So falling in one of the ditches on either side is a better plan...?
Maybe you misunderstood what I was saying.
I wasn't promoting lukewarmness.
I would be very willing to talk about the tensions. I think it would help the conversation.
My thinking was along the lines of...for example, God is both severe and merciful.
So the ditch on one side would be to see Him as only very severe and the ditch on the other side would be to see Him as merciful and never severe. That's the kind of thing I was expressing. The places where verses seem to be in opposition to each other. (Not that they are, but they SEEM so until we understand them roundly.)
What I was getting at was how people pick one extreme, to the exclusion of a lot of verses, and so they get a distorted view because they don't have the balance. But then, those in the opposite ditch have the same problem. I see it often in the threads that go over and over the same topic, day after day, month after month, year after year. But there is never any coming together, or even coming MORE CLOSELY together, because neither side has the balance. Does that make what I was meaning any more understandable?