Conflict: Good or Bad?

Sorry, I've not kept this up to date with the articles in the local paper. June has been an incredibly busy month. Annual Conference kept me away for a week, and I am now in the process of packing up the family in preparations for a new appointment near Toledo, Ohio.

Yes, I am moving from one corner of the state to another! But I will continue to write for the paper and post them to this blog. And I always welcome feedback through the comments section.

With that announcement, let's get back to the regular postings.....


First published in The Daily Sentinel on June 6, 2008:

I attended a meeting recently where an idea being proposed obviously had its proponents and detractors. Some thought it was a great idea; others saw it as terrible. The tension in the room rose and fell as various folk spoke on the merits and failings of the idea. Clearly, there was a lot of passion and energy in the room, and it came from conflict.

Some people cannot stand conflict. They will do everything they can to avoid it – even when they know better. I read about Leslie Perlow a while back. She is an author, and she was working on a book. But her research assistant kept tripping her up. As publishing deadlines neared, she found herself frantically retyping pages – something that was the assistant’s job – because somehow he wasn’t able to find the time to get the job done. He did find time for critiquing her writing – severely – and came just short of saying that he could write a much better book than she was. Leslie wasn’t paying him to be a critic – or even an editor. She was paying him to do work he wasn’t doing and it was about to cause her to lose her own job.

She would go home Fridays in a foul mood, vowing to fire him first thing on Monday morning. But over the weekend, she would find an excuse to avoid the difficult conversation. Leslie became more irritable, frustrated, and unproductive. Finally, she faced the conflict and let him go, “but not until after I let him make me crazy and insecure.”

Leslie’s story is not unusual, except for this fact: the book she was working on was called “When You Say Yes but Mean No: How Silencing Conflict Wrecks Relationships and Companies … and What You Can Do About It.”

Sometimes, it is a lot easier to talk or write about conflict than it is to actually bring the conflict out into the open, and Leslie is the picture-perfect example. My observations of life lead me to the conclusion that most of us are like Leslie. We know when we need to speak up, but we often don’t because we are afraid we will hurt another’s feelings or get hurt more in the process of sharing. So the hurt becomes internal, resulting in poor health, or it gets projected into other areas of our lives, where the damage is magnified even further.

Don’t like something going on at work? Take out your feelings in the church. Frustrated by what’s happening at church? Dish it out on your family. Family issues? Make folks suffer at work.

Do you see the pattern? We avoid the conflict where it occurs and then introduce it somewhere else instead. That behavior is called “triangulation” by psychology experts. The triangle forms when one diverts the conflict away from its source, gives it to another, and then expects the other to do something about it.

Sometimes, triangles are appropriate. We have law enforcement and the judicial system specifically to become the third party when one person victimizes another through robbery, assault, or slander. Our society does not accept vigilante justice. However, most of the time, triangles should be avoided and the conflict resolved directly between the two parties.

The Apostle Paul gave that kind of advice to the folks in Corinth who were conflicted over just about everything: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you… You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere men?

“What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” (1 Corinthians 1:10-11, 3:3-7)

There are some very interesting things about how to handle conflict embedded in that letter! First, Paul goes straight to the source of the conflict. When he hears that the divisions in that church are hurting their ability to love God and one another, Paul doesn’t write a letter to the Galatians talking about how bad those Corinthians are. He avoids the triangle.

Second, the Corinthians themselves are triangulating. Some claim to be Paul-followers and others to be Apollos-followers. Whose teachings they follow is more important than anything else, and so they can blame their conflicts on the teachers – Paul or Apollos – rather than themselves. Paul cuts that argument down by appealing to the fact that neither he nor Apollos are anything. Rather, the Corinthians need to get back to focusing on God.

Third, Paul tells them that their conflict and conflict avoidance are merely symptoms of their worldliness – they are supposed to be Christians and therefore different from the world, but their behaviors give witness to the fact they are NOT different from the world.

Conflict is a fact of life. But what we do with it will show whether or not Christians are worldly or Christly. Back at that meeting I attended, the idea being discussed produced tensions that caused people to think. It caused people to pray. Unfortunately, it also caused a couple of folks to use disparaging words towards those who had a different opinion from them. Did I mention that this was a gathering of pastors? I think perhaps even pastors are still dealing with worldliness.

So what shall we do differently? First, be willing to listen – really listen – to someone with whom you disagree. Second, focus your comments on the idea under scrutiny rather than on the person or persons on the other side of the conflict. Third, don’t take your conflict with one person and give it to another. Deal with it directly, but lovingly (remember the 1^st step!). Finally, there is one third party to whom you can give your conflicts: God. Ask for help in knowing what to say, how to say it, and when to say it – and even what not to say. God causes the growth of Christ-likeness in Christians – and God can use conflict to make that growth happen.