Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Resolve COVID conflict

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

Have you been fighting more? Experiencing more conflict in relationships? You're not alone... and time won't fix it. So why are we fighting more during COVID, and what are practical steps to resolve conflict before it ruins our relationships? Be sure to follow us on our new https://www.facebook.com/Ten-Minute-Bible-Talks-103966368000540/ (Facebook page)! We want to connect with you, and you can help shape the podcast! Here's the URL: https://www.facebook.com/Ten-Minute-Bible-Talks-103966368000540/ (https://www.facebook.com/Ten-Minute-Bible-Talks-103966368000540/) Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. So, Patrick, I was goofing around the web the other day, and I saw an article about divorce lawyers. It was in the Miami Herald, I think. And the story said that one firm in the Miami area had seen an uptick in calls during COVID. 500 consultations a week more this year at the same time. than the previous year. So COVID seems to be really presenting some problems to marriages and

relationships in general. You and Emily thinking about getting divorced? Well, I told her if this pasturing thing doesn't work out, it looks like being a divorce lawyer might be the way to go. No, we haven't thought about getting a divorce. Those aren't awkward less. No, we haven't. Well, you know, if you get divorced as a pastor, you don't just lose your family. You lose your job. You lose everything. That's for sure true. I highly recommend against it. I agree with that. But that said, you're totally right.

I talk to a lot of people, and it doesn't matter if you're married or not. Everybody seems to be experiencing more conflict than usual, more conflict in family relationships, whether it's with your parents or with your kids, in working relationships, in friendships, and marriages. Emily and I, just the other day, we went on our first date since COVID. It was an outdoor date. We were out at the logboat yard. Logboats is this local brewery.

They've got a really cool lawn outside where you can go sit and have a drink. We're having a great time. We're having fun, talking, enjoying time with each other. Hang on a second. Let me guess you blew it. I see where this is headed. Well, what kind of husband would I be if I shared a story where she's the one who blows in? I can tell you also broke one of the fundamental rules, and that is don't pay for a fight. That's exactly right. You never pay a babysitter to have a fight. I can have those for free at home any time that I want. And I did. I did. I did a stupid comment, and Emily called me out on it rightly. And what did I do?

of course I was like, honey, you're right, shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. Let's restart here. Nah. That's what you wish you would have done. Yeah, that's what I wish I would have done. That's what a smart man would have done. No, I decided that this was an opportunity to defend myself, to defend how right I was, launched us into an hour-long fight, which ended with me saying effectively where I should have started and breaking that critical dating rule. And here's the thing, as I talk to people, as I talked to friends, I am so far from the only one who's gone out for a fun night, again, whether it's with a spouse or with a friend, and somehow it's just devolved into an argument. Okay, so Keith, enough about me. What about you? After 30 years of marriage,

Christine and I have made a lot of peace with things. I'm not saying we have a healthy relationship. I think he meant to say that Christine's made a lot of peace with things. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I mean, maybe so. It's just after 30 years, you feel like you've seen a lot. And so the idea that we're going to fight. It's not that we don't get bummed out with each other, but come on, what are we going to argue with at this point? But what I've noticed is just more tension in work relationships. And I think a lot of that is because we're living in uncertain times. Things are changing. And even here at the church, we're having to adapt and flex in ways that are uncomfortable for all of us. And I've noticed myself getting snappier or more easily frustrated, maybe more irritable,

less patient with people. So I think you're right, whether it's at home or work or friends or whatever, we're all more susceptible to conflict. But what if you thought about this? What if you thought that conflict in your relationship isn't really the problem? The problem that we have is unresolved conflict. In other words, conflict is inevitable. Anytime you have sinners living together inside a broken world, you're going to have conflict. It's not the circumstances that cause the conflict. It's the mess inside of us that causes the conflict. But most of us don't know how to resolve conflict. That's a great point. I am kind of your classic conflict avoider. Not all the time. I will attack back. But I remember reading Jesus is in the beatitudes. He says, Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called the children of God. And for a long time, I thought that essentially meant being someone who doesn't rock the canoe, stir the waters, you know, someone who just didn't pick fights, didn't cause drama, that's being a peacemaker. And it's actually my wife who's taught me the truth. Like you just said, conflicts aren't actually what destroys the relationship. And you don't make peace by avoiding things. You make peace by actually taking on the conflicts themselves and dealing with the unresolved conflict that's underneath things. And I say my wife's taught me that because Emily might be more of the attacker. That makes her sound bad. But she wears her emotions on her sleeve. She's going to tell you when she's frustrated and upset. And what I've seen in her relationships is that

