WHEN CHRISTIANS FIGHT
There will always be conflict between people, even between Christians. Big surprise! How we handle conflict reveals a lot about what we value as a community. When people disagree, when tempers boil and emotions run high, words are thrown like knives and damage is often seemingly irreparable.
How do we handle interpersonal conflicts?
A proper Englishman happened to find himself seated on a train between two ladies arguing about the window. One claimed that she would die of heatstroke if it stayed closed. The other said she would expire of pneumonia if it was opened. Being at an impasse, the ladies called the conductor, but he didn’t have a clue as to how to resolve the conflict. Finally, the proper gentleman who had been trying to read his book throughout the verbal battle spoke up. “First, open the window. That will kill the one. Then close it. That will kill the other. Then we will have peace.”
So that’s one way to resolve conflict when you don’t care about the people involved. But how do Christians resolve conflict?
The world has many ways to resolve conflict, but invariably they leave God out of the process. God’s ways are higher than our ways and are counter cultural. That means that his ways are not the norm for a society that asserts coming out on top. Yet if we want true and lasting peace in our relationships, especially in the church, then we need to resolve conflict God’s way. His way for resolving conflict is not to give us surface techniques that achieve outward peace. God goes for the heart – he wants to transform our hearts so that our love for him naturally flows over to others.
When our ways please him, then we have a foundation for resolving conflict with others. The writer of Proverbs wrote, “When a [person’s] ways please the LORD, [they make] even [their] enemies to be at peace with [them],” (16:7). What does James tell us about conflict in the church?
To Resolve Conflict, Recognize the Source (4:1-3)
Church conflict is not unique. We know that the Corinthian church were divided over many issues; Paul singled out two women in Philippi and implored them to agree; and Galatian believers were “biting and devouring” each other (5:15). It is not surprising that James had to write about resolving conflict to his churches.
He asked, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?”(1). Asked and answered. What causes conflict among you? You do. That is, your passions and desires are the source of your disagreements, your angst, your frustration with each other.
While our natural tendency is to find blame outside of ourselves, especially other people, James insists that we are guilty. The problem rests with me, not the government, not my rival, not my parents, not my brother or sister in Christ. It’s me. The word “passions” comes from the root for “hedonism.” Hedonism is the principle of self-gratification. In the soul it is pride, longing, thirst for honor, success; in the body, it is eating and indulgence. Hedonism is the ultimate serving of self – and when this motivation drives us, conflict follows.
This is where logic takes a holiday. The War of the Whiskers was a tongue-in-cheek term for a long conflict between France and England. It began when Louis VII refused to shave his beard after he returned from the crusades. His wife, Eleanor hated the beard so much she annulled their marriage and married Henry II of England. This spat led to the Hundred Years War (1337-1453).
You think that’s stupid? Sometimes churches split over doctrinal issues, but others fight over the color of the carpet.
James wrote that part of the problem had to do with prayer. Note the tone of verses 2-3: “You…do not have...cannot obtain…You do not have…do not receive.” People become frustrated when they see what needs to be done, but others choose a different method or plan. In short, when we don’t get our way, we get angry. And there are two problems with this regarding prayer:
1) We haven’t been praying; we haven’t been asking God for his wisdom. A person may say, “Pray? No, I want to work. Prayers are not practical. Here’s the problem; let’s fix it. While you are praying, I will have solved the issue.” We are very self-reliant; before we pray, we will apply ourselves to the matter. If that doesn’t work, we might pray as a last resort.
2) If we do pray, we pray with wrong motives. James said that Christians were asking “wrongly” so that they could “spend it on your passions.” This may contribute to “not praying” as well. Jesus said, “Ask…Seek…Knock” (Mt. 7:7), and some of the believers in James’ church may have replied, “We prayed. And we did not get what we wanted.” Why pray? James sticks a finger in that wound saying, “You asked wrongly.” Jesus is the goal of our prayers. If he is not your main desire, your focus is misdirected. Our desire must be for Jesus in a world that desires everything else. He is the One we ask for; he is the One we seek; it is on his door that we knock. To treasure him above all else is the work of prayer. When we seek him first, all the things we need will be given to us.
When you are secure in your relationship with Christ Jesus, there is less conflict with others.
To Resolve Conflict, Remember your First Allegiance (4:4-6)
James is blunt. He uses harsh language to get his point across. Back in verse 2, he accused the church of murder. Most scholars see this as exaggeration to make a point. But he does it again when he calls the church “adulterous people” (4).
The correct word is “adulteresses.” This is important because this language recalls OT prophetic literature concerning Israel and Judah. It also connects to the jealousy of God in v. 5. The way Yahweh in the OT viewed his relationship to his people was as a husband to a wife. Jeremiah used this comparison to call Israel back to God when he said, “…like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel,’ declares the LORD,” (3:20; see also Dt. 31:16; Hos. 2:5).
