"Suess-eptible" Lessons on Handling Conflict

First published in The Daily Sentinel, Friday, Aug. 31, 2007


The River City Players present “Seussical—The Musical” this weekend. I play a supporting character, General Gengus Khan Schmitz, who runs a military school for young Who children. (That's NOT me in the photo ...)

General Schmitz is an interesting person. He’s full of military pomp and bluster. He likes to put on a grand marching show. But he doesn’t really know the darker side of war. For him, war is an opportunity for glory – until he encounters young Jojo.

Jojo is a new recruit to the school, just before the Butter War breaks out. Jojo objects to the war’s rationale: “Sir, This war makes no sense. Just one Think and you’d quit. Spreading butter up or down doesn’t matter one bit!”

Indeed, the whole reason to go to war on Who is to get rid of those “bibulous butter-side downers!” It doesn’t take much imagination to read through the lines of the play and recognize the moral point on display: war fought over insignificant differences between people is just plain stupid!

Indeed, most of our conflicts with one another are over small, insignificant things. When I provide pre-marital counseling to couples, we talk about how each of them puts toothpaste on a toothbrush. Are you one who flattens the tube from the bottom, or do you squeeze from the middle? Those who flatten from the bottom view middle-squeezers as illogical. (Don’t you know you can’t get the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube if you’ve squeezed out the middle?) Those who squeeze from the middle think bottom-flatteners are obsessive-compulsive over the tiniest details. (Don’t you have more important things to think about?)

Toothpaste. Butter. Oh, easily we can get our tempers tantrummed! So where do we draw the line between the silly and the serious? When does something become something worth fighting for?

We want the line to be easily drawn, but the dilemma is that there is no line to easily differentiate between the two. Even Jesus’ life offers us a range of responses. The most famous “fight scene” in the gospels is when Jesus cleared the Temple in Jerusalem of the moneychangers and sacrificial animal sellers. He overturned tables, dumped and broke cages holding the birds, goats, lambs, etc. He screamed, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers!” (Matt 21:12-13)

However, Jesus refused to fight when the soldiers came to arrest him in the middle of the night. Peter swung a sword at one of the men, cutting off the man’s ear. “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matt 26:52)

Jesus offered no resistance all the way to the cross. He accepted the mocking, the spitting, the beating, and the climactic agony of crucifixion.

So why did Jesus react strongly against the money changers but no one else? Perhaps because he knew there was no redeeming value to what was going on in the temple. Worship had become a matter of economic exchange where the Temple grew rich by exploiting the people. Jesus’ violence was a necessary correction to a system gone terribly wrong.

The violence done to Jesus, however, was God’s mysterious way of correcting an even more terrible wrong – humanity’s choice for sin. Jesus didn’t resist arrest and the cross because he knew it was the path to resurrection. Not just his resurrection – but the opportunity for resurrection for all of us!

Fighting over whether one butters bread up or down is silly. Dr. Seuss helps us recognize that we must be very careful choosing what causes are worth fighting for. Jesus Christ does more. He helps us recognize that some things are fought for in very surprising ways. I pray that you will be surprised by Jesus and take the right approach to handling all conflict that comes your way.