Proverbs 18:19

A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.

[Proverbs 18:19]

Strong relationships hold strong, and when they break, they break like a thigh bone forced into a Z-shape: badly, brutally, and apparently irreparably. Few relationships are as strong, at their base and in their premise, as that of brother with brother, sister with sister. We do not term our closest friends ‘like a brother’ without cause. So when brothers find themselves in enmity, the enmity oft becomes deep indeed, destroying their peace and altering their lives, driving cavernous wounds across them both, equipped as they are to reach deep into each other, unequipped as they are to protect themselves from each other.

Perhaps I say the obvious when I note that the damage needed to break a relationship is proportional to the strength of that relationship. Marriage takes much more to rive apart than your relationship with your last cashier at the grocery store. Conversely, though, such relationships present many more opportunities for damage and can build that damage up over time. Every opportunity which can strengthen and grow and re-affirm a relationship is also an opportunity to harm it, and when the relationship is already strong, that harm can be magnified by the strength of the relationship. Forgetting something my sister needs is a much greater insult than forgetting what my third cousin’s next door neighbor needs.

Not that the news is all worrisome. Strong relationships have a marvelous capacity to heal, when they are between people of growing maturity (and not the stagnant or regressive immaturity fostered by the world). This healing is not automatic, though. A strong relationship does cause its members to give each other leeway and more ready forgiveness, but such forgiveness only stretches so far. It mends the wound of the deed itself, but it does not amend that the deed was done. If I steal fifty bucks from my close friend, he’ll forgive me, but he’ll remember that I am the sort of person who steals fifty bucks. Unless I actively complete my repentance, that lessening of relationship will persist.

What do I mean when I speak of “actively completing my repentance”?

Repentance is ‘turning away.’ The first step, of course, is the turning of heart which we express by apologizing, the internal despising of the deed or the neglect which inflicted the harm. If this is as far as we go, however, we don’t go far at all. The second step is as integral to full healing as the first: working out that repentance in our lives.

As I discuss as length in an article on redemption arcs in fiction, repentance’s fullness requires active conquest of the sin. Just as faith which does not produce works shows itself to be a dead faith, without the vitality integral to true faith (James 2:14-17), so also repentance without fruit of righteousness is merely cosmetic, is even hypocrisy. Just as we give no credence to the man who says he loves his wife and follows that up with a cavalcade of abuses and adulteries, so we also properly accord no weight to the repentance which is succeeded by a cavalier repetition of the sin. If the repentance is real, the sin will not be easily repeated; if the sin does repeat, it will come only against evident struggle by the sinner to resist the temptation, will be followed by restitution and renewed struggle against the sin.

So strong relationships do not really heal themselves, but they present much more opportunity for healing than their weaker brethren. My siblings, my parents, my loved ones, I will seek to reconcile with them. When they harm me, I will seek to be reconciled with them, to work towards the healing of my relationship, not by forgetting the harm but by remedying it. When I harm them, I will seek to restore them and my relationship with them, abhorring my sin in heart and in life, working with diligence to make right what I put wrong.

However, once such relationships break, they break with a hurt and a depth which their lesser brethren do not match. Divorce is legendarily vicious for a reason: the marriage covenant is among the closest relationships possible for humans. Two people bind themselves to be one flesh, and when one or both parties choose to tear that apart, to rend the bonds and despise the blessings (Mark 10:8-12), they inflict on themselves and on their ex-spouse wounds which weep with blood, tearing open easily and repeatedly. Such harm is horrendous and slow indeed to heal, never quite closing, in all likelihood, on this earth. Many relationships never recover; some cannot (Jer. 3:1); a few, by His grace, become as strong as or stronger than before, despite the scars (literal and spiritual).

In such circumstances or in the throes of the damage which leads theretoward, one choice is surely fatal to all reconciliation: a spirit of quarrel. The spirit which refuses to admit fault, which asserts its own righteousness, which seeks the other’s harm, which wants vengeance, which seeks to indulge the damage done to it, that spirit is an effectual bar to all healing, particularly in its possessor. His wounds he will tear open merely for the pleasure of wanting to tear open the other’s wounds. The relationship cannot recover while this spirit remains un-submitted to God, un-humbled; the other person may heal, but the relationship cannot.

Of all the relationships which have been broken, none was so strong and none was broken so sharply as the relationship between God and man (Gen. 3). God made man in His image (Gen. 1:26), and we spurn that, acting in a spirit of rebellion all our days (Gen. 6:5; Ps. 53:1). What marvel it is, then, that God sees fit to give us spirits of repentance and of faith (Ez. 36:26; Mark 1:15)! By His grace we are brought to repentance; by His grace, we are given to mend that relationship which alone brings true joy.

God bless.