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The Slow Violence of Division

Reflecting on Proverbs 6:16-19

There are things that fracture the soul.
Things that unravel a people from the inside out.
Not all at once.
Usually slowly. Quietly. Like rot beneath the floorboards of a house that still looks beautiful from the street.

And Proverbs says God hates these things.

Not because God is angry in the fragile, explosive way humans are angry.
Not because God is easily offended.
But because God sees what these things do to people.
To families.
To communities.
To the human heart.

So…what are these things?

“Haughty eyes…”

That posture where a person begins to stand above others instead of beside them.
The subtle intoxication of superiority.
The need to be right. To win. To be seen as more enlightened, more spiritual, more important.Pride rarely enters the room announcing itself.

It usually arrives dressed as certainty.

And once pride takes root, people stop listening.
They stop learning.
They stop loving.

“A lying tongue…”

Because language creates worlds.
Every word spoken builds something.
Trust or suspicion.
Healing or division.
Life or death.

A lie is never just a false statement.
It’s an assault on reality itself.
It bends the fabric of trust that holds human relationships together.
And eventually… people no longer know what is real.

Or who is safe.

“Hands that shed innocent blood…”

Violence is not only physical.
There are ways we crucify people without ever touching them.

A rumor.
A betrayal.
A public humiliation.
A character assassination disguised as discernment.

There are bloodless forms of murder we baptize in religious language.

“A heart that devises wicked plans…”

Notice the progression.
This isn’t accidental brokenness.
This is cultivated darkness.

A heart rehearsing harm.
Strategizing destruction.
Feeding resentment until it becomes identity.

We become what we continually contemplate.

“Feet that hurry to run to evil…”

Some people sprint toward chaos.
They move fast toward outrage.
Fast toward offense.
Fast toward gossip.
Fast toward division.

Because evil has a gravitational pull when the soul has not learned stillness.
And then the proverb lands on the final line like a hammer:

“One who sows discord in a family.”

Interesting, isn’t it?
Of all the sins listed, the culmination is division.

Because the enemy’s oldest strategy has never changed:
separate people from God,
and then separate people from each other.

Divide marriages.
Divide churches.
Divide friends.
Divide brothers and sisters.

If you can fracture trust, you can fracture a people.
And this is why unity is so sacred in Scripture.

Not uniformity.
Not pretending.
Not silence.

But the hard, holy work of remaining connected in truth and love.
Because every gathering of humans moves in one of two directions:
toward communion,
or toward fragmentation.

Every conversation.
Every email.
Every whispered comment after the meeting.
Every social media post.
Every private resentment we nurture instead of heal.

We are always either sewing garments of peace…or sowing seeds of division.

And maybe the deepest invitation of Proverbs 6 is not merely to avoid evil, but to become the kind of people who heal what evil fractures.

People whose eyes are humble.
Whose tongues tell truth.
Whose hands protect life.
Whose hearts imagine goodness.
Whose feet run toward mercy.
Whose presence reconciles rather than divides.

Because this is the way of Jesus.

The One who stepped into a world addicted to accusation and violence…
and refused to return evil for evil.
The One who shed His own blood rather than demand ours.The One who came not to scatter humanity further…but to gather us home.

I sense the question sitting underneath Proverbs 6:16-19 is not simply:

“What sins should I avoid?”
But:
“What kind of presence am I becoming in the world?”

Because every one of us walks into rooms carrying something.
Some people carry anxiety.
Some carry suspicion.
Some carry ego.
Some carry hidden violence.

And when they enter a room, the temperature changes.
People brace themselves.
Armor goes up.
Trust leaks out of the walls.

But then there are other people.

People who walk into chaos and somehow peace arrives with them.
People who tell the truth without needing to wound.
People who are humble enough to listen.
People who absorb offense instead of multiplying it.
People who refuse the addiction of outrage.
People who reconcile.
People who heal.

And you know these people when you meet them.
Because around them, your soul exhales.

This is the invitation of Jesus.
Not merely behavior modification.
Not simply avoiding bad things.

But becoming the kind of human who reflects the wholeness of God back into a fractured world.
A person incapable of sowing discord because Christ has dealt with the discord within them.

Because the truth is:

…we cannot heal division outside us while nurturing division inside us.

And maybe this is why the Spirit spends so much time working beneath the surface.

In motives.
In wounds.
In ego.
In resentment.
In the secret need to be vindicated.

Because long before division appears in public…

it was first rehearsed in private.

And the Kingdom of God comes differently than the kingdoms of this world.
The kingdoms of this world survive by accusation.
By scapegoating.
By fear.
By power.
By making enemies.

But the Kingdom of God advances through peacemakers.
Truth tellers.
Foot washers.
Enemy lovers.
Bridge builders.

The world teaches us how to win arguments.
Jesus teaches us how to heal people.

And perhaps that is why Proverbs says God hates these things.

Because God is fiercely protective of communion.
Of shalom.
Of the sacred thread that binds humans together in love.
God hates whatever destroys His beloved.

