Overcoming our Allergy to the Combative

On Gentleness and Offensiveness I

To be gentle or to offend? That is the question. Or it it?

The War Against Combat

One of the many goodfights in our time must be the recovery of robust Biblical speech to combat the many errors, compromises, and assaults upon faithful Christian belief both inside and outside the Church. This is true of every generation of the Church, but one of the particular errors of our time – ironically enough – is the very idea that Christians should not “fight” for what they believe to be right, or against what they believe to be wrong, using appropriately strong words.

More often than not today, when a Christian begins to fight for/against such things, they are – ironically enough – fought against by other Christians for manifesting a “combative spirit” or some other such charge. Needless to say, such Christians usually come armed with an arsenal of verses about peace, meekness, gentleness, and so on. What is a combatant to do? We know what they’re expected to do, of course: lay down their arms (that is, their Bible verses) and bow meekly before the benevolent Gentleness Coalition politely stationed outside with a rather robust barricade, warning that this terribly combative posture could be a serious safety hazard to the effective witness of the Gospel or Church unity.

Indeed, these days the charge of “combative tone” is the closest you might get to seeing church discipline actually enforced within the average evangelical church or network (as some brothers recently discovered).

Gentleness over Combativeness

One such set of counter-verses to combatants occurs in Ephesians 4, where Paul speaks of the need for believers to walk “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph. 4:2-3). It seems fairly straightforward. We should stop disagreeing with one another so strongly, forget our differences, and get on with being peaceable, showing the world the unity of the Spirit. To sharply disagree or say things which offend other Christians thus becomes “divisive,” “breaking the bond of peace,” or “failing to bear with one another in love.”

Parents know well that the greater problem is usually not that our children are insufficiently combative when they don’t like a parental command. Nor when they lose a game, nor when a sibling “borrows” their favourite toy. They seem more than willing to go to war for their pound of sibling flesh if they believe some wrong has been done against them, as though the universe will not rest until justice has been done! Indeed, I regularly find myself reflecting on the irony that the thing I am currently emphasising to grown-up Christians - the need to “fight” - is precisely what I am often daily chastising my own children not to do!

It’s true that the impetuous speed at which children are willing to shout back, argue back, snatch back, or hit back is usually a sign of their immaturity, not something Christians ought to be imitating. There really is such a thing as an unhealthy desire for “quarrelling” and an approach to opponents that is unfair, hot-headed, and ungentlemanly (2Tim. 2:24-25). As ever, there is a time, a place, and a parental and/or ecclesial context for every Biblical exhortation under the sun. It is not that we must choose one or other Scriptural emphasis at will, “cafeteria-style”. Rather, we must speak to the need of the hour, whoever it is we’re speaking to, and whatever we may know about what they’re up to.

Aren’t We Always Meant to “Build Up”?

The need of the hour for the Church in the west is most certainly the need to fight for our convictions. Lest we forget, we live at a time when the wolves are at the door and the gatekeepers have not only welcomed them in with open arms but they have strongly chastised those who said they shouldn’t. In these winsome days, it seems that the greatest evangelical “sin” is to be unwelcoming (irrespective of whoever or whatever is being welcomed). To speak against compromise in the Church too strongly is likely to incur the charge of immaturity, as though the one kicking up a fuss about a doctrinal or socio-political wrong is like the aforementioned child berating their sibling with hostility for taking their favourite toy or winning the game. “Just get over it”, “Learn to get along”, “Be nice”.

Sometimes, those voices bringing challenge to the ecclesial establishment must speak in strong words in order to make themselves heard. It is not that they must make something seem worse than it is, but simply that they must say something is as bad as it is when it is as bad as it is. Such voices have known that to sugar-coat it would be to misrepresent its severity and urgency. Yet it is increasingly likely that those who really wish to challenge their fellow Christians (or indeed to challenge those in the world with Christian convictions) will be accused of falling foul of Paul’s teaching on gentleness, of seeking to tear down rather than build up.