Embracing Conflict - by Pam Heatley

I have a confession to make.  I hate conflict.  I wish I had personal relationships with no conflict, wouldn’t that be nice?  I wish everything went exactly how I thought it should go, and the people I am closest to just instinctively knew what I needed.  I wish the communities we lived in, our neighborhoods, school systems and churches could be places with no conflict.  I wish everyone behaved nicely and we were all on the same page all the time.   I wish I lived in that world.  Do you know why? It’s because it would be easier.   Dealing with conflict is hard and uncomfortable.  When faced with it I always find myself thinking, “Why?  Why is this happening?  I don’t want to fight.  Why can’t we just all get along?”  The most uncomfortable reality of it all is “Now I have to do something about this or say something.  Oh, I hate that.”

Let’s be real about this, the world I would like to live in doesn’t exist.  Just look at all of us here at church.  We are a community of people devoted to following Christ and I think we try our best to be loving and kind, but can we say we live conflict free lives? None of us, no matter how much we want it, have lives of complete harmony and love. If we know we live among conflict that we should expect it and even learn to embrace it. Conflicts come up in the best of relationships, the most loving of families and the closest of communities.

 Then why are so many of us afraid of it?   When I say “many” I don’t just mean us wimpy types that run away from any situation that looks like things aren’t going to go smoothly. I mean MANY, A LOT. 

The story of Amnon and Tamar illustrates  how widespread this problem is.  It touches everyone, even the people we see as strong. In this story King David is afraid of conflict.  Can you imagine? Conflict avoiders take heed for we are in good company. Even the strongest, most charismatic and most successful among us avoids conflict. 

I would never characterize  David as a conflict avoider.  David is amazing. He is a shepherd anointed at an early age to be successor of the throne of the King of Israel, as a child he defeats a giant named Goliath, he is bestowed a promise by God and he is a great warrior.  David is credited with writing 73 of the 150 Psalms in the Bible and yet he fails to confront his son about something that he definitely should have done something about. 

 Let’s look at the story for a moment.  Without a doubt this story has elements in it that are probably like nothing any of us has ever faced.  This is a conflict of monumental proportions. This is a story of meddling in other peoples’ business, rape, incest, the ostracization of a woman who did nothing wrong and the act of someone talking revenge into his own hands leading to murder.  Then on top of all of this, there’s David, a father who would not confront the son that duped him and set the whole thing in motion.  David clearly has cause to confront Amnon.  He has raped his half sister, a completely unacceptable act (for us obviously) and in this culture as well. David was dragged into the middle of this.   Amnon not only committed this heinous act, he used David to make it happen. David is mortified and angry at Amnon, but he does nothing. David has a fear of conflict.  Can you blame him?  Who in the world wants to confront this situation?  I wouldn’t, obviously David doesn’t want to and I bet many of you wouldn’t want to either.    After all, some of us conflict avoiders have a hard time telling the waiter our steak is too well done.

So,  it should be comforting to know that the mighty king David is an awful lot like us.  What flawed people God picks to do God’s work, huh? 

It would be so easy to sympathize with David maybe sit back and have a glass of wine and kvetch with him saying,  “I know, I know, what could you have done?  That Amnon he’s no good.  You raised him better than that.”

Unfortunately for David, all the well-meaning sympathy and friendly kvetching is not going to change the fact that his inability to confront the situation was probably a leading factor in why it got worse.   Absolom went on to murder his brother after two years later to avenge the rape of his sister and David and Absolom’s relationship was never the same.  As a matter of fact, Absolom went on to scheme an overthrow of his father’s reign because he had lost so much respect for him.   He figured he should be king.

The scripture never really tells us why David doesn’t address the situation. Honestly, I think it’s because the writer assumes we know, of course we know.  We avoid conflict for the same reasons.    

The one that really smacks me in the face is that David is guilty of his own indiscretions and probably feels a sense of guilt or unworthiness. You remember the whole Bathsheeba incident, right?   David falls in love with a married women and manipulates circumstances so that her husband dies in battle so he can have her.  David is not exactly a jewel of moral behavior.  He probably figures, “How can I do something about this when I’ve done it myself?”

How often do we feel like that?  Have you ever heard yourself say, “Well I can’t really say anything. I’ve done the same myself.”  However, as Christian people, we should not be acting out of our guilt and shame. We should be acting on our joy that we have been forgiven.  We should act on our belief that there is forgiveness for others too.  God’s gift of grace makes it so that those of us that have stumbled and gotten up can best address those that are stumbling. 

I also think David could have been afraid of his own power.  He was capable of slaying a giant as a boy.  He was king after all.  Maybe he thought his involvement would just make matters worse.  Maybe he thought he’d use his power in a bad way.  He had done that before.  Maybe he didn’t trust himself to do the right thing. 

