(Yes there is a word in the dictionary – according to Oxford’s – called agitant! So there Mr Squiggly Line Under The Word.)
Like a fair few people, I’m a big fan of avoiding confrontation – it can agitate people.
One or two people who have observed me on occasion have noted my tendency towards a more soothing and relaxed to the point of keeling over approach to things. Although I have been known to be blunt, I am more often than not I’ve been a keen participant in the ‘why say two words when sixty-three words can take you on a long and winding road from your anger to a different place of amazement that I’m able to keep talking so long about something that has completely made you forget why you were upset in the first place in a remarkably long sentence that really doesn’t need to be this long’.
I may have had occasional verbal spats from time to time, but even verbal sparring isn’t my idea of a great time. I am indeed a lover and not a fighter. I have seen a number of examples of people who can be agents of change by being relative quiet and non-aggressive. Truly. I’ve seen it.
Yet there is also the very real truth of the matter that a lot of changes that needed to be made was not brought about without upsetting people. Indeed the greatest change the world ever received came through a peacemaker who agitated His way to the cross. Whose very beliefs and expressions of the Kingdom of God and His righteousness confronted and agitated a world and system that did not want to accept it.
This is also seen in the brief time in Scripture we get to hear about the man called Stephen. Acts 7 remains one of the most powerful parts of the the Bible for me. It’s incredible reading the historical outline of the people that God chose and how they reacted to the people God sent. It’s gripping seeing how it was delivered to a group of people who gradually grew from an austere council of religious rulers to a murderous rabble intent on stamping out this irritant. All because Stephen – full of the Holy Spirit – could only speak what he was inspired to speak. For it was the opportunity he had to talk for change. Even as he received thud after thud of the stones raining down on him, there was a witness who approved of the killing that would evidently have a great memory of it. Even as he would go onto become of the most significant figures in the development of the early church – namely Saul of Tarsus who would go by the Greek reference of Paul.
The rule of God in life calls for change. That change starts from the personal and does involve someone agitating about the way things are. Even as I grow in knowing, there are still aspects of me that are agitated because they don’t belong in this rule. Much as I may have got comfortable with it, the agitant says it’s not going to stay if I want to go His way. If that’s how it is on the personal level, you can imagine how much it impacts relationships. And communities and cultures. To be the change we want to see if not just about being an agent, at times it will call on us being an agitant.
There’s enough indication to suggest that it’s not a case of being either an agent or an agitant, but it is the case that to be an effective agent requires you to be an agitant.
So much for avoiding confrontations. (Mind the stones, eh?)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
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