Why fight?

Jesus was not violent in any way. Yet those who opposed him found no other way than violence to fight him. Why fight him anyway? The truth is I don’t know. But if pressed my sense is that there is something deeply rooted in human nature that causes even the best of us to fight against that which we don’t understand. That is, until we tire of the fight, and not because we’re worn out, but because we finally discover that fighting almost always leaves the winner on edge waiting for the next fight. 

Fighting has its upside. “There’s a lot of fight in that one,” an old man said to his wife. What he means is that their child is up to the challenge. He’ll keep at it until he gets it done. In the first half of life it’s good to have some fight in you. When you fall down you get back up. When you fail the first time, study harder, fight it out, and press on toward your goal. 

But fighting has its limits.  By the time you reach the second half of life fighting has done all it can do for you. It got you this far, but it won’t take you the rest of the way. I’ve seen fighting amongst family lead to estrangement that lasts for years, decades in some cases. Sometimes the fight never ends, or ends with a whimper when one of the fighters dies of old age. Even then the fight has a way of living on in the limbs of the family tree. 

Fight is such a fierce word. The sound of it is sheer and sharp. It’s a word that seems like it would bite you if you got too close to it. It’s a word that should be kept on a leash or in a cage. “Nobody wins a fight.” That’s what Howard Thurman’s grandmother said to him curtly when he bested a bully in the schoolyard. 

There is another way. Right before you throw the punch with either your fist or your tongue make a subtle shift. Turn just barely inward and imagine that when you look within you are looking toward God who is the love that makes your heart beat. Leave your opponent unopposed for a slender moment. Let him go, let her be, slip off just for a second into your inner room where you and God are not other than each other, you are one. Remember the love that got you through all the twists and turns of your life to this moment. Feel that love, the very presence of God, pulsing calmly in your body. Then return to the person standing right in front of you and dare to risk defeat. Love that person with God and just see what happens. Not what happens to them, but what happens to you. The win is found when you are transformed into a person who, like Jesus, is not violent in any way. This is the practice of the presence of God applied to the battlefield of your actual life.