Joyful Conflict
How many times have you felt justified for cutting someone off? After all, it seems like they have been a toxic addition to your life, you are not getting along, and your communication has been poor. Following repeated frustration, the easier choice would be to back away and save yourself the stress of trying to repair the relationship.
This is something that I have felt so many times in the early stages of my friendships. Even the friends that I consider to be like family to me now. Things are great in the beginning. Our interests are similar and we agree on nearly everything. We never fight, we are always nice to one another, and we are careful to respect the other person’s space and feelings. Then it happens: the first disagreement. It is almost a shock to our perfect friendship bubble. We don’t expect it and, therefore, find any way we can to relieve the tension between us. One person gives a weak apology, the other replies with an insincere “It’s ok.” Soon we are back to normal, pretending like nothing ever happened. Does this sound familiar?
On the outside this resolution looks mature, like we are taking the high road and choosing not to dwell on the past. Proverbs 19:11 states that “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” In some cases however, this “high road” can be just as childish as toddlers fighting over who had the toy first. It can be hard to overlook an offense when there was never communicative clarity on how one was offended. It is in this lack of clarity where we start to see the fade out of so many friendships. The threat of conflict scares us into a desperate retreat to those perfect friendship bubbles. Meanwhile, we don’t notice that we are being crowded by a host of unacknowledged feelings and offenses. There is eventually no more room to retreat and we seemingly are faced with only two options: Just deal with things as they are, suffocating in the tight space of the perfect bubble, or leave the relationship altogether, as the conflict was likely to end things anyway.
The first option traps you in an uncomfortable place, never allowing you to fully be yourself and always walking on eggshells to keep the peace. The second option seems liberating until you notice a trail of broken relationships in your past and that you do not have any mended ones to accompany you in your present. Thankfully there is a third option: enter the conflict with joy! Though this sounds beyond uncomfortable, as Christians we have hope that the trials we face in this life produce good things in us and for those around us.
James 1:2-3 “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.”
Romans 5: 3-4 “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,”
You can see from these scriptures that we should enter into conflicts with the hope that we will experience growth in our maturity and in our endurance. Even more beautiful is the fact that we do not enter into these conflicts alone. We enter them “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus could have chosen to leave our relationship with God broken, refusing to address the offense of our sin. Instead, we see that Jesus is the perfect example of someone who entered the conflict of our sinful nature for the joy of being in a deeper relationship with those who put their trust in Him. Therefore, in our relationships, we can follow Christ’s example, enduring the uncomfortable cross of conflict and replacing the fear of disagreement and offense with the joy set before us: deeper and more genuine relationships with others.