July 5 2009 7 pm Geoff Pritchard

(This is a dialogue, we shall have a discussion later).

Conflict

If human beings always got on well with each other, the world of work would be great. If everyone agreed with each other at home, there might be fewer divorces. But we live in the real world; we disagree. We are in competition with other people for things they and we want, such as money, territory and space, recognition and approval, status, affection, and ---let’s face it, we like simply having our own way.

When I was employed at a University, we had long and stupid power struggles over the allocation of space and other scarce resources. They wasted a lot of our time. We argued over everything ---whose subject would dominate the syllabus in future, what machines to buy next for the labs, and whose research topics were most worthy of respect.

Even the degree classes we awarded to students were the result of an hour’s argument. One meeting I was at nearly came to blows, and one of the people concerned came out and asked straight away for early retirement.

Forget the tensions over promotion! There are plenty of other sources of conflict.

Sometimes there is no obvious cause. It’s just one hundred per cent personal. To put it in a nutshell, we don’t like them, and they don’t like us.

We resent their status, their gifts, their luck, their appearance, their politics, their way of thinking; what they say, the accent they say it in, whatever. And they think much the same about us. God hasn’t yet got his way with us. We still don’t love people enough, and the other guys, well, they don’t even try. Or so it seems.

The disagreements we sometimes have in our congregations matter a lot to us, but the stakes are not as high as they were long ago with the apostle Paul; the outcome of his discussions with other leaders, with Peter and Barnabas, was going to decide the future of the whole worldwide church. So perhaps it’s a good thing he didn’t try to dodge conflict. Not even with the Jewish authorities.

See these next two slides. Two of our morning congregation, John and Dorothy, spend half of every year as members of the church that meets in this Greek Orthodox building in Paphos.

(Next slide). One of those pillars is shorter than the rest. It has an inscription saying that Paul was tied to it and given 39 lashes.

Our conflicts may not be quite that bad! When we have petty disagreements, it is easy to come to the conclusion that it’s our fault. And it may be. After all, the Christian gospel is about God forgiving us our sins. So if God forgives us, how come we can’t forgive others their less serious offences against us?

In Matthew’s gospel, chapter 18, the parable of the unmerciful servant tells us that God will forgive us for everything we have done wrong, and all that we have failed to do in this life, but read the small print first: it’s only on condition that we forgive all those other people who have done much smaller things wrong to us.

Suppose we have forgotten that parable, we are still without excuse, because in the Lord’s prayer, it says “Forgive us our TRESPASSES, AS WE FORGIVE OTHERS WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US”.

Someone once wrote:-

“There can be no more terrible word in the English language than the little word “as” in that particular phrase”. Resentment and grudges do us real harm. As somebody once wrote, harbouring grudges is like taking rat poison, and then sitting down to wait for the rat to die. Silly really.

When we do that, they say, (I’ve never actually tried it), we begin to feel strange inside, while the rat remains fit and healthy. After all, if everyone were to get their just deserts, we ourselves would be a whole lot worse off.

But the conflict we find ourselves in may not be our fault.

Take the case in the book of Genesis where Joseph, the youngest of many sons, was treated very favourably by his father, and given a posh coat, while the others probably had to put up with those dirty brown cloaks you still see in North Africa. It wasn’t his fault. They felt second-rate. The cloak itself wasn’t the point; they were less loved.

Joseph hadn’t asked to be treated better than the others. It wasn’t his fault. He was just the baby of the family, and his father doted on him.

Gen 37 verse 3 “now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age, and he made a richly ornamented robe for him. “When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.”

So the elder brothers dumped him in a pit, intending to kill him, but they eventually decided to sell him to some passing traders instead. If you don’t know the details, it’s all in the musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

You might think that sort of thing doesn’t happen today, but favouritism is actually pretty widespread in family life. I myself was favourably treated by my father, again like Joseph, because I was the youngest son, and by the time I was born, he had enough money to send me to a posh school.

