Peacemaking in the Church and Beyond - Lesson 10

So, those are the first two building blocks. The third then -- and this is where we want to jump in tonight -- the third is what we're calling a peacemaking theology. Now, this word ‘theology’ here may be overstated, but it is a consistent, more comprehensive understanding of what an approach to peacemaking, rather than what I referred to last week as a devotional approach; you know, you kind of open your Bible one day and you read one text, overlook the offenses, and the next day, rebuke the sinner, and somehow it's kind of schizophrenic as to how we function. So coming up with a really integrated and thoughtful peacemaking theology is a critical building block in dealing with this. It's key to help our congregations to understand how to respond biblically to conflict. 

So probably one of the best places to begin is to ask, what is conflict? One of the classic questions is, is conflict sin? And it really depends on how you define conflict, and that's what this conversation very quickly did, is when there's disagreement; there're obviously disagreements that are healthy. But at what point – it’s kind of like the question is, is anger sin? It's kind of like, what do you do with it, at the very least, when you get right down to it, what do you do with this conflict, that matters completely. 

So I want to turn to one of the most respected names in the area of biblical peacemaking. His name is Ken Sande. Ken Sande has been head for a number of years of a ministry called Peacemakers. Peacemakers is currently partnering with our ministry, Freedom to Lead International, in a project for oral leaders in India, and so we're very excited about this. But Ken says that “Conflict is a difference of opinion or purpose that frustrates someone's goals or desires.” Well, at the very least, as we've said, the response to these goals and desires getting blocked makes all the difference; that's really the core issue, isn't it? 

So how do people typically respond in conflict situations? Let me show you. Again, we go back now to our slippery slope, and what we want to do now is instead of applying this to a culture, applying it to individuals, and this, for example, is how we would want to equip our congregations with this kind of information and this kind of training and help so that they can begin to understand how this actually works on an interpersonal level. Just as church cultures and leaders have this slippery slope, so do we as individuals. The responses, of course, that you can see there on the left side is an escape response. Remember, back with the culture part it was the people-pleasing culture? Well, this response would be the escape response. On the right is what we refer to as an attack response. That takes the place of the controlling culture, the attack response. Again, this is at a personal level, an interpersonal level. When we look at the escape response, there are several things, but before I get to that, let me just give you a little bit of an example. In the middle, of course, there's the conciliation responses. 

In May of 1997, back about 15 years ago, I was in the northern Nevada desert with a group of ten college students. At the time, I was working at a college, heading up a spiritual formation division at a college in California, and there were six men and four women, six college men and four college women in this group, and we were with a professional wilderness guide fellow, and it was a program that we had developed at this college in our department called ‘Conquest,’ and we used this program to train leaders of teams that would take college students around the world in ministry during the summer. They would go in teams, and these leaders that we were training in the Nevada desert, we were training them in all kinds of leadership stuff in order to prepare them to take these teams. We figured if they could make it through the Nevada desert, they could make it through anything, and this was really an extreme thing. You know, we required everybody -- and I participated -- you weren't allowed to carry a toothbrush, and it was like a six- or seven-day trek. You weren't allowed to carry any toilet paper. It was one of those kinds of deals. I mean, it was a real deal out there in the desert. The goal, of course, was to develop the leadership as they faced challenges, as they faced conflict with the natural elements of the desert as well as with each other. It was extreme; it was one of the most extreme things that I've ever experienced in my life. We did a 30-hour solo. I was up on a mountaintop and woke up that morning under five inches of snow, and it was the whole thing. 

But the first day we hiked about 8 to 10 miles, and as it was getting dark, we were in a ravine, and when I'm saying a ravine, I mean a ravine; the sides of this thing were about 200 feet of straight-up cliff on both sides, and the only option was to go forward down the ravine or to go backwards. The only way was to go forward, you couldn't go sideways and, you know, to go backwards would be backtracking miles, and what we did was we came to a pool of water -- it was a large pool, it was right there in the ravine -- that completely blocked our way forward. It was about 20 feet from one side of this pool of water to the other. Now it was dark by now. The pool was about four or five feet deep at its deepest point. It's dark, and it's cold; the water was really cold; you know, the northern Nevada desert is cold in May. 

Well, a couple of the students took one look at that pool of water, and they panicked. One of the students was very afraid because she didn't know how to swim. She feared slipping on the rocks and going under. She really tried to lobby us to turn around and go back. I mean, it would have been about a five-mile trek uphill back through the ravine, but she was willing for us to take as many miles as we needed to search for another way around this thing. She wanted to avoid that pool at any cost. Two of the guys on the team, on the other hand, saw the pool as a way to show off their macho skills, and without discussing a plan at all, they proceeded to wade across with their backpacks up above their heads, and everything was going great. They were doing okay, but just as they were climbing onto the other side, there was a big, big boulder, I mean, it was huge; it was as big as the middle of this room. They were climbing up on this boulder, and one of them slipped on the rock, with the water slipped on the rock, and holding his backpack above his head, he did a literally a face plant into that rock, and he just gashed his chin wide open on the rocks. 

