Killing the Fight Tree

Photo by Johann Siemens on Unsplash

Some knowledge is too much for us, yet some knowledge is so imperative it cannot be understated. This article is about both kinds of knowledge.

The knowledge that is too much for us is the knowledge that God has ever tried to protect us from. Why do we judge and condemn people? Why do we see that people are wrong? Why do we fail to forgive people? Why do we even find ourselves in situations where we need to forgive people?

It’s because we ate from the fight tree.

… the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…

Eat from that tree, God said, and you die.

Adam and Eve were infamous for eating from the one tree God told them not to eat from. Look where it got them. They decided they wanted God’s power of discernment. They desired the knowledge of good and evil, good and bad, right and wrong. They ate from the forbidden tree. They both ate. They both wanted power. And they ruined themselves, and forever more consigned us all to a place where we would fight because we saw we were right and, in seeing we were right, we saw that the other person was wrong. Our vision was tainted, and our hearts were sullied.

We could not see like God, because we were spiritually dead.
We died because we insisted we needed to see like God.

Eating from the fight tree relegated us to death, yet, as we kill the fight tree in us by eating from the tree of life, we live again. We enjoy peace on the earth, and it begins by making a fresh commitment to peacemaking.

Being a peacemaker is not being a doormat. On the contrary, those who live at peace contend with every force of war, both within themselves and without. They see any nuance of the fight tree in them and they kill it by calling awareness to the discord and the indifference between them and the other person; any and every other person. They insist they can love everyone, even those they’ve been in heavy armed combat with. They believe that relationship trumps every issue that feels important.

Those who kill the fight tree that rages inside them have a massive vision for what love can do inside a human being.

We kill the fight tree in us when
we eat from the tree of life.

We kill the fight tree in us when we believe in reconciliation more than the bondage of bitterness, when we prefer the discomfort of challenging ourselves and another person over our comfort to maintain the status quo, and when conflict is viewed as an opportunity to glorify God, to serve others, and to grow to be more like Christ.

Killing the fight tree is about advocating for the relationship over our hardness of heart. Such a purpose is the meaning of life; to bring the light of peace into every dark corner of existence.

When we kill the fight tree in us, we stop seeing others as competitors to goodness, and more as those who are loveable, but who also struggle being all they would want to be.

When we eat from the tree of life we give away what we cannot keep to gain what we cannot lose.

When we eat from the tree of life, we see conflict as the opportunity for God’s Kingdom to come, on earth as it is in heaven.

This existence is always a choice between life and death. Allow the fight tree to flourish and we die. Kill the fight tree and then we live. Will you live or die? Will you be kind and compassionate and seek understanding, or will you compete with and seek to control the other person.

Over to you.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
— Romans 12:21 (NRSV)

There is no justification in heaven for insisting we are right on earth. There is only justification for those who pledge allegiance to God in Christ, and not because of what we had done or for what we can add; quite the contrary.

Fight less, love more.
War less, peace more.
Compete less, cooperate more.
Condemn less, accept more.
Judge less, understand more.
Fear less, trust more.
Tell less, ask more.

The world begins to change when peace starts with us.

Acknowledgement to Peacemaker Steve Frost, a person who truly deserves such an illustrious designation. Killing the Fight Tree is one of Steve’s terms.