"If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you've made a friend. If he won't listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won't listen, tell the church. If he won't listen to the church, you'll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God's forgiving love.Matthew 18: 15 – 17
The passage above is used as the basis for the “Rule of Christ’- a Biblical method for dealing with conflict in our families, our churches, our community and our world.Now, most of us know this is the most mature, reasonable way to deal with conflict. But it remains amazingly hard to do this in times of difficulty.As far as I know, there are no major conflicts in our congregation, which makes this a very good time to talk about how we deal with conflicts in a way that seeks God’s guidance in our times of disagreement.This is really on my mind this week as I just had more opportunities than I would have liked to face conflict and my own desire to fall back on some less healthy ways of dealing with difficulty.One of the things I learned this week is that it takes an courage and trust to walk right up to someone and tell them they have done something you disagree with.What I also learned is that many of our disagreements come from misunderstandings about what was said or heard and conclusions we draw as a result.And I learned it is really easy to jump to anger, frustration or blame, particular if we do not know the person we are in conflict with very well.
But I also learned how powerful it is to follow God’s guidance when we are in difficult circumstances.And I learned how important it is to think about and talk about conflict when things are going well so that in times of stress we can remember our call from God, to work toward being the body of Christ. God’s call for us to be in real community with each other is not easy but it is worth the effort of stepping out in love to work things out together. May God guide our path as we build our community, both in our church and in our world. Amen.
