Is that the way Daddy wants it?

But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, [even] Christ:

Ephesians 4:15

Today I was honored to get into a deep (albeit unoriginal and boring) theological debate with a brother. I am tempted here, of course, to reveal the topic of the debate and turn my brother in the Lord into a perfect "straw man" which I can set up and knock down easily to show that I was right then, I am right now, and here are all of the people who agree with me. But what good would that do? I am convinced that until Jesus comes back we will (as his Body here on earth) have disagreements about His word. I have had this specific debate hundreds of times with many different people and as would be expected we trod the old path realizing that our core disagreements and assumptions would not be reconciled in the space of 15 minutes, if ever. The "I said, he said" part is immaterial to the purposes of this article. The main thing that had me perplexed was that as the discussion continued and my brother in the Lord (who is at least 15 years my senior) got increasingly agitated, and frustrated to find that his "ex cathedra" arguments were not given any weight he became angry, raised his voice, and began to use crude insults.

Of course it would be a logical fallacy for me to claim that because he was losing the argument and became emotional that I have more reason to believe his argument false and his intentions bad, but the question that faces me is this: How must our Father in Heaven feel when He sees us willing to slash each other to the ground and nearly go to blows over something that we can only get the most basic understanding of from His word? It must be comical on one hand to see two little specks of earth filled with the divine breath arguing about something way out of their depth and ability. Almost like two bugs arguing passionately over whether humans have different color eyes or not (when they themselves can't even see in color). I don't know if bugs see color or not, but it makes a better analogy if they don't. We argue and only achieve displaying our own silliness to ourselves (if we are honest enough to see it).

On the other hand it must be all the more tragic for the Father who wants us to be united in sharing Christs love with one another. What a plague it is to have to be right all the time! These realizations in my life made the discussion somewhat unemotional for me. However, I was struck by angry and sad this fellow became as his paper mache arguments that he had repeated over and over to himself (and now to me) fell apart before him as crumbling messes of presupposition and pomp. I was disturbed by his insults and angry words, and especially disturbed by the fact that I often am reduced to the same emotional state when fighting for something that I want to be right about. He felt that he was defending the truth, but he could not speak it in love. I think the best thing to do, when we find that we are no longer speaking the truth IN LOVE is to stop speaking. (Exegetical note - "speaking the truth in love" here is a tough one to translate because in Greek "truth" has a verb form. Literally the verse would be "truthing in love" meaning more than our words but how every aspect of our lives is conducted. Cool stuff.) I pray for my brother in the Lord. He is hurting a great many feelings and then wonders why he is isolated and why he can't find any fellowship at out church. His "backpack" full of anger, hurt, resentment, bitterness, pride and so forth keep him from experiencing and enjoying the love of the saints, and presumably the love of God as well. Certainly a keen reminder to me when I feel like I am not experiencing those things. What blessing am I missing because of a full "backpack"?