All tagged fighting

It is hard to stand silent when we are being disparaged by someone. We are tempted to confront those who do this to us, and yet we have two examples of this happening in scripture that we should use as our guides when this occurs to us. The most obvious is Jesus as he stood accused before the chief priests, and again before Pilot. Even unto death He did not quarrel or defend Himself. The second was King David as Shemei, a relative of Saul, cursed him in front of all his men. This man chased after David and derided him, while throwing stones and dust at him, but David did not retaliate. All of us have been in such situations, and I ask that we each reflect on how we behaved.

It is a common misconception that we need to fight God’s battles for Him. Christian’s who think that they must aggressively defend God, or Jesus Christ, from the world are mistaken. As humans we carry a lot of defensive anger around in us, and it will bubble to the surface when we, or our families, are threatened in any way. If you aren’t inclined to believe this then try disparaging someone’s parents, correcting their child, or doing just about anything that makes them feel their loved ones are facing harm in some way. We allow this anger to bleed over into our faith too, and will turn neighbors into enemies over our desire to defend God, and even our liturgy. We will lash out at others who don’t believe as we do, and will even go to war over these differences. We act as though God needs for us to fight His battles, when all He really wants us to do is to show others who He is by standing firm in our spiritual lives, revealing the nature of His Son Jesus to the world, and then by trusting in Him as He wages spiritual war.