Good Strife / Bad Strife

While I ironed the sheets, I watched a program about Greece. There were a few surprises the presenter wanted to relay. For instance, the pure white Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens wasn’t pure white a couple of thousand years ago, but was painted in vibrant colours. Egyptian Blue. Other colours made from stones near and far. 

Olympia, the original venue for the Olympic Games, was a place of pilgrimage, as the games were part of a religious festival held every four years. The Games were nothing like our resurrected version of the Olympics, because in ancient Greece the striving to win was sometimes so fierce that it culminated in severe injury – loss of an eye, for instance – or even death. That was all part of it, and the ancient Greeks thought it was ok.

They termed such athletic competitions as an example of ‘good strife’. People contended with everything they had, but the striving was thought to be healthy and even virtuous. ‘Bad strife’ I suppose was treachery in war.

The writer to the Hebrews in the Bible compares the Christian life with a race: “...throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus...” (Hebrews 12:1 & 2)

St Paul, too, writes to the church in Corinth in similar vein: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air.” (1 Corinthians 9:24-26)

Good strife. 

The Christian life isn’t easy. It’s rich, and there’s no other life I would want to live. But when hard things happen, things which may make sense eternally but sure don’t on our own level, it can be a challenge to keep running with perseverance. 

Things happen every day that break people’s hearts, that break people’s lives. We hear about bad strife in the news. We see it in our communities. We experience it in our homes.

Something happened this week within my circle of friends. An untimely, tragic death. Inexplicable. Apparently meaningless. 

It could make us wobble. It could distract us from the race. It could divert attention from Jesus.

But I find that when the bad things happen, I just want to be like one of our cats, who always looks for a place to tuck herself into, to make herself invisible, to make herself safe. And that place is always under the wings of Jesus, tucked in, tearful perhaps but trusting that though I don’t get it, He does. 

Bad strife. Good strife. One day heaven will totally invade earth, and it’ll all be good. 

Meanwhile, we need to keep our eyes on the prize, on Jesus, and keep running, even staggering, forward. Or at least, curling up in his protective embrace until we’ve recovered enough to rejoin the race.

God bless you.