Truth Is To Be Lived, Not Debated
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.
James 3:13
The clamor of raised voices turns the heads of everyone in the room. Two men in the corner are arguing over the merits of respective candidates in a political campaign.
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Arguments tend to bring out the worst in people. Sooner or later, accusations are made that go beyond the search for right and wrong. Anger and bitterness result.
How do you react when confronted with a volatile situation? Conventional wisdom says, “Win at all cost”; godly wisdom suggests otherwise, as the helpful nineteenth-century commentary An Exposition on the Bible describes.
WALK WITH AN EXPOSITION ON THE BIBLE
“This test is a very practical one, and we can apply it to ourselves as well as to others.
“How do we bear ourselves in argument and in controversy? Are we serene about the result, in full confidence that truth and right should prevail? Are we desirous that truth should prevail, even if that should involve our being proved to be in the wrong? Are we meek and gentle toward those who differ from us? Or are we apt to lose our tempers and become heated against our opponents?
“If the last is the case, we have reason to doubt whether our wisdom is of the best sort. He who loses his temper in an argument has begun to care more about himself, and less about the truth.
“He has become like the many would-be teachers rebuked by James: slow to hear, swift to speak; unwilling to learn, eager to dogmatize; less ready to know the truth than to be able to say something, whether true or false.”
WALK CLOSER TO GOD
When Christ admitted to his accusers that he was the Son of God, they violently disagreed. In order to silence the truth, they crucified him. But notice that Christ did not argue; he didn’t need to. After all, truth was on his side—indeed, he was the very embodiment of truth. His enemies may have seemingly won the battle, but he triumphed in the end.
Truth has not been entrusted to you just to be debated. Indeed, the whole world waits for a convincing demonstration of the life-changing power of God’s truth.
As Christ showed, the application of truth to life is the most powerful argument of all.
