I’ve blogged twice recently about conflict and some its causes. The first of those two posts was a direct result of simultaneously reading through the Proverbs, and being humbled by my own failure, at times, to guard my speech.
Today, Kevin DeYoung posted a portion of a sermon on conflict based on Proverbs. It’s outstanding, as you might expect. Here’s a sample of his list of the distinguishing marks of a quarrelsome person:
1. You defend every conviction with the same degree of intensity. You don’t talk about secondary issues, because there are no secondary issues.
2. You are quick to speak and slow to listen. You rarely ask questions and when you do it is to accuse or to continue prosecuting your case. You are not looking to learn, you are looking to defend, dominate, and destroy.
3. Your only model for ministry and faithfulness is the showdown on Mount Carmel. There is a place for sarcasm, but when Elijah with the prophets of Baal is your spiritual hero you may end up mocking people instead of making arguments.
4. You are incapable of seeing nuances and you do not believe in qualifying statements.
5. You never give the benefit of the doubt. You do not try to read arguments in context. You put the worst possible construct on other’s motives and the meaning of their words.
There are more, and some are even more convicting than these! Read them all. Ouch…
Thanks for another good, convicting post. Just yesterday I was asking some friends for prayer regarding some conflicts I am having with other people. Conflict reveals character, and when we trust God it can even refine character.
Within me there is this little Pharisee that would quickly engage in ALL of the quarrelsome behaviors on the list . . . but for the grace of God!
I am so thankful for the grace of God.
I see too much tendency in my own heart to be quarrelsome too, Derek, and share your gratitude for God’s grace. That reminds me of something I ready by J.C. Ryle the other day, probably worth a post of its own:
“[The apostle Paul] had a clear view of the fountain of evil within his heart. But then he had a still clearer view of that other Fountain which can remove ‘all sin and uncleanness.’”
My heart melts at the thought of “that other Fountain.”
Yes, it is brilliant.
Of course, I see myself in more of it than I’d like, but I’m sharing this with a lot of my friends with whom some of these issues have been coming up recently, in terms of faith but also political discourse.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing the post with your friends, wken. I think most of us, if honest, would admit that we struggle to handle conflict well, and are sometimes the cause of it. We need not only to hear this, but to be humbled and changed by it.