Siblings will rival. Relatives will drop in and stay too long. Children will demand to know "Why" Interpersonal conflict is seldom as intense as two gunslingers glaring at each other from ten paces at High Noon. It is seldom as colorful as a red-faced husband and wife, standing in their kitchen, shouting insults. It is more often a tale of two perspectives demanding to be heard. Conflict is one of those peculiar concepts few people can define without a dictionary, but most people know it when they see it! We also want it resolved promptly and to our personal satisfaction. How should Christians resolve interpersonal conflict? Should we simply give in to someone with whom we disagree just to avoid conflict? What are the rules when Christians become petty, insensitive or argumentative? If we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, how do we confront conflict without compromising our values? The solution is to understand and learn to confront the behavior, not the people we love. "A Tale of Two Perspectives" explores the dynamics of interpersonal conflict from a Christian point of view. It blends business conflict resolution strategies with biblical narratives to demonstrate a compelling and innovative point of view. Dr. Norris uses his background as a pastor, chaplain, business executive, husband and father to embroider his work with contemporary examples that may sound uncomfortably familiar. He examines how our communication style, personality, attitudes, emotions, frame of reference and spiritual values influence our capacity to resolve conflict effectively.
A Tale Of Two Perspectives
Dynamics of Interpersonal Conflict from a Christian Point of ViewBy Kenneth R. NorrisAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Dr. Kenneth R. Norris
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4520-5611-1Contents
1. Brussels Sprouts and Other Leafy Green Vegetables.....................12. Have You Been Shopping Only for Apples?...............................133. Fertile Ground for Conflict...........................................234. Some Images Are More Divine Than Others...............................315. Toast Sweat and Other Annoyances......................................376. Thou Shalt Not Substantive Conflict..................................417. If You Had Been Here! Relationship Conflict..........................458. As Simple as A-B-C....................................................519. Symptoms of Conflict..................................................6110. Personalities........................................................7311. Communication........................................................8312. Attitudes............................................................9113. Even Christians Get Angry............................................9714. Sometimes Solutions Are Outside the Boat.............................10715. The Strategies.......................................................11516. A Misunderstood Strategy.............................................12517. Say a Little Prayer for Me...........................................13118. The Ancient Hills Conflict...........................................13719. Sticks and Stones....................................................14520. Calculated Forgiveness?..............................................151
Chapter One
Brussels Sprouts and Other Leafy Green Vegetables
Siblings will rival. Relatives will drop in and stay too long. Defiant children will demand to know "Why?" Interpersonal conflict is seldom as intense as two gunslingers glaring at each other from ten paces at High Noon. It is seldom as colorful as a red-faced husband and wife, standing in their kitchen, shouting insults. It is more often a tale of two perspectives demanding to be heard.
During my early years in ministry, our little congregation experienced a baby boom of unprecedented proportions. The new church year was only a few weeks away and we were unprepared for the expanding needs of our Preschool Department. Like most churches, we formed a committee.
Jane, the newly elected Preschool Coordinator, promptly reported the purchase of tape recorders for each classroom. I was pleased to see our Preschool needs met so efficiently. It appeared my insightful leadership had paid great dividends!
Later that day, I received a call from Valerie, the new Steering Committee Chairperson. Apparently, she also noticed the Preschool Department's need for tape recorders. She had sent her daughter-in-law to the nearest discount super store with a fist full of cash. Suddenly you couldn't walk through the Preschool Department without stumbling over boxes of tape recorders!
Now, you might think the simple alternative would have been to return some of the tape recorders. That wasn't going to happen!
Valerie announced, "Technically the new year doesn't start until the first Sunday in October, so Jane had no right to buy new tape recorders!" Jane said she officially went to work on October 1 and had to prepare the department for its first Sunday, so her actions were perfectly justified. How technical, official and justified we were!