when she sees a problem, she addresses it, and her relationships don't have a lot of underlying conflict because they're dealt with. And that's actually making peace. She's actually resolving the conflict. She's dealing with the issues rather than avoiding them. Well, one of the things I love about the Bible is that it is so honest about our frailties, you know, about what's really possible. And so one of the verses I just love when you think about conflict is Romans 1218. It says, if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. So it's got two things there that I think are realistic with our sinful nature and the world we live in. First, if it is possible. So sometimes it's impossible to resolve conflict and live at peace with others. And then it says

as far as it depends on you. In other words, we can't take responsibility for other people's choices, words, responses, but we can take responsibility. before God for our own. And so we need to wrestle with the question, what can we do to resolve the conflicts that we find ourselves inside of? So we're going to walk through a process for conflict resolution, but I think it's really helpful to pause and say how not to resolve conflict. Let's start with bad strategies. And why I say that, and I'm guilty of this, my strategies for conflict resolution are usually not very helpful. In his novel, Love in the Time of Colora, Gabrielle Garcia-Marquez, tells the story of a marriage which disintegrates over a bar of soap. And in the story itself,

you've got a husband and a wife, and the wife's responsibility was to keep fresh towels and toilet paper and soap in the bathroom. Is that Emily's responsibility around your house? No, we share that, and it's usually when someone needs it. They're like, hey, can someone get the toilet paper? Because I'm stuck here. That's funny. Maybe it should be pointed out that Love in the Time of Colorado was set in the late 1800s in the country of Columbia. And it was a very traditional marriage. And so the wife is taken on that role. Yeah.

And so the husband is trying to take a bath and discovers that he doesn't have any soap. And he goes storming out and he's angry and upset because he yells at his wife, it's been a whole week and I've been bathing without soap, which is, of course, a gross and terrible exaggeration. And she, of course, responds in turn. She doesn't say, well, actually, honey, it's only been one day and I'm really sorry I didn't do it. She says, no, there's soap in there right now. Look, this is a you issue. This isn't a me issue. I've been doing

this for you your whole life. And they end up spending the entire next seven months eating their meals in silence and sleeping in different rooms. And what I like about the story is that I think it actually illustrates two terrible ways to deal with conflict. On the one hand, you never deal with conflict by attacking each other. No one's ever resolved anything with a soap fight. Trust me, I have tried this a million times. When you were fighting about everything except for the thing itself, it rarely takes you anywhere. On the flip side, no one resolves anything by avoiding. Do you think that seven months of silence, seven months of sleeping in separate bedrooms solved their conflict? Well, no, yeah, they were fighting a lot less, but they never resolved the underlying conflict. Nothing got better from that.

Yeah, one thing that story exposes is this idea that time heals all wounds is a fraud. It's a lie. It's just not true. And yet so many of us believe it. All time does is, kind of lock things in to a status quo. There's a church in Jerusalem called the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and it gets that name because it is built on the site that people believe that Jesus was crucified and buried. And it's a magnificent structure. The architecture is beautiful, it's breathtaking on the inside, but there's one eyesore on the outside. If you look up a little higher on the building, you'll see this ladder sitting on a four-inch ledge. And that ladder goes nowhere, it's useless to anyone. Nobody uses it for anything, but it's been there for almost 300

years. And the reason it's been there so long, unmoved, is kind of an interesting story. See, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is owned by six different Christian traditions, and there have been arguments, terrible conflicts over that building throughout the centuries. And so in the mid-1700s, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire declared what he said was the status quo agreement. He just kind of enforced the status quo saying instead of dealing with the conflict, we're just going to lock it in and leave everything as is untouched. Well, 300 years later, that's where it sits. That ladder is still there. So that puts to rest the idea that time heals all wounds. All time does to an open wound is make it worse. And our conflicts, they get worse when we

ignore them. That's right. Avoiding conflicts doesn't make conflicts better. And as I've talked to people during COVID-19, a common refrain I've heard is, look, we're in a weird time. This is going to change. We're going to go back to normal. The conflict and the troubles that I'm facing in my various relationships, that'll go away. It's going to get better. And that's a self-deception. It's not going to get better. You might be making things worse every day right now, but things are not going to get better by just avoiding the issue. On the flip side, like we said earlier, things aren't going to get better by attacking. So some people's response to conflict isn't to avoid, it's to attack. And it looks like this. When you come at me with this conflict, I'm going to come right

