2. Passionate.
Our polemics ought to be passionate. Like playfulness, this characteristic is deeply rooted in the truth of the Gospel and a love for people.
You can see this all over Paul’s letters. Paul is nothing if not passionate in his polemics for the sake of the Gospel.
Galatians, anybody?
A holy zeal marks his tone in that letter because of his great gospel-fear that they might be abandoning Christ. He does not shy away from making his points forcefully, giving voice to his real concern in order to communicate just how important the issue was.
A friend might know you disagree, but may not grasp the significance of an issue until they hear the alarm in your voice. Paul’s letter not only communicated truth, but the way he communicated it gave it an emotional tenor, an urgency, that was vital to the content.
Many of us, especially in the younger generations, enjoy being liked a great deal. Given that, passionate engagement with our neighbors and friends over the truth can be intimidating. We’re scared of offending, or coming off as pushy or unloving.
In a world like ours where our radios, TVs and blogs are full of people just yelling and trying to brow-beat people into submission, that’s a real danger. I don’t want to minimize that. We should never argue just to argue, yet so often that’s what we find ourselves caught up in: meaningless arguments about things that, really, nobody should get that agitated over.
Still, this shouldn’t stop us from engaging passionately with our friends about things that really matter. Love engages over truth. Apathy or an unwillingness to trouble yourself with a difficult conversation out of fear is not the loving thing to do. The truth is something to be passionate about because truth is about life.