Finally, the daughter-in-law, who bravely risked life and limb at the discount super store, dropped by my office. She said, "I know I'm just being petty, but I'm not going to return those tape recorders. Jane will have to take hers back!" After a brief pause, she gave me a stern look and added, "Ken, I'm going to get my way on this!"
Conflict is one of those peculiar concepts few people can define without a dictionary, but most people know it when they see it! We also want it resolved promptly and to our personal satisfaction. Our little church began its new year with freshly painted rooms, new furniture, energetic Sunday school teachers, excited children and a tape recorder in every Preschool classroom-with eight more stacked in my office!
Afterwards, I became intimately familiar with the irreverent paraphrase of Matthew 18:20: For where two or more are gathered together, there is bound to be a difference of opinion. I still recall the defiance in the daughter-in-law's voice as she declared, "I know I'm just being petty, but.... I'm going to get my way on this!"
How should Christians resolve interpersonal conflict? Should we simply give in to someone with whom we disagree just to avoid conflict? What are the rules when Christians become petty, insensitive or argumentative? If we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, how do we confront conflict without compromising our values? The solution is to understand and learn to confront the behavior, not the people we love.
Literally, conflict comes from a Latin word meaning to strike. Its definition implies competition, incompatibility, quarrelling, antagonism, internal demands, and even fighting. The catch is that some strikes are more destructive or personal than others. For those who need a working definition, let's use this one:
Conflict is the experience of individuals or groups who are trying to achieve goals or reach objectives, which are or appear to be incompatible.
The phrase, appear to be, is key to understanding conflict because many conflicts are the result of perceptions and not facts. Of course, most people consider their perceptions factual until proven otherwise.
Conflict is a generic term. It may refer to something as global and complex as peace in the Middle East. It may be as personal as your reaction while sitting in a movie theater, holding hands with your date, after paying twenty dollars for tickets and another fifteen for refreshments, and the light from someone's cell phone rudely breaks the darkness.
Conflict may be as simple as the annoying sound of the alarm clock while realizing you are not ready to face the day. It may be as simple as deciding to wear the red tie or the blue one or to eat corned beef, pastrami or the low fat yogurt. It may be as complex as trying to understand your teenage daughter, who just ran from the room in tears. It might be as benign as rushing through a familiar traffic light on your way to work. It may be as physically upsetting as seeing flashing blue lights in your rear view mirror, with the sudden awareness the traffic light had turned red! Like it or not, human nature tends to travel a collision course with conflict. It is everywhere and easily perceived as bad, harmful or even sinful. So we need to understand it.
We read self-help books. Insightful businesses and churches have workshops to address it. Productive strategies are needed to control it and resolve it, so it doesn't control us! However, most people don't really consider strategies for resolving conflict. Usually, we barge right in, playing out familiar old scripts or memories from our past, hoping things turn out better this time. You might say, we are the product of our memories.
These old scripts are familiar to everyone. Our little dog, Riley, serves as a great example. We have two pugs, Tess and Riley. Tess, the older of the two, is the little black runt of the litter my wife Teri carefully selected. Tess sleeps in our bed, sits snuggly under my arm as we watch TV and has seldom heard a harsh word. I jokingly encourage Teri to write her a stern note when she does something naughty.
Riley has lived a different life. We found him in a pug rescue shelter. He came from a family who did not want him. He suffered from heartworms and barely survived. When he arrived at our home, he was a skinny little fawn-colored pug, with a big head, bad manners and a painful history.
Within a few months, Riley began to adjust to his new surroundings. He followed Tess everywhere and still sleeps with his chin on her back. He learned to "sit" and goes to the back door when it is time to do his business, instead of using the furniture. He grew fatter with each day and more accustomed to being loved.
Tess and Riley love to supervise while I cook. They generally sit just far enough away so I won't step on them, but close enough to catch any morsels aimed their way. One night while Tess, Riley and I prepared dinner, Teri became annoyed by a housefly on one of the kitchen curtains. It had to go! Intending not to miss anything, Riley and Tess carefully watched me with one eye and Teri with the other as she opened the closet door. As soon as she picked up the fly swatter, Riley ran!
