An unfriendly person pursues selfish ends and against all sound judgment starts quarrels. – Proverbs 18:1

Today's Scripture Reading (November 15, 2022): Proverbs 18

Board meetings, in any business, can be strange beasts. Sometimes, I can predict how the discussion is going to go. But at other times, these meetings can still surprise me. The last church board meeting I attended, just a couple of weeks ago, was one of the latter. I thought an item on the agenda was a fifteen-minute discussion, but the debate over that agenda issue took us over an hour to decide. And when the decision was made, it went opposite to what I would have predicted. 

As for why, well, that might be a little more complex. I live in an area of the country known for its red-necked ways. It is an area where the concept of political correctness is often scorned, although, in practice, I tend to think that we are a little less red-necked than we think we are. In this case, we lived up to our reputation, and maybe I underestimated that reputation. But that is just my opinion.

When it comes to why a fifteen-minute discussion took an hour, well, that might be more easily explained. Sometimes, and I include myself in this area, we don't know when to give up the argument. Often, if those around us disagree with our ideas, we think it must be because they don't understand the problem. There is a little plaque that I have seen in several houses with a paraphrase of the opening line of Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" written on it. The plaque reads, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then you clearly don't understand the situation." The plaque clearly describes our feelings when the discussion isn't going our way. So we try to restate the argument differently or repeat the same idea we have been using a little louder. It is a lesson I am working hard to learn, so I can't blame those who are also trying to learn the same lesson. We want our world to see society as we see it, and those moments can be hard when they don't.

Proverbs says that an "unfriendly person pursues selfish ends." We want things to go our way. And at first, I have to admit that my reaction was that the board meeting wasn't unfriendly, even if we did want the decision to go our way. But as I thought about it, I realized that, at various points in the evening, two board members felt that they had come to the end of their patience and threatened to quit. That is not the action of a friendly meeting.

Maybe the lesson I need to learn from this Proverb is that it is okay to state my beliefs and give my side of the argument. But to continue to pursue my opinion is to be selfish. I need to realize that it is okay for there to be two sides to the disagreement, even with conflicts among friends. To continue to restate what I believe is unnecessary and it will only keep the quarrel going. And, eventually, arguments will end friendships.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Proverbs 19