There are lots of chances to fight these days; in fact, it seems like we’ll fight about some pretty unimportant things. But those of us who carry the name “Christian” have to be careful about our fights, and about how we fight.
Paul said this, in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
Christians have a lot to fight against, but it’s not those dumb other people. We fight two things. We demolish arguments against the faith, and every pretension that sets itself up against God. That means we go to war on ideas, not people. The most sinful person is just another image bearer who bought into some bad ideas.
But we don’t use the same weapons the world does. The world uses guns and tanks. The world uses snark and sneering. The world uses lies and gossip and innuendo and fake news. But we use love, as expressed in the message of good news that we bring.
The other big difference is that, in comparison to the world’s take-no-prisoners attitude (meaning any wounded enemies are finished off), we take captives. Those captives, Paul says, are our thoughts. Every thought we have has to be obedient to Jesus. That’s the only way we’ll be thinking right and therefore able to go to war against those bad ideas.
It’s a different way of fighting, but it’s critical that we do it this way. Attacking arguments and pretentious ideas, fighting against anything that sets itself agains the knowledge of God, and doing it only in love, with all our thoughts captive to Jesus – that’s the way we win. It’s so different, the world has no response for it.
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