I don’t like conflict. It is uncomfortable and often gives me an icky feeling in my stomach. I am most definitely not one of those who seek confrontation, dispute, or arguments. They don’t excite me. They drain me.

Yet, I sometimes engage in arguments online because I think there is value in rightly chosen and well conducted dispute in-person or online. Sometimes there are good reasons to disagree out-loud with one another.

Before I share those reasons, let me clarify something important: arguments are not necessarily fights. An argument, rightly defined, is carefully giving reasons to explain why something is true, good, or worth believing. A fight, by contrast, is driven less by reasons and more by rivalry. Where arguments seek truth, fights seeks victory. Arguments are cooperative, working together to build toward reality. Fights are oppositional, seeking only destroy the other. Arguments are carried with an open mind and fights with them slammed shut. Confusing the two leads us to avoid disagreement of any kind since we don’t want our family, friends, or neighbors to think we want to destroy them. However, rightly defined and rightly done, thoughtful argument is one of the most respectful and productive ways we can engage another person and important ideas.

Why I Choose to Argue

With that, here are nine reasons I choose to argue.

1. Arguments sharpen my own thinking skills

They help me move beyond slogans, emotional reactions, reactive thinking, or vague impressions and force me to think and articulate ideas with clarity, coherence, and careful reasoning. Like your body, working out your mind makes it stronger.

2. Arguments give me a chance to examine my own beliefs

I think everything I believe is true. Otherwise, I wouldn’t believe it. However, I know I am wrong about stuff. Tricky situation, isn’t it? How can I spot my false beliefs? By allowing other people to question, challenge, and poke at them. If someone has well-reasoned and well-supported arguments, it gives me a fighting chance to see my blind-spots.

3. Arguments train me to be more like Jesus Christ

I daily pray, “Lord Jesus, make me like you.” My greatest desire is to think, feel, and act more like him everyday. He’s just the best. Arguments offer me significant opportunities to practice the patience, love, gentleness, humility, courage, and wisdom of Christ. Growing in those virtues will not only make me a better thinker, but a better husband, father, and church member. I don’t always do it well, but, as the saying goes, practice makes perfect. Arguments are gym sessions ripe with opportunity to grow myself up into his image.

4. It reveals people worth talking to

Proverbs 26:4 says, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” Some people are fools not worth talking to. Not because they disagree with me, but they’ve no desire for truth. They don’t care to be right. They only want to feel right. These folks tend to live and breath online which is why many refrain from online debate at all. That decision isn’t cowardice, but wisdom. Folks who jump to mockery, insults, rants, thoughtless sloganeering reveal themselves to be little more than noise machines who merely provoke and annoy rather than reason. By contrast, those who respectfully push back with evidence and reason are rare treasures who sharpen us. In that sense, arguing with others can be a useful filter, revealing who is capable of genuine dialogue and who is simply not worth our time.

5. Arguments help listeners

A helpful way to think deeply about important issues is hear people debate them well. A good debate offers presentations of both sides in their own words along with careful cross-examinations where the arguers point out perceived deficiencies in each other’s arguments. Listeners are left with a lot to consider. Though the debaters’ minds are seldom changed, the listeners’ minds are often enlightened. If my online exchanges can leave my friends and neighbors with a little more light, I am game to serve.

6. Arguments break me free of possible echo-chambers

It is comfortable to listen to those you already agree with. Shared perspectives, beliefs, and values create a trust the grabs our attention. Trust naturally binds us together. This is normal and good. However, there is a danger that only listening to those we already agree with can keep us locked in communal blind spots. Stepping into conversation with people who see things differently gives us a fighting chance to unite ourselves to truth that our own news feeds or communities may be missing.

7. Arguments reveal assumptions

A fish will never realize what water is until they meet a creature who doesn’t live in it. In the same way, people rarely recognize the things they take for granted until someone challenges them. Arguments help both parties to not only express their beliefs but also understand the assumptions their ideas are grounded in. Without good-faith arguments, we rarely have the opportunity to unearth the assumptions we and others operate from.

8. Arguments clarify the real issues in question

They help distinguish between preferences and principles. For instance, many abortion debates are filled with emotionally-laden points about poverty, crime, or women’s choice. However, the actual issue about abortion comes down to one question, “Is the unborn a human?” Once that question is answered, all the other questions are answered. Similarly, arguments against Christianity boil down to, “Did Jesus really rise from the dead?” The debate about same-sex marriage or transgenderism come down to who gets to decide the definitions of marriage or gender. Arguments help me gain clarity on secondary matters and first-order truths. They help me distinguish the root from the fruit.

9. Arguments create true unity

Unity that avoids argument is superficial at best. It’s often false. Like a wedding ring without a marriage, it offers the appearance of unity without the substance. Thoughtful argument, by contrast, helps highlight where we truly agree and where we genuinely disagree. It gives us a fighting chance to move closer together by locating disagreements accurately and setting them proportionally alongside points of common ground. And even when argument reveals less unity in belief rather than more, it still serves a vital purpose: it shows us exactly where the fault lines lie, allowing us to engage one another with eyes wide open rather than defaulting to dehumanizing and disrespectful caricature, demonization, or dehumanization.

10. Arguments cultivate courage

In Pilgrim’s Progress, Great Heart encourages Christian to continue on the path even though the road is scary, “We must go on; for here is not all our danger.” There are more dangerous things than the discomfort of argument. Ideas have significant consequences. To live well, we must cultivate enough courage to take on scary conversations because we’re convinced living by illusion is far scarier and much more dangerous. Choosing to stay comfortable and avoid arguments is likely to keep you trapped in bad thinking and, therefore, doomed to bad living. Courage, not cleverness, is what’s required if we want to live free. Arguments force you to exercise it.

In my view, arguments, done rightly, are not acts of hostility but acts of hope; a courageous hope that truth can still be known, shared, and pursued together.