Not unlike a cartoon character, his short stubby legs seemed to be spinning out of control as his fat little body slid around the corner, down the stairs, into the bedroom and under the bed. Of course, Teri did not intend to hit him, but his tormented little mind was playing an old script. It said fly swatters punish bad little pugs. Clearly, he did not intend to wait around to find out what he had done!
An old adage says if a wise man goes to the refrigerator and finds the milk has spoiled, he does not return a few hours later expecting it no longer to be spoiled. Riley had learned that lesson well. A fly swatter had always meant trouble and the old familiar scripts seldom lead us to new results. The faces may change, but the consequences tend to be just as frustrating as in the good old days. This is because when serious conflict surfaces, we tend to react and not respond.
A response comes from a strategy designed to address the circumstances, personalities and extenuating factors of a particular conflict. It takes time, commitment, understanding and expertise to do this on the spot, so keep reading!
A reaction tends to be a knee-jerk action or comment based on emotions or a very familiar script. It's like when you are spending a quiet evening in your favorite chair, drinking a cup of hot tea, reading a magazine article as a moth strays from under the lampshade. Suddenly, it flutters just above eye level. You are startled and swat frantically, causing your glasses to fly across the room!
As an unexpected conflict ignites, especially if it stirs much emotion, we seldom have or allow ourselves time for analysis. We seldom stop to consider the effectiveness of our past strategies. We swat away with all our might to rid ourselves of the little beast. However, if a similar reaction previously resulted in the purchase of an expensive new set of frames, we might soften the blow. We may actually inconvenience ourselves to retrieve the most effective tool: a fly swatter. Just be sure Riley isn't in the room! It works the same way with conflict. Experience, insight and the correct methods will bring increased effectiveness.
A Little Child Shall Lead Them
When conflict becomes stressful, it often helps to look back in time. Frequently, conflict returns us to our childhood and how we learned to handle adversity. We may expertly deflect it with humor or hide it with a heavy coat of sophistication, but more often than we want to admit, our little child inside is stomping its feet, holding its breath, demanding to be heard.
It may be helpful to ask, what did conflict look like when I was a child? How did it sound? How did it feel? Was conflict handled calmly and respectfully? Was it more often loud and frightening? Sometimes these answers may help us better understand what issues cause conflict to be personally stressful.
What do the old scripts sound like? Try to recall how parent-child conflicts sounded in your childhood. Were they most often resolved with phrases like: "Because I said so!" or "Don't make me tell you again" or "Stop crying or I'll give you a reason to cry"? The same impatience may filter into relationships later in life, influencing our style of parenting, managing, teaching or supervising.
Another provocative script, "If you loved me you would [fill in the blank]," resonates with many couples in conflict. However, its expectation of a romantic quid pro quo cannot dispute the fact that I may really love you, even cherish you, and still not realize you need or want me to [fill in the blank]. This script often leads to unmet expectations and deep, persistent frustration.
Some of our scripts are familiar, while others are powerfully unique and personal. The old script often quietly rests in a reservoir of childhood memories, until conflict stirs it from its nap. Then like a grumpy three year old, holding his blanket and rubbing his sleepy eyes, a familiar script is about to be heard.
Brussels Sprouts and Other Leafy Green Vegetables
This is not to say conflict is always emotional. Take the matter of brussels sprouts. Apparently, most of us either like them or hate them, but very few of us are on the fence. Conflicting opinions are present, but few of us care! You seldom hear provocative conversations at the water cooler about their savory, versatile flavors. You seldom see folks swapping brussels sprouts recipes in the Break Room. It seems no matter whether you are in Berkley, Birmingham, Buffalo, Boston, Baltimore, or the Bronx, you rarely see much conflict over brussels sprouts!
