Fighting Fire With Fire

This post is an assigned response to Paul Louis Metzger’s post, Fire Fighting and Religious Conflicts

I am intrigued by the use of this firefighting metaphor in the context of religious conflicts. With four young men in my family pursuing a career in firefighting I can relate to the metaphor. Are we ignoring the burning tree in the room? [All fire photos used in this post were provided by my fireman brother, Steven Dueker]

Dr. Metzger is not using “conflict” in the sense of violent outbreaks but in the sense of identifying and addressing real points of disagreement between religions. While we can find areas of mutual concern between major religious groups, at their roots they are very different. When we take time to consider it, we realize that it takes conflict on the cellular level just to stay alive. The immune system depends on the right balance of conflict within the body to remain healthy. A forest is much the same.

Just one tree?

A healthy forest can usually survive natural lightning-started fires. The problem comes when the forest is not healthy. Summer heat and extended periods of drought can produce tinder-dry fuels. Insects can damage or kill large swaths of forest and ironically fire can be a natural way of controlling the damage and promoting new growth.

Smoke over  Fire-camp in Washington

Recently when commenting on a classmate’s writing on this subject, I agreed with her first paragraph, “Fighting fires is hard exhausting work…So it is when speaking with someone who disagrees with you on religious issues. It can be exhausting, hard work before we reach a resolution.” While I am not a fireman, I am a pastor and have fought a lot of relational fires over the years. It is hard and often frustrating work. Sometimes such fires, like those in heavy timber, will not be extinguished until the winter rains come.

Setting a Backfire

While compromise is not a satisfactory answer in discussing religious differences, we should not grow rigid and defensive at sincere questions and doubts, but welcome them, listening deeply before we answer. Often such discussions, which Dr. Metzger calls “conflicts”, are a natural way of cleaning out the brushwood and undergrowth of man-made ideas and non-essential practices on both sides of the table. If so, then the fire lines cut can be beneficial to overall relational health and religious understanding. If there is a problem with their reasoning then carefully setting the backfires of logical questions can be effective in slowing the spread of wildfire. In any event, earnest listening and active loving-kindness make an effective relational fire retardant.

I must confess to being a little hesitant to stir up conflict through aggressive over-engagement. I once had a professor whose approach to teaching a marriage enrichment course was to provoke couples to fight over various topics (even where there were no differences to work through) because “what didn’t kill you made you stronger.” Such an approach is foolishness. My experience reminds me that we need to be careful to balance properly our communication (10 positive comments to each negative or critical remark) or like the Santa Ana winds in Southern California, it will make the relational forest dangerously dry and susceptible to combustion. However, on the other hand, we should not withdraw and under-engage assuming that the quiet and the calm means we are in agreement—because it doesn’t. 

The Bible teaches that while followers of Jesus need not run from such relational and multi-faith “conflicts” we are not to be quarrelsome. St. Paul made this clear by writing to the young pastor Timothy “not to quarrel about words” (2 Tim. 2:14); and again, “Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.” (2 Tim. 2:23-25a)

While it is true that there is a season for everything, including “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (Eccl. 3:7), we would do well to follow St. Paul’s guidelines for those times when we should speak. For, as James, the brother of Jesus wrote,

“How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! 

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.

The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.” (James 3:5-6) 

If our tongue is not controlled by the cool fire of the Spirit of God, then we may blacken more than a meal with our inflammatory words.

As I write this I am reminded that 30 years ago this week, I wrote the following poem that still fits this subject very well. I have resisted the urge to edit and revise in order to preserve its “Greg’s early works” vibe!

Conflict, Growth & Perspective

Conflict

Norm of the day.

Key to strength

Or, to death.

It keeps the living alive

Causes the rest to die.

Growth,

Birthed only of conflict.

Subject also to the curse;

`Thou shalt have pain,

In Childbirth!'

Growth,

It is painful

Indeed.

Christians struggle

Toward Jesus

Unto life,

Then sacrifice their gain

For the world,

That some might be saved.

Those of the world

Struggle Into self

Or,

In moments of platonic thought,

Each other,

Only to die in the grinding collision.

© 1985 Greg K. Dueker