Balance

There is a line in The Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi tells Daniel, "Better learn balance. Balance is key. Balance good, karate good. Everything good. Balance bad, better pack up, go home. Understand?"
I'm sure every generation stands at a crossroads of the past and the future, and we are no exception. We stand at a crossroads of faith and culture. Postmodernism has challenged Christianity to the point where the new atheists are asserting that training a child in faith is a form of abuse. People need the Gospel as they always have; yet are ever as rebellious. The Midwest is in a state of denial about globalization, as someone told me recently.
Balance. How do we balance in the church? In our own lives we have to balance vocation with being workaholics for Jesus (as the same someone told me recently). In the church we have to balance midwesternism with globalism. We have to balance faith and culture. We have to find the balance between past and future. To be backward under the name of conservativism is not balance. To throw out liturgy in the name of relevance is not balance. Even "blending" worship styles is not balance.
I don't have the answers, obviously, or I wouldn't be sending this out to the cybersphere. We need to find the balance where we stand firm and where we move forward. Contradiction? Paradox? Perhaps, but not beyond the realm of Christians who are sinners and saints.
Maybe we find balance only through our paradoxes.