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A Tale Of Two Perspectives

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Contents

1. Brussels Sprouts and Other Leafy Green Vegetables.....................12. Have You Been Shopping Only for Apples?...............................133. Fertile Ground for Conflict...........................................234. Some Images Are More Divine Than Others...............................315. Toast Sweat and Other Annoyances......................................376. Thou Shalt Not Substantive Conflict..................................417. If You Had Been Here! Relationship Conflict..........................458. As Simple as A-B-C....................................................519. Symptoms of Conflict..................................................6110. Personalities........................................................7311. Communication........................................................8312. Attitudes............................................................9113. Even Christians Get Angry............................................9714. Sometimes Solutions Are Outside the Boat.............................10715. The Strategies.......................................................11516. A Misunderstood Strategy.............................................12517. Say a Little Prayer for Me...........................................13118. The Ancient Hills Conflict...........................................13719. Sticks and Stones....................................................14520. Calculated Forgiveness?..............................................151

Chapter One

Siblings will rival. Relatives will drop in and stay too long. Defiant children will demand to know "Why?" Interpersonal conflict is seldom as intense as two gunslingers glaring at each other from ten paces at High Noon. It is seldom as colorful as a red-faced husband and wife, standing in their kitchen, shouting insults. It is more often a tale of two perspectives demanding to be heard.

During my early years in ministry, our little congregation experienced a baby boom of unprecedented proportions. The new church year was only a few weeks away and we were unprepared for the expanding needs of our Preschool Department. Like most churches, we formed a committee.

Jane, the newly elected Preschool Coordinator, promptly reported the purchase of tape recorders for each classroom. I was pleased to see our Preschool needs met so efficiently. It appeared my insightful leadership had paid great dividends!

Later that day, I received a call from Valerie, the new Steering Committee Chairperson. Apparently, she also noticed the Preschool Department's need for tape recorders. She had sent her daughter-in-law to the nearest discount super store with a fist full of cash. Suddenly you couldn't walk through the Preschool Department without stumbling over boxes of tape recorders!

Now, you might think the simple alternative would have been to return some of the tape recorders. That wasn't going to happen!

Valerie announced, "Technically the new year doesn't start until the first Sunday in October, so Jane had no right to buy new tape recorders!" Jane said she officially went to work on October 1 and had to prepare the department for its first Sunday, so her actions were perfectly justified. How technical, official and justified we were!

Finally, the daughter-in-law, who bravely risked life and limb at the discount super store, dropped by my office. She said, "I know I'm just being petty, but I'm not going to return those tape recorders. Jane will have to take hers back!" After a brief pause, she gave me a stern look and added, "Ken, I'm going to get my way on this!"

Conflict is one of those peculiar concepts few people can define without a dictionary, but most people know it when they see it! We also want it resolved promptly and to our personal satisfaction. Our little church began its new year with freshly painted rooms, new furniture, energetic Sunday school teachers, excited children and a tape recorder in every Preschool classroom-with eight more stacked in my office!

Afterwards, I became intimately familiar with the irreverent paraphrase of Matthew 18:20: For where two or more are gathered together, there is bound to be a difference of opinion. I still recall the defiance in the daughter-in-law's voice as she declared, "I know I'm just being petty, but.... I'm going to get my way on this!"

How should Christians resolve interpersonal conflict? Should we simply give in to someone with whom we disagree just to avoid conflict? What are the rules when Christians become petty, insensitive or argumentative? If we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, how do we confront conflict without compromising our values? The solution is to understand and learn to confront the behavior, not the people we love.

Literally, conflict comes from a Latin word meaning to strike. Its definition implies competition, incompatibility, quarrelling, antagonism, internal demands, and even fighting. The catch is that some strikes are more destructive or personal than others. For those who need a working definition, let's use this one:

Conflict is the experience of individuals or groups who are trying to achieve goals or reach objectives, which are or appear to be incompatible.

The phrase, appear to be, is key to understanding conflict because many conflicts are the result of perceptions and not facts. Of course, most people consider their perceptions factual until proven otherwise.

Conflict is a generic term. It may refer to something as global and complex as peace in the Middle East. It may be as personal as your reaction while sitting in a movie theater, holding hands with your date, after paying twenty dollars for tickets and another fifteen for refreshments, and the light from someone's cell phone rudely breaks the darkness.

Conflict may be as simple as the annoying sound of the alarm clock while realizing you are not ready to face the day. It may be as simple as deciding to wear the red tie or the blue one or to eat corned beef, pastrami or the low fat yogurt. It may be as complex as trying to understand your teenage daughter, who just ran from the room in tears. It might be as benign as rushing through a familiar traffic light on your way to work. It may be as physically upsetting as seeing flashing blue lights in your rear view mirror, with the sudden awareness the traffic light had turned red! Like it or not, human nature tends to travel a collision course with conflict. It is everywhere and easily perceived as bad, harmful or even sinful. So we need to understand it.

We read self-help books. Insightful businesses and churches have workshops to address it. Productive strategies are needed to control it and resolve it, so it doesn't control us! However, most people don't really consider strategies for resolving conflict. Usually, we barge right in, playing out familiar old scripts or memories from our past, hoping things turn out better this time. You might say, we are the product of our memories.

These old scripts are familiar to everyone. Our little dog, Riley, serves as a great example. We have two pugs, Tess and Riley. Tess, the older of the two, is the little...