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Los Angeles, CA 90053   

AFRAID OF WAR

They call it “spoiling” for a fight — and maybe “spoil” is the right word, as we consider biblically the end results of conflict and turmoil. But isn’t it true that people sometimes just love to throw rocks and stoke the fires of controversy? “Did you hear the latest?” And the pulse just spikes right off the EKG chart. “No! What!”

In an Internet essay from “thelivingwordtbc.com” by Pastor Ken D. Trivette, entitled Sermons From the Book of James, this gifted writer shares a little anecdote which makes you laugh, then wince. Speaking about how we gravitate toward the battlefield action on the Parker Brothers Risk board, he writes:
“It is like the fellow who no matter what was discussed in a business meeting always got up and said, ‘I’m against it.’ On one occasion someone offered to donate the church a chandelier. As usual, he got up and said, ‘I’m against it.’ The pastor looked at him and said, ‘Why would you be against it? It is not costing us ANYTHING.’” I mean, this is a FREE chandelier. “He replied, ‘Well, first of all, we don’t have anybody that can play it. Second of all, where would we put it, and thirdly, what we need around here is more light.’”

Trivette then quotes from James 4:1, and let’s look at it in a couple of versions. Here’s the NIV:
“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it.”

There’s an interesting word in the King James, to replace “desires.” Notice:
“From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your LUSTS that war in your members?”

Now, I guess that could mean essentially the same thing: that we lust for THINGS, and then go to battle in order to grab the THINGS. “To the winner go the SPOILS” . . . and there’s that word again. But friend, isn’t it possible that we just plain lust for the battle? We love the fight as much as we love the thing we’re fighting about.

Speaking of battles, there was an amazing tell-all book that came out in 1994 shortly after Bill Clinton beat George Bush the Elder in a Presidential race. It was entitled All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running For President, co-authored by James Carville, rabid Democrat, and Mary Matalin, equally rabid Republican. Ironically, these two political warriors helped run the two rival campaigns . . . and were quietly dating each other the entire time. You can still see them on Crossfire sometimes, and he’s as far to the left as she is from the right. It’s got to be an amazing marriage — and talk about loving to fight, loving the battle, the “smell of napalm in the morning.” But in her half of the back-and-forth narrative, Republican Mary Matalin admits that she used to live a much more liberal lifestyle.
“By the time I got to college,” she writes, “flower children weren’t a clique, they were running the joint. We were ALWAYS marching over something or storming the administration building.” Now get this one: “During a march on the county courthouse, I turned to a fellow long-hair. ‘What are we protesting?’ ‘I don’t know, man,’ he said. ‘Nixon did something.’”

And that was enough for her. “Far out, man. Let’s burn down the library. Let’s rumble, dude.” Because inside most of us is a simple desire to be in battle, to beat some enemy, somewhere, at someTHING. And there are people we all know who seem to forever live on the protest bus, wearing a tie-dyed T shirt. “You know Fred,” somebody once observed. “He’s not happy unless he’s not happy.”

Yesterday we thought a little bit about a fracas going on over in Ephesus, where Paul’s young friend Timothy was staying. People were quarreling about this and that, and Paul issued a warning to stay away from it. But here’s just a tiny added insight from chapter six of his first letter.
“If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing.” And now notice this: “He has an UNHEALTHY INTEREST in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men and women of corrupt mind.”

That’s a warning bell going off, isn’t it? “An unhealthy interest” in controversies.

Sometimes they’re doctrinal. You know, I’ve been sitting in a cafeteria in a distant state, attending a spiritual retreat. And someone comes up to talk, and we’re chatting away. And the conversation just inexorably goes to this or that point of heated discussion in the church. I can see them steering the tank right over to the bomb craters. What do I think about this? What’s my position on that? What is the Voice of Prophecy saying about such-and-such thing? And you know, all of a sudden, this person pulls out of their purse or coat pocket a whole sheaf of papers they’ve put together. Photocopies of religious quotations, or recent news clippings, in order to “prove” that they’re right. And you know, maybe they ARE right. But it’s a dangerous thing to be so enamored of the battle, of pinning our opponent to the wall of the cafeteria with our proof texts.

And the same is true in our own personal lives, religious AND secular. Do you find yourself ENJOYING that lingering reverie, where you imagine your opponent just “getting it,” receiving at long last their comeuppance? And then you realize, if you think it through, that you’d just have to quickly scoot to another conflict, another feud. This one completed fantasy wouldn’t be enough; you wouldn’t get satisfaction. Because, friend, conflict is an unfulfilled and unfulfilling quest. Someone once described it as a “down escalator to nowhere.”

James chapter four talks about this LUST for things, and for the battle to get the things. Just three verses earlier, James makes this observation:
“For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.”

And he’s undoubtedly using the word “disorder” to describe the endless confusion, the chaos, of our squabbles. But isn’t it also true, perhaps, that this inner drive to fight is itself a disorder? A twisting of the Eden original, where Adam and Eve got along in perfect harmony? And then INSTANTLY began to snipe at each other and pass off the blame when they sinned? Think about it.

There was a devastating feature article in the February 3, 2003 issue of Newsweek magazine, entitled “Fear at the Front,” written by Evan Thomas. And he has some amazing details and statistics about the reality that when it comes to real war and real bullets, most soldiers are scared right down to their socks. Through the centuries, warriors have often had to rely on strong drink in order to get out there and go into battle. Back in World War II, according to historian S. L. A. Marshall, maybe no more than 25% of soldiers actually ever fired their weapons when they got into a combat situation. Some just go into shock. Others throw up. They get dry mouth; they gag. Ten percent are so scared they wet their pants. Only about TWO percent of soldiers, when you get right down to it, relish the action, the zing of the bullets flying by, the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air. And a good share of those are later diagnosed as psychopaths. As Thomas sums up:
“It has long been recognized that men fight, not for God or country, but out of fear — fear of being killed and fear of showing fear.”

What a fascinating turnaround, isn’t it? We’re so upside-down in our thinking sometimes. In battle, where you might get wounded or killed, we’re afraid to fight. However, in real life, day-to-day living, where we don’t think it can hurt us — but where the stakes are ETERNAL — we love the sound and the smell and the feel and the taste of blood. We go after it; we seek it out, not realizing that our little fights and spiritual skirmishes on Main Street might, in the end, carry more eternal weight than the possible carnage on Baghdad Boulevard.

Let’s be honest right here. As I record these words — I’m really going to try. You join me. Friend, do we secretly fancy ourselves as warriors? Do we remember the savoring of controversy, of wanting to go into a meeting where we knew our opponent was going to get hammered? By God’s grace, let’s face that truth, that reality. Let’s confess it. The lust IS there — AND the disorder. To enjoy combat is spiritual disorder, and it can be more eternally deadly than bullets from an M4 carbine.

The good news is that this is one military unit we CAN get out of without risking a term at Leavenworth. It is possible to leave the war behind and be set free by the Prince of Peace. Right after James writes about the lust of desire, the infection of envy, of wanting to endlessly fight, he admonishes:
“You do not have, because you do not ask God.”

That’s the question for us today. Have you and I asked God — and meant it — to strengthen us in our resolve to not live in the war zone? To “bear with one another” and forgive, as we studied yesterday?
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” Paul writes.

But we do have to mean it. And we do have to ask.