Well, after a bit of discussion, you know, the rest of us were still standing on the other side thinking, what are we going to do here? We've got these women that are scared out of their skin. We've got this guy on the other side who’s bleeding. What do we do? Well, after a bit of talking, and I was involved in trying to figure this out, the rest of us decided that we couldn't avoid the pool by turning back. But we witnessed that the macho approach wasn't very effective either. We decided instead to form a chain of people across the pool, and when the chain was formed, we passed the backpacks across from one person to another, and then the girls who couldn't swim, they held on to each one of us for dear life through the chain until they reached the other side, and we all made it. We were wet, we were cold. It had begun raining, so we literally pulled up a huge tarp over ourselves and slept through the night right there. 

But we learned something about ourselves through that experience. We noticed that people tend to approach conflict in various ways, as we looked at that pool of water, that massive barrier in front of us. To some, conflict is a hazard that threatens to sweep us off our feet and is to be avoided at all costs. We try to escape with everything that's within us. 

Christians often teach that conflict is bad news. In fact, some Christians teach absolutely that without question, without exception, that conflict is sin, and that doesn't help a lot when it comes to figuring out how we're going to manage this thing. To others, conflict is an obstacle that we should attack and conquer, and the sooner the better, regardless of how bloody it might get. Some people have learned that conflict is an opportunity to solve common problems in a way that honors God and benefits those involved in the conflict. So these three types of approaches sort of sum up, in a sense, and again, these are not rigid categories, but they sort of sum up the different approaches to conflict that people might have.

Under the escape approach, what we put there before, there's denial; that's one way that people deal, in escape; they pretend that the conflict doesn't exist. That approach brings temporary relief at times, but usually it ends up making matters even worse. And then if denial doesn't work, then flight is the next. And by the way, as you go down, these become more extreme; you'll see that. Flight, of course, is running away. It may be a legitimate thing to do in some circumstances when there are no avenues to solve the problems in a constructive manner. In most cases, though, running away only postpones a proper solution to the problem. And then of course, there is self destruction, which, in lack of better terms is the word suicide. When people lose all hope of resolving conflict, they hurt themselves. They take themselves out of the running. 

The other side of the equation is the attack, and we could start here with assault. There are various forms of force or intimidation that that people use. And then there's litigation; some conflicts are taken before a judge or a jury, but usually that destroys relationships, and it doesn't ever achieve complete justice. That's why in Romans 13 we’re encouraged to avoid this, if we can, because there is a difference between law and justice. And then in the extreme cases, of course, on the other side, whereas on the escape response, there's suicide, on the extreme side of attack, there's murder. Even when we don't murder a person physically, we can destroy their reputation. We can harbor hate in our hearts and do all kinds of damage. 

So, those are the escape [and attack] responses, typically, and as you see, even if these are not all the best words to describe it, as we go more extreme, down one side or the other, you can see that those responses get more extreme. But those are very real responses in the way that people deal with conflict. Does that make sense? And again, what we're saying, it's easier to slip one way or the other than it is to deal with conciliation responses. 

So, here are conciliation responses. Closest over here to the escape response, just over the line, if you would, into the conciliation area, is what we call overlooking the offense. Proverbs 19, verse 11, talks about overlooking offenses. You know, many disputes are just too insignificant to give your energy to, and so there are times in which overlooking the offense is an appropriate approach to dealing with it. Then of course, there is confrontation, and that’s confrontation in the most positive sense. If an offense is too serious to overlook, we have to deal with it, and we're going to be talking about discussion and confession and confrontation, but that is captured under that term, confrontation. Okay? And then there is potentially mediation. Mediation is where issues that need to be resolved with the help of another that protects and satisfies the legitimate needs of both parties. So there are times in which we really have get after this thing and be aggressive in order to come up with solutions. You know, Matthew 18, verse 16, teaches us that if two cannot agree in private, they should ask one or more others to meet with them to help them communicate more effectively and explore possible solutions. In this model, the mediator advises, but does not force a particular solution. So that's what mediation is all about. We'll talk about that a little bit more later. 

Now, please know there's another realm of conflict resolution in the Christian realm that is not mentioned here, and it's what some have referred to as arbitration, and it's not included on this list. But often this is where money is involved, is where property is involved. It's when two parties have agreed to a binding statement. In other words, it doesn't go to the court of law, but the two working with a negotiator or with an arbitrator, if you will; it's not a legal issue, but before the parties enter into that agreement, they commit themselves to be bound by the solution, whatever that solution happens to be. It's an important alternative to keep in mind in very difficult, very heavy cases, even though it's really beyond the scope of this course to deal with that so much. 

So, that's kind of the slippery slope, and this model, I think, has been very helpful for me and for people that have gone through interpersonal conflict resolution preparation, because it helps us -- even if we could add other words or replace words, etc. -- it helps us to understand that there are serious ramifications when we begin to slide one way or the other, and the call of God is to remain on the apex of that slippery slope in order to honor him most effectively.