Conflict

I don’t naturally seek conflict. I think that most of us generally don’t. We try to stay where it is comfortable and not get into disagreements with one another. But you have probably realized that conflict is natural. If we spend any significant amount of time with someone or with a group of people there will inevitably be conflict. We often think of this as a bad thing, as something that we should try to avoid. I think that this is more because of what conflict mishandled often leads to. Emotions like anger, frustration, betrayal, or resentment may come to mind as we think of conflict. Does this have to be so?

A central part of the formation process of YSF is to begin to learn to see conflict in a new way, to get beyond superficial relationships and frustration that we experience with one another and learn to lean into the tension of conflict instead of shying away.

At the very beginning of YSF we talked about how once the newness and excitement wore off there would inevitably be conflict. Now about six weeks into the program this is true. As we live together we realize we have different expectations, desires, preferences, and personalities. If we choose to bottle up the frustrations that come from those differences or let them explode then our relationships are hurt because of it. Instead when we approach the conflict in a healthy way we are able to understand and learn from each other even when we disagree. This week we sat down together for a few hours and put these tensions out on the table. It was not an easy time listening and sharing on a very honest level about what frustrates and confuses us about one another, but it is the beginning of something beautiful. In Ephesians 2 Paul says:

For he [Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of
hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself
one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the
cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those
who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Paul states that in Christ a new humanity has been born, one that is defined by peace and reconciliation with and among one other. He has created a humanity that embraces Jew and Gentile; African American, Asian, Hispanic, and Caucasian. This is good news for us, and good news for our neighborhood. But it has to start in our house. If we cannot be reconciled from disagreements that we have over small things that stem from living together, then how can we possibly preach a message of reconciliation to our neighborhood? If we are not willing to sit down and do the hard work of talking through our differences, of growing deeper in our love for one another then how can we possibly ask our neighbors to? And so that is why I believe that the time we spent this week learning to see conflict in a new way is as formational to each of us as anything we will do; because as we are able to understand that we are a new humanity created in Christ to be at peace with one another then and only then are we are able to authentically live this message out in our neighborhood.