The Virtues and Vices of Contention

Languages change over time. Words evolve in their meaning. What a word means in 1611 won't be exactly the same as what it means in 1828, it in 2024. Because scriptures are historical texts, using historical dictionaries and lexicons to understand them is good practice.

There is a website dedicated to the 1828 edition of Webster's Dictionary. Because the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price were translated, written, and compiled in the 19th century, understanding the 19th century meaning of words helps us to understand them better. So whenever I want to understand the way language is used in those scriptures, that is the dictionary I use.

An added bonus of this resource is that many of the usage examples come from the Bible. You can see layers of meaning for the same word being used in different places in the Bible. It also emphasizes opposite uses, where the Bible contradicts itself. It's a testimony of how the Bible is a text with many authors who don't always agree with each other.

A good example of this is the entry for Contend, the root word for Contention.

Our people have internalized that contention is evil, in no small party because of the words of Jesus Christ given in 3 Nephi 11:29. I'm providing the surrounding verses for context.

28 And according as I have commanded you thus shall ye baptize. And there shall be no disputations among you, as there have hitherto been; neither shall there be disputations among you concerning the points of my doctrine, as there have hitherto been.
29 For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.
30 Behold, this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away.

But all contention being evil is not what these verses say. They specifically say that contending in anger about the doctrine Christ gave us the particular evil here. Jesus is condemning scriptural debates and arguments, where the worship of the Saints is interrupted by arguments and division. And in that context, it makes perfect sense. But is that interpretation complete?

Consider the moments when contention is treated as a good thing in other places in Scripture. Note the examples Webster gives in Nehemiah 13:11 and Jude 1:3—to say nothing of when God himself contends in Amos 7:4.

The Bible is not univocal. It is an approximation of God based on the inherently flawed understanding of humans across time. And contention is a particular subject where I can see our modern misunderstanding of authorial intent in Scripture creeping into our discourse and treatment of one another. We cannot remove all heavy discussion and debate from our community. It's often a necessary activity to communicate with others, especially when our life experiences have been so drastically different from each other. Opposition is part of the human experience, especially in our interactions with other people. That is part of the experience we came to mortality to obtain. Experiencing differences is crucial to our personal and spiritual development.

So what do I think contention means? What place does it have in our community?

When contention is being condemned in Scripture, I think it speaks to ambition and its willingness to create arguments to consolidate power—building authority, identity, and position in conflict. It's an absolute dedication to an issue, and caring more about that than the impact (especially harm) it has on other people. It's the act of purposefully creating irreconcilable differences and actively resisting resolution, against wisdom and the greater good. It's a contrarian zealotry, unchecked by reason and experience, that becomes a person's entire personality.

It's a very specific kind of arguer, not all argument.

God argues with humans. God also assists humans when they argue with each other. Jacob's wrestle with God to become Israel. Moses' constant badgering of Pharaoh to let his people go. Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Job. Esther and Haman. Abinadi with King Noah and all his priests. Jesus with so many people he encountered during his ministry. The Canaanite woman who argued with Christ to heal her daughter in Mark 15, and won.

Contention and contests are how God calls his chosen and proves their faith. He consecrates disagreements to the gain of his people all over the place in Scripture. Much of what God accomplishes in the lives of his children wouldn't be possible without conflict.

If we avoid all potential conflict by never daring to venture even a difference of opinion with anyone, we fail to use the agency and reason that God has given to us. We become the children in Ephesians 4:14, "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive." We are acted upon, rather than acting for ourselves.

"But what about being a peacemaker?"

To be a peacemaker is to resolve conflict, not avoid it entirely and allow others to suffer alone in silence, letting anger curdle and hurt to fester. Once a conflict has started, the time for avoidance has ended. The time for active conflict resolution and harm reduction begins, with or without us.

You can't be a peacemaker when you avoid all conflict on principle. You especially can't when you're in denial about whether a conflict is even happening. Peacemaking requires emotional integrity with your own feelings and the feelings of others. Without it, nothing changes—it only simmers until all the water boils off and the contents are charred to the bottom of the pan.

Being in conflict is hard and unpleasant. That's not the same thing as all conflict being evil. And in my experience, the people with the greatest insistence on all contention being from the devil are the same ones who either give too much or too little weight to the emotions of others who are in conflict with them. The former do so out of fear, the latter out of a profound lack of compassion. Neither should be celebrated because they both fall short of the calling God has given us to "bear one another burdens, that they may be light... to mourn with those that mourn." (Mosiah 18:8-9)

I hope that in our current emphasis on covenants, we don't lose sight of this part of our baptismal covenants: the duty we owe to each other to be the hands of God in each other's lives. If we run scared from contention, we abandon each other to some of the worst experiences in life. We will lack the tools and language to improve the culture and functioning of the Church that Jesus Christ has entrusted to us. We're under covenant with God that we will do better than this.

The question we then have to answer, as individuals and as a community, is if we will actually do it or not. Will we do the hard work to have difficult discussions with each other to solve problems? Or will we continue doing the same thing we've always done, while also expecting different results?