In recent weeks, you and I have considered story after story about automation, innovation, technology, and convenience. The incredible acceleration of technology is, without a doubt, the dominant story of our day. Every time you look around, there is another way to make your life easier. More convenient. More prosperous. Less difficult. On and on it goes.
As we’ve acknowledged together in the past, this is a wonderful gift in many ways. Praise God for the gift of innovation and ingenuity! But there is also an unmistakable temptation to allow technology to eliminate as much friction from our lives as possible, and that carries with it a very profound risk.
Romans 3:3-5 is a passage you and I have returned to with some regularity, because it contains numerous truths that are essential to cling to in our days: “[W]e also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
This passage is so critical for our time for the very reason that we are increasingly offered the option of avoiding suffering and struggle. In my mind, the word that best describes it is friction. You and I increasingly have the option to minimize or even eliminate friction in our daily tasks, and to be clear, this can be a very helpful thing! For example, my wife, Brooke, and I have benefited greatly from automating and syncing much of our family’s calendaring. There are always so many moving parts between the six of us, and the automation of calendaring has been an immense blessing. I’m sure you can point to dozens of similar examples in your life.
But it would be a mistake (and a very easy one to make) to assume that all removal of friction is a good thing. Why? Because friction is essential to formation.
Our passage gives us part of this truth. We are to be endeavoring to be like Jesus, and to have His eternal hope in our spirits. Working backwards, to achieve hope, we need His character. To embody His character, we must develop His perseverance. And to possess His perseverance, we must share in His suffering. It is that suffering and that struggle that allow us to lift our eyes from ourselves and set them on Him. It is the friction of that struggle that refines our inner beings.
The second part of this truth is in what scripture repeatedly calls the “refining fire.” My personal favorite use of this analogy is in 1 Peter 1:6-7: “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
It can be difficult to recognize in our human finiteness, but comfort and convenience—the removal of friction—is nowhere close to the goal of your existence and mine. The goal of our being is to bring praise and glory and honor to God, and that is accomplished through the proving of our faith that occurs through testing.
My friend, if the friction is removed, so is the formation that brings glory to your God. In a world where convenience abounds and a frictionless life is all the rage, remember that your primary mission is to be formed in the likeness of Jesus that you might bring Him praise!
Friction, after all, is required for formation!