Picking Fights Or Picking Your Fights

Read Proverbs 20

Avoiding a fight is a mark of honor; only fools insist on quarreling.

Proverbs 20:3

This proverb does not deny the fact that conflict may be necessary. Rather, it challenges those who go out of their way to create conflict. It also turns upside down the typical attitude that honor is best defended by eagerness to fight. Honor doesn’t “insist on quarreling” in order to prove itself.

The wise person pictured in this proverb learns to see a fight coming. Such a person knows that a fight may demonstrate who is stronger more often than it demonstrates who is right. Thus, fighting may not move the parties any closer to a resolution. Hostilities may bury the truth more deeply. It is better, and more honorable, to seek the truth before a fight breaks out.

Quarreling usually turns out to be an attempt to verbally defeat an opponent by superior volume, threat, or insult. Rarely does quarreling have to do with the truth. Therefore, those who readily resort to quarreling reveal their foolishness, even if those doing so happen to be ourselves!

A WORD FOR TODAY

The wise don’t quarrel.

Dear Lord, I admit I can be foolish and quarrelsome. I need your help to recognize this temptation when it appears in my life.