Proverbs 20:3

It is an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be quarreling.

Have you ever been on Facebook? X? Any other social media site? YouTube comment sections?

Then you know the desire to quarrel is strong in mankind, and you know, in all likelihood, that the impulse is in you, as it is in me. On certain topics, I see somebody say something that’s stupid or ridiculous or just plain wrong, and I want to get down in the mud, to win that fight. And then, on my better days, I pause and ask: ‘What’s the purpose here? Is it good? Will this response I’m planning have good results?’ This question, and others like it, are important parts of self-restraint.

Why is it an honor for a man to keep “aloof from strife”? What makes a quarrelling a ‘foolish’ characteristic? Some fighting, after all, is wise and necessary: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle” (Ps. 144:1). Defense of life, of stewardship (property), of freedom, such defense can be not only right but our duty, a part of stewarding what He has given us to His glory (Gen. 1:28; Col. 3:23). The distinction between righteous conflict and quarrelling, between justified fighting and unjustified, starts with the fighting’s purpose.

If I enter a fight to prove I am awesome, I’m not fighting for a worthy purpose. If I get into a squabble for the fun of winning an internet match-off, never regarding how my witness to others is compromised by my apparent enmity, I’m fighting for a compromised purpose. My ill intent makes my words, however good in theory, contemptible; they become false witness against God. And, of cours,e if I fight to avoid consequences or satisfy a bruised ego, I fight contrary to His command.

Our whole must be bent to honoring Him (Matt. 22:36-40). My capacity for conflict—for violence and for intellectual strife—must be set to that purpose, not to my own gratification. The fool makes as his purpose something other than God, avoiding all the joy of that pursuit because it requires submission, and therefore he picks fights or permits them where they ought not to be. He makes a mockery of the worthy; he breaks true peace; he gets himself in a whole lot of trouble.

Having the right purpose, however, is only the first half of how we ought to deal with conflict. Once we know whether this is a fight we ought to have or not, whether we ought to press into the strife, to defuse it, or to avoid it, we must ask what we’re actually going to do. I’ve been in conversations (online, because it’s a lot easier to be mean online) where I’ve had to pause and ask myself whether my comment, however satisfyingly sarcastic, actually fulfills my ostensible purpose for the conversation—to communicate the truth to somebody convincingly. Purpose means only so much (and adds condemnation) if it is not worked out into practice.

We are all fools on occasion. Most of us are fools on a regular basis; Job is a rare sight even in the church, though he can be found. For many of us, bruised pride or questing ego or anger or fear or unregulated impulse leads us into at least one or two fights that ought not to have happened and which, eventually, leave their own bruises behind. For such sin, however, we have a solution, hard and inimical to the hard heart: repentance, absolution, and the outworking of repentance, reformation.

Repentance’s first part, what we too often consider its whole, is recognizing and abhorring sin: guilt turned to rejection. True repentance, of course, requires a countering and whelming love of righteousness and of the God of Righteousness; as such, it requires salvation, which comes by faith (Mark 1:15) and is a symptom of it, the human side of that great work, for which He gives us the strength (Is. 26:12). Thus, true repentance is followed in the believer by growing recognition and reliance upon His absolving work. Christ bore our sins, and thus we no longer bear them (Is. 53:10-12).

Then, as the final step of our war with sin, short of the perfection He gives us at the second resurrection (1 Cor. 15:45), we have the other half of repentance, the part that we all struggle with: the continual ‘turning away’ from sin. Repentance’s first flash is abhorrence and rejection; its reality and fullness is living out that rejection and abhorrence every day, every hour, and every minute, turning always to righteousness. I’m no dab hand at it, and every Christian, as he grows more mature, finds himself ever more aware of how terrible he is at denying sin. But, by the grace of God, we do grow more and more to turn from sin (Rom. 8:13; Is. 26:12), even as our recognition of that sin’s depth easily outpaces the reformation, in anticipation of the final joy He promises (John 14:2).

God bless.

Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.