the good fight – with who?

As I begin this journey, I find it only appropriate to address the nature of the title I’ve given this blog – The Good Fight.

In general, I prefer to start things at a high level, the highest level in fact. It is often comical to my peers at work the height to which I desire to initially see things before proceeding with action, no matter how insignificant. When I say “see” things, I mean accurately understanding their purpose. Why do they exist? Where did they come from? What is their meaning? As one could imagine, this doesn’t always lend itself to quick decision making, although I would like to think that each of us possess a degree of filtration that is able to be applied to our natural thought process in times of crisis or times constraint or otherwise. I believe the same applies to me. I digress.

I find it humerus that traditionally, when I have thought of the phrase “the good fight”, it has always been connected to my christian upbringing and biblically based understanding of the Apostle Paul’s letter to his young disciple Timothy – reading “fight ‘the good fight’ of faith”. I have always been inspired by this passage for many reasons. For one, as a young boy, the concept of my God telling me I needed to “fight” was rather enticing. Furthermore, as a young adult, I found the challenge to be even more appealing as I slowly began to develop my own beliefs about life and thus also began to distinguish that there were those whom thought different. Therefore, in my mind, the only relation I had to obeying the call from God to “fight” was directly correlated with the degree that I was willing to defend what I believed from those who believed differently. And frankly, this idea does make sense. After all, if God is a teacher who taught the world many things, and of which the purpose of the Bible (as I understood it) was to relay those things to humanity, then what else could Paul have meant to timothy by saying “fight the good fight of faith” if not to defend what is said in the very book this source of instruction comes from?

Here is where you will get your first glimpse of the irreconcilable amount of sin that lies within my heart and in my life of which I will furthermore regard only as the “brokenness” of my life. I will describe what I mean by “sin” and “brokenness” at a later point (both terms that Christian circles frequently use but are often left to be ambiguously defined by un-churched audiences – but again – that is for another time). Before I began the works of creating this blog, I was emersed in thought about, to no suprise, the purpose for it’s existence? It’s meaning? And I felt the title should reflect that purpose. For this reason, I took great pains in dealing with the thought of the title. I was surrounding myself with scripture and other sources of wisdom in prayer that God might be glorified through these reflections and not me. I stirred and stirred for several weeks (silly if you think about it considering that there is an incredibly high probability that in reality – this “blog” is really more of a virtual diary as I am likely to be it’s only reader!). Regardless, the turmoil and significance of the title of this blog existed within me nonetheless. After reading through the books of 1st and 2nd Timothy, I finally felt peace about the phrase “The Good Fight”, perhaps rekindling afresh the ethos I felt as a boy. Imagining that what I am to flesh-out on these virtual pages will be a continual “battle” of Truth and lies between myself and the world, or in reality, the “world” being anyone whose beliefs are different than mine.

This is where I am ever thankful for the discernment that accompanies time. As I re-read Timothy and began to embark on the setting up of this website, I found a constant wrestling going on on my heart. You see, there was a great deal of unaddressed sin that I had been dealing with in my life that was paralyzing me from writing this blog, much less starting one. It was what most Christians would refer to as a “thorn in my side” of which I couldn’t remove myself, not without involving something or someone outside myself. Frustrated and in a moment of striking clarity, I found myself staring directly into the eyes of the enemy at which I was to embark on this “good fight with” and it was a face of which I am all too familiar…me. It was at this moment of internal depravity and self-awareness that I realized the Fight to which I am called to never give up is the very one that lies within my own heart waging war against the members of my flesh. the fight that, unless properly addressed, will lead to the ruin of me.

Remember when I mentioned that I always like to start at the highest level of things? At their origin? Well, I realized that what I had been trying to deem as “fighting”, in the sense that I am defending my truth from others or outside sources that think differently, I was actually skipping a step. A incredibly consequential step that equips me to even engage in combat with the second. I wonder why so many times I felt in-ept to deal with conversations of truth, meaning, morality, destiny, purpose, origin, or most other related to God at a young age? It was because there was a battle that needed to be engaged within myself before there was ever a drop of blood shed elsewhere. The heart within myself is the battlefield on which God desires to duel and eventually stake his claim as King. Now, I understand that the concept of ourselves being our “own enemy” and the fight being something “inside of ourselves” can sound silly, or even impossible. But in reality, speakers, authors, and professors identify and recognize internal conflict as legitimate as gravity. For example, have you ever heard any of the following phrases: “battling with addiction”, “fighting the urge to give in”, “procrastination always wins”, “laziness is the enemy of production”, etc.? In each of these examples, there is, within ourselves, a third party identified as existent, but not existent independent of us as individuals. To elaborate, there would be no such thing as laziness or procrastination if individuals were not there to embody said characteristics. There reality is symbiotically related to the presence of a human being. However, at the same time, while these traits do no exist independent of human existence, they do exist independently within humans separate from the humans themselves. Example; when someone says that someone else is lazy, their are referring to the trait of laziness within the person, but would not believe that the two could not be separated. I say all of this to iterate the point that when Christians refer to the “sin” within themselves, they are both acknowledging that they as an individual exist independent of the sin, but that at the same time, their very existence provides the platform is essential for sin to exist. Hence, the turmoil that Christians have with sin is very much similar, in regard to its descriptive nature, to what many would describe they have with say, procrastination.