Have you ever asked yourself any of the following types of questions?
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Should I seek structure or live in the moment and be spontaneous?
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Is everything predetermined or do we have free will?
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Should I focus on being satisfied with who I am, or be driven and keep pushing for more?
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Should I just be compassionate and encouraging, or challenge others and hold them accountable?
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Should I be rigid and focused, or flexible and adaptive?
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Should I be friends with my children, or focus on being their parent?
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Open and accepting vs. discerning and judging?
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Chaos or Order?
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Collective life or individuality?
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Liberal and open or conservative and protective?
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Justice or mercy?
Can you feel the tension? They seem like unsolvable problems right?
The trouble with these questions is that they often present a false choice.
The reason is that many of these questions are polarity questions. When we frame them as either/or, we’re setting ourselves up for a one-dimensional answer to a multi-dimensional challenge.
I recently came across the term “Polarity Management” for handling just such questions. They are Polarity questions, and the answer is often something in between or “both.”
Truth or grace is another such false dichotomy. You might say, “Well which one is it, bozo?!” And to that, I would respond, “Both truth AND grace!”
And you might say, “Well you can’t have it both ways!”
To which I’d respond, the greatest truths in life seem to be Polarity questions that are seeming paradoxes.
Another one is “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” It’s not either or. If we’re just shrewd then it’s terrible what we can inflict on others. But if we’re just harmless doves, that’s another kind of awful vulnerability too.
The scriptures eloquently present both, together, living in seeming tension but perfect harmony.
Welcome to adulthood, where there are no simple answers to Polarity questions. And I for one love that God made it this way. The mystery is more beautiful than the trite one way or the other.
Polarity Management usually involves determining degrees, not either/or’s.
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe there is right and wrong. I do believe there is truth and error.
It’s just that not all questions are truth questions. Some are Polarity questions.
Couldn’t our culture use less polarization and more Polarity Management?