back at you. I'll strap on my weapons. I'll take my pound of flesh. I'm going to say my peace. And it might feel really good in the moment, but again, it never resolves anything. I love Proverbs 1714. It says, starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam. So drop the matter before dispute breaks out. Now, Proverbs aren't telling you to avoid conflict, what they're telling you is if you're just starting a quarrel, if you're just fighting back, you aren't solving anything. You're just unleashing a dam. You're making things far worse. So you need to know yourself. Are you a attacker in the face of conflict, or are you a avoider? Both of these are really defense mechanisms. But where do you tend to fall? And that's going to help you self-assess if you in the midst

of a conflict are avoiding or attacking rather than dealing with the conflict itself, which leads to the natural question. If attacking and avoiding aren't the answer, what should we do? How can we resolve underlying conflict in our relationships. So remember Romans 12, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with all people? When you start to resolve a conflict, you don't start with the other person. You start with you. And the best place to start with you is in prayer before God. Is my heart right here? Am I open to hearing feedback that I may not want? Am I open to seeing this from another person's perspective? Am I humbling myself before God? Am I? Am I open to hearing feedback? Am I aware of how much God has forgiven me in Christ so that I don't come across as self-righteous

or looking down on the person, but instead know that I am a sinner and I may not see everything as well as I think I do. So I think that all gets processed best in the context of prayer, where you're sitting before God, praying for your own heart, doing a little self-examination, praying for the other person and asking God to heal this relationship. And then it probably moves to initiate. Yeah, before we get to initiate, one other thought. Most conflicts are two-sided. And as Keith just said, you cannot control or change the heart of the other person that

you're in a conflict with. You can really only deal with you. And so one thing you're going to notice in this process is that it's you-focused. It's not the other person focused. But here's the good news. There is someone who does control. the heart, the mind of the person that you are dealing with. And that's God. God can change people's hearts. When I got married, I asked an older and more mature guy, said, what's your one piece of

advice for a newly married guy? And it's stuck with me and it's been incredibly helpful. He said, you are not your wife's Holy Spirit. And that was really helpful because I happen to be someone who will want to influence and change other people's thoughts, hearts, and ideas. And I can do that in more or less manipulative ways, I'm sure. But that reminded me that it's not my job. I'm not the one who can change my wife's heart. I'm not the one who can make her see things rightly. And she can't do that for me either. So before you go into a conflict, pray for God to work in their hearts to help them to see things rightly.

You as well, but them as well. So like he said, the first step is prayer, and then we move into initiating. I bet Emily never confused you with the Holy Spirit. I guess that's probably just something you had to come to terms with. Yeah, that's right. You didn't have to tell Emily. Don't worry, Patrick's not your Holy Spirit. My guess is she already had figured that one out.

Smart woman that, Emily. Yeah, so let's get to initiate. Conflicts don't get resolved accidentally. They only get resolved when you will take the initiative to approach another person and to talk through it. And that's one of the hardest things to do because you're not sure how it's going to turn out. What if they react angrily? What if they don't want to talk? It's uncomfortable.

We've all been there. Some of us are more okay with the uncomfortability. Some aren't. But the reality is none of us love that, but we have to initiate. So if you're thinking right now of someone that you have conflict with, I would challenge you to pick a day and a time and a place that you're going to initiate with them. Now, be smart about it. You know, take into account who they are and what they're going through and pick a good time. Don't try to pack a $100 conversation in a 10-cent moment.

In other words, don't try to take a big subject and talk about it right. at the end of a conversation before you have to leave or catch a plane or that kind of thing. You want to find the appropriate time to address this when nobody's stressed and you got a little bit time to unpack it. My wife and I learned that the time that you don't talk to our kids about conflict that we had with them or about things that were going on their life was early in the morning when they're eating breakfast. High school kids are not open to those kind of conversations at breakfast. You just keep your mouth shut and talk to them later at night. So, we're all like that in our own way. Find the best time to have it. Now, don't let that be an excuse

to never have it because there's never a perfect time, but be wise and pick a good time and then initiate. The worst time to do it is when you are already in a fight. And again, I do this all the time. If you ever had the argument where you know that you're arguing about something that is really dumb and you think this isn't the thing itself, that's when you know that there needs to be a conflict resolution. You aren't angry. I mean, use the soap example. He's not angry. because of soap, not being in the bathtub. There's something underneath that. That's what's actually causing the argument.

And so if you're in one of those arguments, I found it's helpful to say, you know what, I don't think we're upset about this. I think we're upset about something else. And I think now it's probably a terrible time for us to deal with that thing. So let's find a time. Let's set it and let's talk about it

when we're both cooled down. And I promise you we're going to have a much better conversation. Yeah, I think that's really wise, Patrick. When you see someone or even see it in yourself, getting more upset than they should about an incident. In other words, why is this person so upset about a bar of soap, about being five minutes late, about me forgetting to unload the dishwasher? Why are they so upset about it?

