Three Group Chats and a Tuesday

Four hundred messages since Thursday. You have not counted; that is roughly what it feels like.

The first chat is the one where everybody agrees and the agreement has an edge in it, and people are slightly sharper than they would be face to face.

The second is the one where two people are genuinely arguing and the rest of you are watching, and one of them keeps making a point you can see is wrong and cannot work out how to say so without it becoming about you.

The third is quieter and is mostly links.

The question is real. It matters, it has consequences for how a church treats people, and you are not wrong to care about it.

And on Tuesday morning at nine you have to do a specific thing about it, in a room, with a person, and not one of the four hundred messages has been about that.

That is what has started to bother you. You have spent six evenings extremely engaged with a subject you will have to act on in forty hours, and you are no better prepared than you were on Thursday, and you are considerably more tired.

You have been treating the arguing as preparation. It has not been.

What this page will not do

I am not going to tell you which side is right. The question is genuine and it is not settled by an article, and this site does not adjudicate between people who are trying to be faithful.

I am not going to tell you that doctrine does not matter. It does. What people believe about this shapes how somebody gets treated in a room, which is exactly why you have a Tuesday. That is not my opinion. Scripture stands behind it in 2 Timothy 2:23-24, and the Holy Spirit brings it near.

And I am not going to name anybody in any of the three chats.

What I am going to do is put Tuesday back in the middle, because it has been displaced by an argument for six days.

You are not shallow for wanting to stop arguing about it. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is not a reward for holding the correct position, and the Holy Spirit is in that kitchen with a woman who has read four hundred messages.

The verse is about a manner, not a topic

There is a passage in 2 Timothy that is usually quoted at people to make them stop talking, and it is doing something more precise than that.

But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient.2 Timothy 2:23-24

Look carefully, because Paul is not banning the subject.

Apt to teach. That is in there, in the same breath. He is not telling Timothy to stop engaging with hard questions; that would be strange advice to give a man whose job was teaching.

What he names is strive, which is a word about the manner of the thing. It is contention, the wanting-to-win, and it is what turns a genuine question into something that generates heat and produces nothing.

And notice the test he gives, which is unusually practical: knowing that they do gender strifes. The mark of the thing to avoid is not that the subject is unimportant. It is what the discussion is producing.

Apply that to your three chats. What has the second one produced since Thursday? Two people further entrenched, several watching, one person who has gone quiet who used to contribute.

That is the test, and it is failing it, and the failure is about the format rather than about the question.

You are not required to stay in a discussion that is generating heat. Scripture says the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, 2 Timothy 2:24, and the instruction is about manner while teaching stays in the list, and the Holy Spirit is at work in somebody who withdraws from a fight without abandoning a subject.

Why the chats cannot help with Tuesday

Here is the structural reason, and it is not that the people in them are foolish.

A group chat is optimized for positions. It has no room for particulars: nobody in there knows the person you will be sitting with on Tuesday, what they have been through, what they are actually asking, or what tone the room will need.

So the four hundred messages have been about the general shape of a question, and Tuesday is entirely particular, and the two do not connect.

And there is a second thing. Arguing about a doctrine and acting on it use different faculties. One is analytical and adversarial. The other requires warmth and attention and the ability to be surprised by a person.

Six evenings in the first has made you worse at the second, not better, because you have been rehearsing a stance and on Tuesday you will need to be listening.

You are not going to be ready for a person by having won an argument. Scripture says be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, James 1:19, and the order of those is deliberate, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes somebody able to hear a particular person on a particular morning.

What Tuesday actually needs

One sentence of preparation, and it is not about the doctrine.

Write down what actually happens at nine. Who is in the room. What they are hoping for. What you are able to offer and what you are not. What you will say if it goes the difficult way. Scripture holds that ground in 2 Timothy 2:23-24, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it into a room like this one.

That is fifteen minutes of work and it is worth more than every message since Thursday.

And go in prepared to be surprised. The person you are meeting is not a position; they are somebody with a history that none of the three chats knows about, and the most likely outcome of the next forty hours of arguing is that you arrive with your answer already loaded.

You are not without preparation for a room. Scripture says a soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger, Proverbs 15:1, and the softness is a description of manner rather than of content, and the Holy Spirit is present in a room at nine on a Tuesday in a way He is not present in a thread.