Instead of immediately jumping on one side, John Frame encourages us to think carefully about the following options when we come upon a controversy between two people.

“1.) That the two parties may be looking at the same issue from different perspectives, so they don’t really contradict.
2.) That both parties are overlooking something that could have brought them together.
3.) That they are talking past one another because they use terms in different ways.
4.) That there is a third alternative that is better than either of the opposing views and that might bring them together.
5.) That their differences, though genuine, ought both to be tolerated in the church, like the differences between vegetarians and meat-eaters in Romans 14.”

The only “problem” with these suggestions is that thinking these things through actually takes work and concern for other people’s good and it doesn’t feed our pride nearly as well as simply closing our eyes, siding with one person and going on the attack against the other.