Don’t Spiritualize Away Conflict

Today I want to talk about another lesson from one of my favorite books, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.

One of the most destructive myths alive in the Christian community is the belief that ignoring disagreements, or turning a blind eye to them, is part of what it means to follow Jesus. We avoid conflict, and then try to rationalize it away by saying it’s something Jesus would want or do.

We may tell ourselves that we’re maintaining unity, peace, or love by ignoring conflict and sweeping it under the rug, and I get it. No one likes conflict, conflict is painful, it indicates that we are doing something wrong which is a scary prospect.

But conflict that is left unresolved doesn’t just go away. Its negative affects will grow under the surface, and over time will sprout up in unexpected places. A disagreement over one important thing that is ignored can pop up as little disagreements over many things, and because they seem unrelated it makes it much more difficult to resolve the root issue.

So, it may seem obvious that we should be resolving our conflicts, but another issue is that often times we believe we are resolving them. The problem is that we’re trying to solve them in the fastest and least painful way possible, which unfortunately leads to them not being properly resolved. We try and take the easy way out, but unfortunately life isn’t easy.

True conflict resolution is difficult, and few people are good at it. One reason why is likely because few people are raised in homes where conflicts are resolved in a healthy way, so we learn bad habits and never figure out what we should actually be doing.

In addition, the unhealthy conflict resolutions we grew up with causes us to have an aversion to conflict because we grow up seeing only how it’s bad, and not how it can be used for good.

In reality conflict can be a powerful tool to help ourselves, and others, be our best. Jesus had many conflicts in his life but he used them as opportunities to teach and help people. Now, we aren’t going to be teaching when we have conflicts, because we aren’t Jesus. Much more often we will be having a discussion where we try to learn as much about the other person and their side as possible.

Once we understand them, and they understand us, we can come to an agreement or at the very least we should be able to understand why they believe what they believe. Truly understanding someone is one of the most difficult things we can do as humans. We have a limited perspective and limited minds. We need to be trying to gain God’s perspective because he knows and understands everything, and the only way we can do that is by learning from other people’s perspectives.

So, it’s time that we stopped running from conflict. Its time that we stand up and face the conflicts in our lives and address them head on. We should be seeking out the conflicts that we’ve ignored in the past and bring them out into the light where we can use them to grow and become better versions of ourselves. The versions of ourselves that God intended for us to be. Good luck.