

But the reality is that tension is the main thing, and I’ve had to learn to breathe through it. 

We tend to want life to cut us some slack. We’ve had enough of the emotional tightropes, the spiritual high wires, the relational tug-of-wars. So we try to push the rope, release some of the tension. But the slack we create undermines the purpose of the rope. The rope is taut because it is in the tension that we discover all that is good, and beautiful, and true. 

Those three words—good, beautiful, true—are the essence of the Hebrew word tov. We are introduced to tov when God describes his craftsmanship in Genesis chapter 1. “And God saw that it was [tov]” (Genesis 1:3, 10, 12, etc.). Usually rendered in English as “good”, tov is a concept that cannot be captured in a single English word. The full meaning of tov implies something that fulfills its created purpose. Like a rope being pulled from both ends.

There is undeniable tension in the creation narrative. Everything God made required tension. A stretching. A pulling by opposing force forces. Light and darkness, water and land, seeds and soil, etc. Tension is a basic ingredient of our experience in the world.

Without tension, there is no language, or music, or seasons, or blood circulation. We need tension to live. Tension is life. Opposing forces pulling us in every direction, but/and/thus giving us every opportunity to lean toward the God who is always pulling us to himself.

Without tension, there is no faith. To live by faith is to walk the tightrope between the unresolved past and the unrealized future. A kind of suspended animation. Living in the here and now with our eyes fixed on the then and there. Alive, but waiting to be made alive (Philippians 3:21). Whole, but waiting to be made whole (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). Made in His image, but waiting to be made in His image.

When we see Him we will be like Him. But until then, we trust that the rope we are standing on can support the full weight of our in-process-ness (1 John 3:2). That is, the sanctification of our doubts, our motives, our imaginings, even our bodies. It’s only when we put our full weight on the rope that we can learn to trust the process, and the Processor.

Will we trust that the rope is tov? That it is good, and beautiful, and true. That it will do what it is designed to do. To move us and to hold us up. All by means of tension.

Picture Peter walking on water. A scene bathed in tension. Jesus shows up on the lake because his friends are in a boat being bullied by wind and waves. But he doesn’t immediately relieve that tension. He displays his strength, his resolve, his presence in the midst of it. He knows that the tension is necessary, at least for a time. The tension will reveal the tov. The good and beautiful truth that he is there.

Peter asks Jesus to allow him to walk on the water too, and he does. So Peter begins to walk the tightrope. A boat full of fear and chaos behind him; his singular Hope for the future before him. Such tension! And as if that isn’t enough, science conspires with Spirit to create enough surface tension to make an impossible thing possible. An ordinary man walking on water. But seconds later Peter is sinking.

What happened? Did the science change? Did the Spirit change? No. What changed was Peter’s faith. That’s what faith does. It changes us, moves us, holds us up. 

This understanding of faith is almost indistinguishable from the definition of tension. Genuine faith is fraught with opposing forces pulling us in every direction. It is not our job to stop the pulling, or expect God to. Our role is to lean into the tension with our full weight. To keep the rope taut and learn to trust.