Conversely, have you wondered why the old adage reminds us never to talk in mixed company about politics or religion? Our perspectives on religion and politics are often intensely personal and very sensitive subjects. They come from places deep within a well-defined value system, creating who we are. We don't like it when our values are challenged. Try discussing abortion, gun control, race relations, and global warming at your next neighborhood cookout.
This may also demonstrate why marital conflicts become so volatile over issues like money, infidelity and failed communication, but rarely over baseball scores or movie reviews. It explains why a teen will defiantly lock herself in her room over not being allowed to drive the family car, but could not care less about the latest downturn in the stock market. Compared to issues attached to our personal value systems, brussels sprouts are relatively unimportant, unless mercilessly linked to a childhood plagued by the forced consumption of leafy green vegetables! Then, let the childhood scripts begin. "Eat your vegetables." "You'll get no dessert until you eat your vegetables!" "You can't go outside until you eat your vegetables!" "Okay, just sit there until you eat at least one!"
A Problem of Biblical Proportions
Since conflict is so familiar to the human equation, maybe that explains why so much conflict is in the Bible. The Bible brings us into the arena of inter-personal and intra-personal conflict at many turns.
Intra-personal conflicts are intensely personal. They are internal conflicts, often experienced as racing or anguished thoughts or intense emotions, like a broken heart. They cause anxious, sleepless nights. They weigh heavily, sometimes causing uncharacteristic irritability or distraction. They may draw us to an open refrigerator in the middle of the night, put an adult beverage or prescription drug in our hand or take us deeply into our personal Gethsemane.
Some intra-personal conflict in the Bible is obvious, while other instances are gleaned between the lines. We can't avoid being drawn into Jesus' grueling spiritual conflict in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Gospel narratives poignantly describe Jesus as "sorrowful, even unto death" and "greatly distressed and troubled." Some translations mournfully indicate, "His sweat became like great drops of blood."
Other examples include Pontius Pilate obsessively trying to wash Jesus' blood from his hands. We collectively hear the rooster's third and ultimate reminder of Peter's cowardly denials. We can almost feel the flushing of his face, his quickened heart rate and the tightness in the pit of his stomach.
One of the most provocative statements of intra-personal conflict came from the helpless father of a child tormented by a spirit (Mark 9:14-29). No matter whether you believe the boy was possessed by a spirit or suffered from a form of epilepsy, imagine the anguish of the father who watched powerlessly for years as his child suffered relentless seizures. Imagine the deep sadness in his tortured soul as he stood before Jesus and uttered, "I believe; help my unbelief."
As a hospital chaplain, I have heard these troubled words softly echoing from family to family in intensive care waiting rooms. The words may not have been exact, but the sorrowful merging of faith and doubt was very much the same. It called not only for healing, but understanding and grace.
On a lighter note, have you noticed how names sometimes cause internalized conflict? Children with traditional names sometimes shorten them to make them sound cooler, such as changing Charles to Chuck, Lawrence to Larry, Elizabeth to Betty, Bartholomew to Bart. Celebrities also like to play name games, apparently without giving much consideration for how life might be when the child reaches middle school. Nicholas Cage named his son Kal-El after Superman. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin named their daughter Apple, after, well you know. Imagine what internal conflicts must have plagued Isaiah's son each time he filled out a loan application, in a day without word processors or ballpoint pens, having to write a name like "Mahershalalhashbaz."
Interpersonal conflicts occur between two or more people. This is conflict between husbands and wives, parents and children, bosses and employees. It may be as fierce as a fistfight or a baseball manager screaming in the face of an umpire. It may be as detached as a computer chess match between two ardent rivals in separate cities. It may be triggered by a disagreement over dinner plans, two drivers dashing for a single parking space or two highly motivated warriors with automatic weapons in Afghanistan.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Tale Of Two Perspectivesby Kenneth R. Norris Copyright © 2010 by Dr. Kenneth R. Norris. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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