Reconciled opposition? (December, 2005)

Please forgive my continued tardiness and back-dating this article to be easier to find.

Jay encourages us to contend, to argue, in a Christlike manner.

What makes the prayer interesting is Hauerwas's insistence that "God...must love a good argument."

I believe that. That's a fascinating statement, though, considering God's omniscience. If there are better and worse ideas (and I believe there are), God must know them all. Yet he often allows us to wrestle and argue things through, to start--and perhaps end--confused about what to think.

Contending with God--or with a brother or sister--is not necessarily destructive. Hauerwas says that such a debate is not "a matter of winning, but rather for the up-building of your church, the body of Christ."

Since I started this blog to contend with Jay from time to time, I appreciate his perspective on godly argument. May my contending result in the up-building of the body of Christ.

We can be brothers and sisters in Christ--in love with God and each other--and wrestle with differences of vision, style, approach to ministry, and theology. In fact, if we don't contend about these things we will likely become lazy and fall into error and sloth. With Hauerwas we pray, "make us your witness so that the world, observing how we argue, will say: 'See how they love one another; they would rather argue than kill.'"

Amen.