I used to work with a woman and whenever she got involved in a situation with conflict she would say, “I would say something, but If I get involved it would explode!” or, “If I told him how I felt it would kill him.”    Imagine knowing you have that much power? I think that’s great.  However, we need to remember that power is not about anger or insensitivity, power is about influence.  I believe that God bestows the gift of influence on some people and when those people are willing to enter into conflict in a kind and gentle way what a great gift to have and use to glorify God.

Lastly, I think David could be afraid of the reaction he is going to get. I can see why David could be worried.  David does have a history of people trying to kill him.   I guess he could be imagining an array of possible responses, from yelling to revenge,  to leaving the family and never seeing this son again. We worry about those things too.  We think about addressing a conflict and we wonder what it will do to the relationship.  Maybe we grew up in a family in which anger was reserved for one person (the anger addict) and the rest of the family had to be always happy with everything.  Maybe we fear abandonment. I think those of us who imagine the worst might be pleasantly surprised.  I honestly think that most people want to resolve conflict. The best thing to do here is to practice.  Begin with scenarios that don’t involve people to whom you are emotional attached.  Go ahead send that steak back!  (Just remember to make sure you don’t know the waitress.) 

The good news is we can overcome our fear of conflict when we embrace conflict for what it is; an opportunity to reach out to those with which we have a disagreement, misunderstanding or hurt with the goal of extending God’s grace and offering reconciliation.  It is then that we act like Jesus and become the peacemakers he asked us to be. 

Jesus did not run a way from conflict. Remember the story about the stoning of the woman caught in adultery.  Jesus didn’t run away from that conflict.  He stayed.  Remember what he did while they were arguing?  He bent down and doodled in the sand. I think he was collecting his thoughts.  He rose and said, “Go ahead and stone her but let it be by one of you who has done nothing wrong.”  It was brilliant and both sides walked away with dignity. 

So this is where we start.  I think we should challenge ourselves today to follow some general rules of conflict resolution and you’ll see there not unlike the way Jesus acted.  He knew what he was doing.

 

-      When you encounter a conflict, stop and be quiet before you do or say anything you wish you hadn’t. Doodle in the sand if you have to.   Acknowledge the conflict.  Investigate internally why you are angry.  Decide how you would have liked the situation to go and make a decision to do something about it.

-      Approach the person directly. There should be no third parties, no mediators, no friends. (venting to your friends only reinforces anger) In Matthew, Jesus tells us that if someone sins against you that you should go and show him his fault alone, just the two of you.

-      Don’t act anxiously. Speak to the person how you would like to be spoken to and use direct communication so you are not misunderstood.  Explain how the event made you feel and ask for the change you would like to see occur. Make sure you are able to explain your feelings accurately while still respecting the dignity of the person with whom you disagree.

-      Remember that the motive behind this action should be reconciliation. The goal is to restore the relationship. The goal is not to prove who was right, not to get back at someone, not to avoid the situation, not to turn away and forget.  (I think we live in a really aggressive time in our history.  There are news stories of teenagers bullying fellow students in person at school.  There are stories of internet bullying.  That kind of blatant confrontation with no goal of forging a better relationship is not embracing conflict, it’s aggression). 

 

It’s unfortunate but understandable that a lot of times the church is THE place were we are most uncomfortable with conflicts.  We feel that we are involved in matters of eternal significance.  We care about our ministries, friends, pastors and values deeply.  Often the arrival of conflict can make people doubt their church.  It reminds me of a story. 

Once upon a time a man was shipwrecked on a deserted island. He was an industrious, hard-working sort of man, so by the time he was rescued, 15 years later, he had managed to transform the island into a collection of roads and buildings. The people who rescued him were amazed at his accomplishments and asked for a tour of the island. He was more than happy to oblige.

“The first building on our left,” he began, “is my house. You’ll see that I have a comfortable three-bedroom estate, complete with indoor plumbing and a sprinkler system. There is also a storage shed in the back for all my lawn tools.” The rescue party was astonished. It was better than some of their homes on the mainland.

“That building over there is the store where I do my grocery shopping. Next to it is my bank, and across the street is the gym where I exercise.”

The rescuers noticed two other buildings and asked what they were. “The one on the left is where I go to church.”

“And the one on the right?” they inquired.

“Oh, that’s where I used to go to church.”

         The absurdity of that story just brings to light how unfortunate it is that churches seem to have the hardest time with conflict.    I can’t think of a better place to learn skills of peacemaking and reconciliation.  A place where we can try our hand at living in authentic community with a diverse group of people all with one common bond, a connection to each other through Christ. Jesus says, if we’ll learn how to address conflict appropriately, we’ll remain a healthy, strong, loving community; and in such a community, when we pray together, wonderful things will happen in our lives. Creating healthy relationships invites the power of divine love into our midst, and with divine love, all things are possible.