Is there such a thing as a humble fight?
Think about that for a moment. Better yet, think about when you fight. With neighbors, friends, siblings, significant others. As we pondered in last Sunday’s writing, ancient words as true to the way of human nature for as long as we have known ourselves, revealed that we fight because we do not get what we want.
“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
We discovered that even just causes can succumb to compromise of the self for the sake of a stance. In other words, you do whatever it takes, even if what it takes undermines the integrity of the fight itself. Even if the fight undermines the integrity of your soul.
Yet, to simply not fight is to potentially forfeit a zeal for justice, or freedom, or insert whatever cause you have chosen to defend or uphold. Your soul may not be given the chance to make way for compromise or regret in so far as we’ve already discussed, but instead will fall lethargically towards meekness or indifference.
Indeed, we are to fight. For those God-fearing individuals, we are actually given a mandate in our vigor for bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to earth:
Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked. (Psalm 82)
Yet to engage in a humble fight? Is such a venture plausible, let alone even necessary? A fight itself seems to be upheld by a longing to receive that which we don’t yet have, or to protect that which we feel is being taken away. Admittedly a rather self-serving motivator to uphold our jut cause.
As I am sure you have seen, we are all rather poised in fighting stance. I haven’t needed to go much further than Facebook, and although an easy place for voices to boast and bail, we know too that the fight has been taken well beyond fiery social media posts.
Media headlines have done their fair share to highlight the tactile fight to their liking, and we have consumed their words with a satiating effort, spurring on in us an urgent rage against injustice as our eyes have consumed it.
So again, we fight, and whether prompted by falsehood or fear, we feel urgently at the center of our being that what needs to be made right is threatened.
Consider our history. The history of our nation that is, although a few measly sentences are by no means a summary of all that has come to pass. Yet we know Indigenous people fought for their land. European immigrants fought for their independence. African Americans fought for their freedom. Women fought for their voices. Soldiers fought for their neighbors. Homosexuals fought for their liberty. Concerned citizens fight for a mandate-free face covering.
Now mind you, please read this as a horrifically short glance of a timeline which cannot be contained in books and light reading. Neither is this a political jab of any sort. Simply a way to recognize that fighting is part of us. Fighting has actually shifted culture and outlined polarizing opinions.
At this point it would seem only fair of me to draw the distinction between a ‘fight’ as a quarrel, or a spat – an “I’m so mad I could throw things and/or vomit on Facebook” – and a ‘fight’ as a standing up against injustice as we have defined it.
Yet therein lies the heart of the matter. We have married the two so fiercely that to fight for a cause without rage towards others would seem rather empty. When all the while humility is mistaken for weakness, and we instead find ourselves in the despair of unmet desire.
To fight with humility as a motivator is an odd foundation for zeal, and certainly not the way we have been taught. Yet to all who have lost a piece of themselves in the fight, even when all was won, then perhaps you would know best that what you gained was only worth in part against all that which you lost.
EXPOSITION: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? “
RISE: “You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.”
DENOUEMENT: “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”