I work at my job with two guys on a regular basis. They have been arguing now for over a week and are hardly speaking to one another. One's breviloquence is only surpassed by the other's ire. I thought that I had chilled them both out last week. I was wrong. I was off Monday and it started all over again. The problem is, one guy is somewhat slack in the way he works, and the other one resents it. I generally solve the problem by looping a rope around the somewhat slack guy's neck and tying him to his work. Hey, that's the way the boss wants it. I deal with it.

The problem arose when 'resentful' decided to unload two years worth of pent up frustration onto 'slackguy'. It just doesn't work that way. Slackguy will just tend to have forgotten most of what he does and be on the defensive, and Resentful will just get more resentful. Granted the whole problem might have been avoided with a bit of strong leadership, but by approaching the matter the way he has, Resentful has just made things worse and raised the tension level to an almost tangible level.

If you have something against somebody, it would be better to confront them honestly and without malice. It is better to be frank with them and kind, and in situations like this, firm. Too much time has gone by here though. Bitterness has been allowed to creep in here and fester. The bitterness will keep these two apart and the differences now may be too big a bridge for them to gap, unless one offers an olive branch to the other. I don't think it will happen soon. They have both done some fibbing, to me and to each other. They have both tried to draw me in and I won't be party to it.

Politics.

That is just one of the endlessly beautiful things about Jesus. No politics. Check out Chapter 3 of John. Nicodemus came (under cover of night) to talk to Jesus and sort of states the obvious to him. I can only guess at his motives so I won't say anything about that, but Jesus just speaks right to the heart of the matter in view of the fact that the man talking to Him is a Pharisee, and was one of the people who should have recognized Him as the Messiah. Nicodemus also needed a quick lesson in how one enters the kingdom of God. I'm not putting Nicodemus down. I really like Nicodemus. It's just that Jesus avoided word games with people and always got to the material point.

From the beginning of the passage, where Nicodemus comes to Him, Jesus proceeds to tell Nicodemus what he should already have known, giving him the Gospel account before it happened, and ends their encounter in verse 21 by saying;
"But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."

Even that true statement had to hit Nicodemus in more ways than one. He did after all, wait until nighttime to go to Jesus, likely because he didn't want others to see him there. There was nothing political about the Lord Jesus. He only spoke the truth to people and one of the reasons He did it was to put all bitterness out of the picture. It can be out of the picture, if men will listen to and speak the truth.