Are You Fighting Right?

The dragons that scare us sometimes aren't the ones we should be fighting.

Let it never be said that this blog encouraged anyone to give up and give in. Let it never be said that I told you it was okay to let a struggle consume you, to allow your characters to fall into a pit and decide to remain there, to throw your hands in the air and say, “I go no further.” We are fighters, all of us, fighters against injustice, disability, irrationality, fear, doubt, sin, our own minds, the devil’s schemes. These fights are noble and worthy and should never be abandoned, and those who fight them should not rest until they gain victory.

But surely I don’t have to explain to you that any fight can be taken too far, can become a vicious duel instead of a righteous battle, can make any hero into a villain and portray a villain as a hero. How do you tell when it is time to keep fighting and when it is time to drop your weapons? How do you discern whether to push through with prayer or change strategies, perhaps allowing your attention to be drawn to another area? How do you determine that your battle has already been won, and God is calling you to another one?

The truth is, I have no idea. I don’t know all of you or all of your battles. But there’s one major question you should ask yourself constantly about your battle, and it’s about the only black-and-white rule I can give you about it (and authors, stay tuned – your characters have battles too; how does this rule apply to them?):

Is your fight hurting someone else?

This is hard to think about, especially if you feel like the victim in your battle. It’s hard if you’re in a bad situation, if you’re fighting for basic rights on your own behalf or another’s, if you’re fighting your own mind. It’s much easier to label someone else as the problem, to put a face or name or color on the struggle so that you can, in a sense, see what you’re fighting. But the fact remains: no matter how noble your fight, if others are suffering it’s time to stop, or at least change tactics.

Internal battles can often appear in strange ways in your relationships with other people, and you need to make sure you’re not taking out your frustration with yourself on those who love you most. It’s easy to isolate, to focus on yourself, to assume you’re the only one affected because it’s all in your own head, but the fact is there are always others who care – and others who can become collateral damage in your struggle with yourself.

Authors – are your characters fighting against themselves? Are there relationships being damaged in the process? It’s a great way to build tension, but you’ll have to be sure the tension is resolved, for better or for worse.

The same goes for fighting against injustice in our world: yes, those treated unjustly deserve better, and taking up a cause that is not your own, being a voice for those who have none, is a beautiful and courageous thing. But if it involves villainizing another group of people, it’s time to put on the brakes. No country, no government, no organization, no race is solely responsible for any injustice in the world. The root problem is sin, and not only is it universal, but it’s not going anywhere. All we can do is fight the symptoms and wait for Christ’s return – but that’s another topic altogether. My point is, forcing anyone to play the villain’s role only increases injustice and hatred. So assess your cause, address your issues, and make sure you aren’t hurting anyone, physically or mentally, deliberately or accidentally.

Authors – are your characters careless of their effects on everyone else? Do they have a hard time with stereotyping or demonizing other people groups? Do they accidentally, or even deliberately, harm others – including those who side with them – to accomplish their goals?

This gets tricky when it seems that there is a villain in your story, a face on your problem, a person on whom you can blame much of your hardship. It’s easy to fight against someone who has mistreated you or those you love, to hold one person responsible for everything that you struggle with. It’s even harder to deal with if it’s true on some level. If this is the case for you, let me first say how sorry I am. I’m sorry you’ve had to face such a battle, and I’m sorry you have a name with every scar, a face in every hard memory, a figure in your life who has betrayed you in such a way. All I can say is that God has never left you and never will, and He empowers you to change even that fight to one that rebuilds instead of destroys, heals instead of leaving more scars, and brings you closer to Him instead of further away. I can’t say what His plan is in such a situation, but I can say that if you fight a human enemy, you both lose in the end. If you release the battle to God, He can bring good from any evil and victory from any loss.

Authors – is your hero fighting the right villain? Or have they blamed their problems on another? How will this affect the story?

Realize that I never said you should stop fighting altogether. To be human is to struggle, to battle sin and doubt and wrong. You can never stop fighting until you die, or you become only a shell of your true self. You continue living only in the physical sense, and the fire that burned within you dwindles to ashes.

So keep fighting, keep struggling, keep battling, but also keep watching. Make sure you’re fighting from the right place, or your footing will eventually slip – and it hurts a lot more if you chose not to see it coming.