"Friction is the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult.” - Carl von Clausewitz
Friction is the force that resists all action and saps energy. It makes the simple difficult and the difficult seemingly impossible. The very essence of war as a clash between opposed wills creates friction. In this dynamic environment of interacting forces, friction abounds.
Friction may be mental, as in indecision over a course of action. It may be physical, as in effective enemy fire or a terrain obstacle that must be overcome. Friction may be external, imposed by enemy action, the terrain, weather, or mere chance. Friction may be self-induced, caused by such factors as lack of a clearly defined goal, lack of coordination, unclear or complicated plans, complex task organizations or command relationships, or complicated technologies. Whatever form it takes, because war is a human enterprise, friction will always have a psychological as well as a physical impact.
While we should attempt to minimize self-induced friction, the greater requirement is to fight effectively despite the existence of friction.
Proverbs 14:4
Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.
Everything has problems. Opposing wills produce friction. Oxen produce manure.
It is not difficult to understand that oxen are useful for plowing fields and that oxen help you produce a greater harvest than if you had to do their work by your own power. It is also not difficult to understand that in order to keep oxen, you must feed them and take care of them. It is easy to see how feeding them and housing them will lead to you being responsible to clean up after them and all of the crap that comes with that. Quite literally, shoveling their shit.
As easy as all of that is, it is difficult sometimes to bring yourself to endure the smell, the sweat, the work, the effort of keeping oxen. As easy as it is in one sense is as difficult as it is in another.
Friction is what makes apparently easy things difficult. Something should slide one way easily enough, but friction makes the force required to move it greater. It takes something simple and make it more complicated. Such is life.
Such is war.
In the world as God has willed it, enmity, war and friction are hard-wired into the system. It is the way it is. It is a problem, but it is the problem we are to contend with, resign ourselves to and overcome. It is not our mission to end the friction, but to account for it and fight in spite of it by faith that overcomes obstacles without discounting that they really were difficult to get over or around.
Because God has designed us to be whole, the strain of this is felt in the form of physical, mental and spiritual exhaustion. The costs are real and accounting for them does not pay them for you. While we must account for the problems, the accounting does not solve them. It only enables you to avoid creating another problem - that of overlooking the obvious.
The requirement of the Christian is to fight effectively despite the friction, in light of the friction and in the hopes that by God's grace the friction we face now in the form of thorns and thistles will one day be the problems of our pasts as we embrace the new problems of glorifying God without encumbrance.
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