There’s a saying in the self-defense world that “The winner of a knife fight goes to the hospital.” The implication is the loser goes to the graveyard. There is another kind of knife fight that takes place in a different realm than on the mean streets of a city. That fight can produce an outcome more deadly than spilling blood.
People are becoming nervous about where our culture is moving, and in some cases, the direction of the Church. Our observation and the resulting interpretation of these issues are constructed from what we consider to be reliable sources of evidence used to support our take on reality. As we read social media comments or listen to the news outlets that support our opinion, some segments of the Church use their opinions to engage in an emotional and intellectual knife fight.
The weapons we use to cut and puncture each other have not been offered to us from within the pages of Scripture, healthy fellowship, or a face-to-face honorable discussion. They are prepared labels provided for us by competing worldviews used to instigate combat with fellow believers and create division within our ranks.
The label “white nationalist” has replaced the word patriot for a white person with traditional values. A “leftist” is the label attached to someone who veers an inch off the established path of conservativism. A black person who has gone through the personal trauma of racial prejudice and voices their pain in an attempt to bring healing might be labeled a BLM activist just because they attended a rally whose peaceful purpose was high jacked by violent extremists.
If we empty our hands of love and wisdom, hell will be faithful to place weapons in our hands that will be used to cut an opposing opinion to pieces and leave both parties bleeding out. Watching such a conflict gives an inquirer of faith yet another reason not to follow the Lord.
The sharp edge of our blades of division are the labels we have unwisely and flippantly accepted and placed on fellow believers without Spirit-led discernment. We are not each other’s enemy. We are the Body of Christ. Our battle is not with each other. The real battle is with the dark spirits who manipulate our interpretation of reality and motivate us to slash and cut another believer with whom we might disagree. In such fights, there are no winners.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Garris Elkins
Featured Image by Michal Renčo from Pixabay