Well, it's because there's something else. It may be with you or it may be a conflict that they're having at the office or something. But try to talk about the real issue, not necessarily the presenting issue. The next step is to humble yourself. And this is really challenging. Anytime I humble myself, I feel like I'm losing something. I feel like there's a cost associated with it. And that's because all of us, myself included, are tempted to be proud.

And proud people have an incredibly difficult time admitting when we're wrong and admitting when we've hurt someone else. But humble people are able to not just admit their own faults, they're able to see from other people's perspectives. They're able to not just see, but validate other people's perspectives. So my big task when it comes to humility is trying to walk a mile in the other person's shoes. So if I'm in a conflict with my wife, before I walk in, my best self, I will have sat down and intentionally thought for a while, what's it like to be married to me right now?

What would I be thinking if I was married to me right now? And I know that I've done a pretty good job of it if I'm able to articulate my wife's grievances against me better than she can. If I can give her more ammunition than she walked in with, I've probably gotten into a good place where I have become as offended by myself as she is. And again, it feels like there's a big cost associated with it, but it's necessary to resolve conflict. Man, we could just do a whole episode just on that idea because I think it's one of the most important things I've learned about relationships in general, work or friends, but also marriage.

And that is that those who are forgiven much love much, that when I think that I'm a great husband to be married to, that's probably what I'm the biggest jerk and the worst husband to be married to. When I realize how patient Christine is to me, when I realize how many things that probably drive her crazy, but that she graciously overlooks. And of course, not just my marriage, but people I work with, how difficult I probably am to be in a meeting with, or to make decisions with, then I become more gracious. But as soon as I start thinking, I'm pretty good. I'm a pretty good dad. I'm a pretty good dad. I'm a pretty good husband. I'm a pretty good co-worker. That's when I become self-righteous and judgmental and incredibly difficult to work with.

How do you think the reputation of Christians around the world would change if we took really seriously Romans 12.3? For by the grace given to me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment. If I could just think that way all the time, not more highly than I ought to with sober judgment, which I think means probably from someone else's perspective, not my own. I'm guessing I'd be an easier person to work with. I'm guessing I'd be an easier husband to do life with. And so, again, if you want to resolve conflict, you've got to walk in and take the humble

path. That looks like repenting of where you've fallen short. It looks like owning what you've done wrong without qualification. Don't use the deadly word, but just avoid the word, but. Don't say, but I was tired, but I was overworked, but my personality makes this hard, but you were being too sensitive, but whatever it is, set that word aside and own without qualification what you've done. Here's another way to look at this same issue about humility, is you might be approaching someone about a conflict that you're in, and you think they're 90%

at fault. Now, that's not how most conflicts work, really. Most conflicts are not 90-10 conflicts. The responsibility is much more shared than that. But even if you're approaching a person that you have a conflict and you're really sure that that person is 90% at fault. I think it's best to start with the 10% you can own. Start with your 10% own that. Confess that. Apologize for that. Ask them to forgive you for your 10%. And then you'll be in a position to talk to them about the part that you think that they've got wrong. But you're not going to get anywhere if you go in with guns of plays telling them that this is all their fault and they're the bad guy and you're the good guy. First of all, it's not true. Second of all, everybody gets turned off by that. You'd be turned off if somebody came at you

that way. So if that's not going to work when somebody talks to you, why in the world do you think that it would work if you talk to them that way? The next step in conflict resolution is forgiveness. And so anytime someone has wronged you or you have wronged someone else, there's going to be a step where either you ask for forgiveness or they ask for forgiveness. forgiveness and to give it back, I really like Proverbs 179. It says, whoever would foster love covers an offense, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends. And that little proverb gets at the heart of what forgiveness really is. Forgiveness is setting down your weapons. Forgiveness is setting down your personal right to take vengeance against the person

who's wronged you and instead giving it to God and trusting God to be the one who does justice ultimately. Yeah, forgiveness isn't forgetting. The Bible tells us to forgive as the Lord forgave us. So when God forgives us, he doesn't forget. God can't forget anything. Instead, what he does, like Patrick already said, is he doesn't hold our sin against us. So to forgive another person isn't to forget what they've done. That might very well be possible or that might happen over time or it might never happen. But what it means is to say, I'm not going to make them pay by me blowing up at them. or gossiping and ruining the reputation or giving them the cold freeze and the silent treatment,

I'm not going to make them pay. And another thing forgiveness isn't is forgiveness isn't reconciling. I think we should all hope that our relationships are reconciled, and that can be a goal and a prayer request, but we have to see that it's a separate step from forgiveness. When we ask someone to forgive us, it calls on them to make a response, and hopefully that will lead to reconciliation. But a person could forgive me, but not immediately accept me back into their circle of trust.