What James does here is rebuke the church for focusing on their own agendas and ambitions instead of pursuing God. Another way of saying this is that Christians have chased after the world forsaking God in the process. Why are they in conflict? Because they are thinking like the world.
When we adopt the world’s philosophy for doing life, we turn our backs on God. We can draw our own images of a faithful spouse with a ripped open heart. A soldier comes home after a tour of duty to find his wife has been seeing his best friend. A wife has made a home for her hard-working husband only to discover he has been texting another woman. We can feel the hurt of these suffering souls; how much more then the heart of God when we flirt with the world.
John also warned the church about friendship with the world (read 1 John 2:15-17). James says that friendship with the world means becoming an enemy of God. Both James and John challenge us to reconsider what we love about the things of this world and about our love for God. When you pursue your desires, your friendship with God fades.
To Resolve Conflict, Submit yourself to God (4:7-10)
The remedy for friendship with the world is submitting to God. Submit! That’s a loaded term in our culture and has some negative connotations.
You can go to seminars on how to be more assertive. You can find self-help and life-coaches who can boost your esteem. The “in” thing in the 2020’s is to be true to yourself. I even heard a speaker on CHVN radio talking about “loving yourself first” so that you can properly love your spouse. If you don’t take care of you, you are no good to anyone. The speaker may have even based this on “love your neighbor as yourself,” a misunderstanding of Jesus’ response to the question of the Greatest Commandment.
But you don’t hear about seminars or advice on how to learn to submit. Submission translates to so many as servitude and weakness, as in a wife submitting to her husband (like the Archie Bunker model). Yet James seeks to reverse this love affair with the world and turn Christians back to God by saying, “Submit yourselves therefore to God,”(7a). In this context it is best to understand submission as ordering our lives under God’s authority and will. This is actually the purpose of worship: to align ourselves with God choosing his values over the values of society.
Submission to God flows into the rest of your life. Paul envisioned a life surrendered to God to be such a state of contentment and trust in Christ that it influences relationship with each other. In other words, as Paul said, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ,” (Eph. 5:21). Mutual submission is the natural result of submission to God. This does not mean you keep your mouth shut when ideas are shared, but it does mean listening to others who may have better ideas (or worse; with respect). This does not mean rolling over when your idea is rejected, but it does mean respecting the fact that the community went another way (even if you think your way was better).
When we submit out of reverence for Christ, out of love for one another, the devil must flee. When he flees, the conflict dissipates.
To Resolve Conflict, let the Law of Love Reign (4:11-12)
What happens after a committee meeting where the discussion gets hot? What happens when two people disagree and each feels they were not heard or were shot down? They talk. But not to each other. If they are good Canadians, they will passive-aggressively talk ABOUT the other person to someone who will sympathize with their perspective.
James will have none of that. He clearly and plainly puts this response in its place. He wrote, “Do not speak evil against one another…The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” (11-12).
This verse talks a lot about “the law.” I am convinced, and there are scholars who agree, that the law James refers to is not the OT law as such, but the law that he mentioned earlier. The royal law, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” (2:8), governs how we talk about each other. It must; it is imperative. If we give in to our desires and ambitions, passions, and hobby horses, we will destroy our brother or sister in Christ with words. James teaches that to claim to follow Christ and to speak evil of others is double minded.
Why do Christians attack each other? Why is there conflict between us when we discuss politics, blueprints, or even what we believe about the Bible?
· Is it because we believe that we are right, and they are wrong?
· Is it because we make a hill of beans about matters that are of no eternal worth whatsoever?
· Is it because we enjoy arguing and “winning” so that we appear intelligent or smart?
· Is it because grappling with Christians over so-called spiritual issues is easier than sharing our faith with unbelievers?
· Is it because we are jealous of others in the church and tearing them down will bring them down a notch?
· Is it because we enjoy the affirmations of others who feel neglected or on the fringe?
The law of "neighbor love” does not allow for these attitudes. The law of love seeks to restore relationships and to reconcile with adversaries. There may be a cost to reconciliation. You must be willing to answer softly. You must be willing to give up the final word. You must be willing to lose your dignity, if necessary. You need to forget the offense. You need to return love for hurt and risk looking impotent. In other words, you need to look like Jesus. “Forgive each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive,” (Col. 3:13).
Larry Crabb said, “The difference between spiritual and unspiritual community is not whether conflict exists but is rather in our attitude toward it and our approach to handling it. When conflict is seen as an opportunity to draw more fully on spiritual resources, we have the makings of spiritual community.”
A spiritual community is a community filled with the Holy Spirit who guides us into more fully into the life of Christ. I pray that we would be a community that reflects the person of Christ so intimately that when we face conflict, we will walk away loving each other. They will know we are Christians by our love.
AMEN
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