Barring anger at organizations, people in power, or “the other side” of your political leaning, I found a little chapter in the Bible that really gave me a pretty good formula for ANY relationship squabble.
And I think at its face value, it’s a great rule of thumb on what to do (and spoiler alert – you literally don’t have to read any more if you don’t want to): it’s direct communication.
But the way I looked at it is slightly different now. I had a volunteer who was kind of rude to another one of my volunteers. My usual prescription is to “Matthew 18” them.
“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
So when a volunteer had an issue, I’d usually ask them, “Have you talked to them? Have you Matthew 18’d them? Because that’s what Jesus said to do.”
And in most cases, they hadn’t, but would talk to them – and (surprise, surprise) it usually worked out for everyone without any required escalation. I had always operated that if it didn’t work out, I would absolutely be required to step in and if that still didn’t work out, their removal from the church or something like cutting them off would absolutely be necessary.
But in looking for great, specific methods on how to resolve said conflict, my Google searches lead me to this little nugget of an article: The Most Misapplied Passage on Church Conflict
And the gist of the article kind of rocked me: escalation is only required if the “sin in question” – especially left unchecked – is cause for removal from the church.
So things like (potentially a lifestyle of) I don’t know: theft, murder, adultery – big things.
Wow. So at one point after reading this, I say to myself, So I have been applying this so incorrectly for so long, that I need to remove this obligation from my formula of righting every little hurt feeling. Right?
Wrong. The tenets of the scripture still apply.
For example, if Joe upsets me and my wittle feewings and I have a relationship with them, I need to confront them about it. That just makes sense. And if that doesn’t work, then Joe and I can mediate with a third-party (that will hopefully be impartial). Does Joe have to agree to mediation? No, not necessarily – even if he’s a Christ-follower – even if he’s the lead pastor of the church. To dangle the “but the Bible says we have to” doesn’t apply here.
But it would behoove Joe to mediate if he cares about the relationship. That’s not always a given because not everyone will care about every relationship, but I think that’s something we all need to be okay with.
And so I have a lot more grace and patience for the relationships that may very well come and go in our lifetimes – from friends to co-workers, neighbors to acquaintances – most are temporary and few are permanent.
My grandfather used to always say, “If you can count your true friends on more than one hand, consider yourself lucky and blessed.”
So having said this, I hope you can answer the question truthfully, “Who are you mad at and have you talked to them about it?”