Let's just use an absurd example for a second. Let's say that you are a bank, and a bank teller embezzles a bunch of money, and you as a bank forgive the bank teller. That doesn't mean you have to put that bank teller right back in the same position. It might take a while to earn that trust back. It may never happen. That could be true also in a relationship with a friend or a coworker or a spouse that they hurt you deeply and you can forgive them and you hope to reconcile with them at some point.

But it doesn't mean that you have to automatically accept them back in the same position of trust that they had before. This is especially true in abusive relationships. A lot of times people who have gone through abuse will hear sermons or podcasts on forgiveness and their abuser might even use it to manipulate them. See, you aren't forgiving me. You haven't done what Jesus is calling you to do. And Key's point here is, no, if someone has physically, verbally, or in any other fashion, abused you, you don't forget. Yeah, just think about a spouse who is unfaithful, sexually unfaithful. The offending spouse might seek forgiveness, and the offended spouse might offer forgiveness. It might really forgive their husband or wife or cheating on them. But

that doesn't necessarily mean that they have to accept them back in the marriage. And even if they do accept them into the marriage and keep that marriage going, it's going to take a while for that trust to develop. So we get into trouble when we blur forgiveness and reconciliation and act like they're the exact same thing. One other example, and I think this one helps even because it comes from the Bible, Jacob and Esau. Esau threatens to take Jacob's life. In fact, Jacob spends decades on the run as a result of Esau's threat to take his life. And when Jacob and Esau finally come back together, it really does seem like they forgive one another for what's transpired between the two of them. But Esau begs Jacob, come move in right next door to me, let's all live together, we'll be one big

happy family. And you know what Jacob does? He doesn't do it. He refuses. He moves actually a good distance away from Esau. Why? I think it's because Jacob knew it wasn't safe for him, ultimately, to stay with Esau. They might have forgiven each other, but it wasn't safe for them to live with each other, to live near each other. And again, if you're in an abusive relationship, a physically abusive relationship, it's time to move out. And the Bible gives you very good grounds to say, we might forgive, but we are going to heal separately from each other. By now, you're probably thinking of a person that you have some sort of conflict with. And it might be small, or it might be medium, it might be growing. You know, that's how conflicts are.

They start small, maybe over a bar of soap. And all this sudden it's been seven months and you realize you've been sleeping in separate bedrooms and have eaten your meals in silence. That's just how conflict works. It works down in our heart and our angerness turns into bitterness, turns into resentment and it just hardens our heart toward people and God. So here's what I want you to do. Start praying for that person. Just asking God to have his hand of favor and grace in that person's life and start asking God to show you anything in your life that you need to deal with so that you'll be prepared to resolve this conflict. And then look for a time to initiate.

When are you going to have this conversation? It's going to be uncomfortable, but I think you're going to be really glad you had it. Own your sin. What have I done wrong? What do I just want to go in and confess and ask them to forgive me? And then I would be quiet. Like Patrick said, don't offer excuses. Ask for forgiveness for how you sin against them.

After you've acknowledged how your sin cost them, then just be quiet. Let them respond. And then hopefully, over time, that relationship will be reconciled. But the danger is that we offer you a list of do this and then this and then that, and you do these three, four steps, and it'll all be okay. And the reality is that all of us know that's not true. A woman named Elizabeth O'Connor said this. She said, despite a hundred sermons on forgiveness, we do not forgive easily, nor find ourselves

easily forgiven. Forgiveness we discover is always harder than the sermons make it out to be. Isn't that the truth? Of course forgiveness is harder than any list of dues and don'ts. So where do you get the power to forgive? I think it's from knowing how much Jesus has forgiven you. I said this earlier, but taking the humble power. is costly. And you can say that about the entire conflict resolution process. It's costly. It's scary to

initiate. It's costly to admit the ways that you've fallen short. I think it can be terrifying to ask for forgiveness. So like Keith is saying, you can't do that on your own. The only place where you find the power to forgive is from Jesus. And like he said, I think you find it first by knowing that he's forgiven you. He's forgiven you. He's already set aside the cost of whatever it is that you are confessing or owning to that person. But on the flip side, know this. Even if you feel like you're going to lose something in the conflict resolution process, there's one thing you most assuredly cannot lose, and that's Jesus's love. Whatever happens in that conversation, your Lord, your Savior, the creator of the universe is still with you. And when you know you can't lose that,

it frees you to enter into a process of conflict resolution with the people who you love in your life. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.