Whereas my brother, older than me, was sent to a technical college and trained run the family business, which he wasn’t very interested in. We have never got on since then.

Conflicts with neighbours are very different of course; they often start with arguments over a hedge or bonfires or noise or car parking. They sometimes end with shootings or stabbings. The book of Proverbs has lots of advice about these everyday problems.

Sometimes we have conflicts because the other fellow seems to have a screw loose. Very few of us are completely sane all the time, but sometimes we meet someone who really needs a doctor. This is illustrated in the conflict between David and Saul. The Old Testament Saul, not the Tarsus one.

Saul was king, and he used a former shepherd, David, as a musician, because he needed to be soothed when he was in a black mood.

Saul wasn’t a weirdo, he knew how to lead people in battle. His problem was really a medical condition, caused by brain problems, not a character weakness. We all know people with similar illnesses. They often have very few real friends, and it can be a terrible life.

Saul found the music played by David on a harp helped a bit to soothe him when he felt ready to explode.

Saul made David a general; but David turned out to be a much more successful general in battle than Saul. The mob went around shouting, “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands!” This didn’t exactly help the relationship between the two men. It must have been easy for King Saul in one of his black moods to think,

“David is plotting against me, he is getting the mob on his side; I must kill him, before he kills me”.

Paranoia –irrational fear----is one of the big causes of conflict. It leads to people getting their retaliation in first, that is, crippling their enemy before their enemy gets a chance to do them harm. It’s what Saddam Hussein used to do: he killed his enemies, yes, we can understand that, but he killed his friends as well, in case they ever thought of changing sides.

King Saul would have understood. Nothing changes where human nature is concerned! That’s why the Old Testament is still relevant.

On one occasion Saul actually hurled a javelin at the young musician, while he was still playing, to try to pin him to the wall. See 1 Samuel 18 v 10, 11.

It must be difficult enough to play an instrument, without having to look out for lethal weapons being hurled at you from close range. Our band doesn’t yet have that problem, but you never know.

David had done nothing wrong, and he always did his best to reassure Saul that the two were on the same side. We are told a story about David feeling sufficiently afraid for his life to leave the palace and flee into the hills, and to take refuge at night in a cave.

Saul followed him in hot pursuit, even going into the same cave himself to relieve himself. David was further inside the cave in the dark, so he had the advantage. He saw an opportunity to kill the king, without anybody knowing who had done it.

But he spared the king’s life, and later showed Saul that he had done so, by bringing back a piece of the king’s garment that he had cut off while in the cave.

It was a brave attempt to heal the conflict between the two men.

Usually, when there is a conflict within a congregation, the disagreeing parties don’t directly confront each other, because they are all publicly committed to loving their neighbour.

It is beyond most of us to disagree with someone frequently, and to appear loving at the same time. So instead of losing our reputation for being nice guys, we just mutter discreetly among our friends. The problem festers. Whereas Paul did not hesitate to have it out in the open with Peter, face to face, not on a personal matter, but about whose teaching was right.

You’ll have the chance to say which is best soon. But please don’t focus entirely on conflicts among Christians; there is a whole world out there, we need to live in it.

Any Christian who has suffered persecution will understand that just being a Christian can put you in the firing line in a way that wouldn’t apply to most other people, except perhaps Jews.

Leaving aside those Christians whose children are beheaded in certain countries, there have been several well-publicised cases recently of people even in England who have been suspended from their work by an employer because they have done something specifically Christian, such as talk to somebody about prayer or heaven, or worn a simple Christian cross.

Conflict of that sort can affect someone’s health as well as their wallet. There are people who are pressing the government to bring in new laws that will make life more difficult for us.

One last point: In James 2 v 12-13 the apostle gives a general principle:

“Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, ¹³ because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!”

On the next slide is a list of Bible examples of conflict, contributed by the cell group I belong to.

Now I would like us to contribute our experiences of conflict, without giving any confidential details of course, and I hope we will be able to share ways of resolving some of the awkward disputes of life. Is conflict always avoidable, or should it be faced, and how?

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