So today the invitation is simple:

Pay attention to what you are planting.
Because every thought becomes a seed.
Every word becomes a seed.
Every conversation becomes a seed.
Every post.
Every whisper.
Every grievance left unchecked.

Seeds.

And eventually, the field of your life becomes the harvest of what you planted there.
So plant peace.
Plant truth.
Plant mercy.
Plant humility.
Plant reconciliation.

Become the kind of person who makes it harder for hell to spread.
Become the kind of presence that reminds people what God is like.

Because in a world tearing itself apart…that may be one of the holiest acts left.

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Our Kids Are Losing

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Ravi Zacharias has always inspired, challenged, and taught me much. He has a way of speaking directly to the culture from a very profound and godly place. The following is taken from his book, “Recapture the Wonder” where he observes and articulates just what our kids are losing…

“In the 1950s kids lost their innocence. They were liberated from their parents by well-paying jobs, cars, and lyrics in music that gave rise to a new term —the generation gap.

In the 1960s, kids lost their authority. It was a decade of protest—church, state, and parents were all called into question and found wanting. Their authority was rejected, yet nothing ever replaced it.

In the 1970s, kids lost their love. It was the decade of me-ism dominated by hyphenated words beginning with self. Self-image, Self-esteem, Self-assertion….It made for a lonely world. Kids learned everything there was to know about sex and forgot everything there was to know about love, and no one had the nerve to tell them there was a difference.

In the 1980s, kids lost their hope. Stripped of innocence, authority and love and plagued by the horror of a nuclear nightmare, large and growing numbers of this generation stopped believing in the future.

In the 1990s kids lost their power to reason. Less and less were they taught the very basics of language, truth, and logic and they grew up with the irrationality of a postmodern world.

In the new millennium, kids woke up and found out that somewhere in the midst of all this change, they had lost their imagination. Violence and perversion entertained them till none could talk of killing innocents since none was innocent anymore.”

― Ravi Zacharias, Recapture the Wonder

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Influence and Culture

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I came across this gem by Tim Keller today and simply thought he said it well. I have been teaching through a series called the new normal, and the first few weeks the conversation centered around looking at the effects of worldview and culture on faith. Keller notes:

“Even if 80 percent of the population of a country are Christian believers, they will have almost no cultural influence if the Christians do not live in cultural centers and work in culture-forging fields such as academia, publishing, media, entertainment, and the arts. The assumption that society will improve simply be more Christian believers being present is no longer valid.”
Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City

It’s not a numbers game, it’s about creative influence. God created us all to be cultural artists and gardeners. The way to see things change is not by condemning, critiquing, copying or consuming culture, rather it is about creating more culture that is winsome, authentic and powerful. To create more culture we need to unleash men and women of faith in the key centers that Keller notes ion his book.

There is a beauty and a freedom when you realize the best way to change things is not to fight, but rather to be like God and create.

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Reformers and Fences

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In many ways, it would seem that we are a world of reformers now. Thanks in large part to the power of social media, everybody has a platform to say whatever they like regardless of how accurate, intelligent or worthy their thoughts may be. Some people like to troll and cause conflict while others simply like to demolish the ideas and people that they disagree with.

One of the problems with this platform in our current context is that most people who are posting status update after status update, using their agenda as a polemic, seem to have forgotten the basic laws of logic and reason. What has taken their place, you ask? Emotions, opinions, and half thought through arguments.

In order to be a true reformer one must understand the scope of the thing that they wish to reform before they destroy it. Many go about reform the way history tells us Cortés burnt his ships in the harbor. While there was no going back for Cortés, sometimes we burn the ships before we have reasoned through such actions.

Today we are in the midst of cultural reform. Facebook has proven to be the new “speakers corner” as people pontificate, throw in a meme or two that agrees with their viewpoint, erroneously thinking that the picture and soundbite alone should end all other disagreement.

People are unfriended when they disagree, or perhaps more to the point, when they become belligerent concerning their topic.

The problem with the new reformers is that too often they have not thought through fully the reasons that something existed before. They have not entered into the “whys” of the thing they wish to eliminate or change. Some areas of reform seem easy such as ending human trafficking or eliminating global poverty. Some areas of current reform seem less clear to the populace such as gun rights and same-sex marriage. While boats are being burned, and status updates are flying, the conversations that are needed are being ignored in lieu of trying to determine who is right…who is wrong.

When emotions rule the day, we don’t ask the deeper questions, we simply want everyone to agree with our position. These are not easy issues, and before we tear down the things that have been in place for a while, we need to understand why they existed in the first place. Maybe they do need to be changed, maybe they don’t. Until we can clearly understand why something has existed, we don’t have the clarity yet to remove it.

G.K Chesterton spoke profoundly to this:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

Dialog is needed today on so many issues from global economics to civil rights. It would be my hope that we could engage the issues with honest reflection, being compassionate about the other person, even if we disagree on some issue.

But before we keep tearing down fences, lets make sure we know why the fence was put there in the first place.