Conflict? Ask Ken: Runaway Congregational Conflict and Why We Should Solve It (Part 3)

(Continuing from last week’s article, Part 2)

PEOPLE'S  PERCEPTIONS

Making the Transition
Changing expectations is the first of two major steps that will help churches to better deal with conflict.  The second has to do with the way conflict is viewed once it has emerged.

Question: when does one draw the line between a healthy difference of opinion and destructive arguing? Answer: when people become “antagonists.”  The etymology of the word “to antagonize” comes from Greek, meaning “to struggle against” (Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, and Danker). Hence, when someone starts directing energy away from a given problem and begins to struggle against another person, the line demarcating destructive conflict has been crossed.

The Need to Erect a Wall in Our Minds
When people begin to undermine the other, it does not bode well for the future of that relationship or for the social setting in which it occurs.  The original issue is no longer the real issue. The problem is now identified as a person.  He is / she is / they are the problem.   In a highly inter-relational setting such as a church, sides begin to form. If the dispute does not get resolved, people begin talking less constructively to each other and more negatively about each other with those in their own circle.  Each faction views the other with growing suspicion and ignores what they have in common.  Thoughts become increasingly judgmental and condemning.  Questions of the other's character, competency, credibility, or spirituality are raised.  Emotions affect reasoning. Exaggeration, false assumptions, and other distortions in perception increasingly occur. Parties belittle each other. Action begets counteraction and the conflict escalates. The nasty spirit that surfaces may be as ugly as any found in a secular setting.  Why?

“For one thing, parties' core identities are at risk in church conflicts.  Spiritual commitments and faith understandings are highly inflammable because they are central to ones' psychological identity….  When church folk feel that their worldview or personal integrity is being questioned or condemned, they often become emotionally violent or violating” (Halverstadt).

It goes without saying that this escalating cycle of conflict must not be allowed to occur. Rather, (1) a wall must be established in each person's mind prior to the point of personal attack, and (2) a concerted effort must be made to bring back parties who have scaled that wall.  These two objectives are foundational and must be met if churches are to effectively resolve conflict.  Indeed, these are not just good ideas.  They are rooted in Biblical theology and must be clearly enunciated to churchgoers on a regular basis.

The Theological Foundation
Volkan has observed that people in battle have “the tendency to portray one's own tribe or ethnic group as human while describing other groups as subhuman.” An illustration of this concept occurred on an individual level when a U.S. government official made the following statement about another elected official with whom he was in conflict. Speaking to an intervening third party the first man said, “Let's get this straight. We're dealing with a subhuman species here - this is not a human being we're dealing with” (Wilmot & Hocker). Such labeling, however, does nothing to manage the conflict.  It only creates a more entrenched enemy. Lewis Smedes, who noted this tendency to negatively portray an adversary, put it this way,

“We shrink him to the size of what he did to us; he becomes the wrong he did.  If he has done something truly horrible, we say things like, `He is no more than an animal.'  Or, `He is nothing but a cheat.'  Our `no more thans' and our `nothing buts' knock the humanity out of our enemy.  He is no longer a fragile spirit living on the fringes of extinction.  He is no longer a confusing mixture of good and evil.  He is only, he is totally, the sinner who did us wrong.”

Such a direct attack on another person is very common in the midst of interpersonal strife. Nevertheless, it cannot be allowed to stand, especially in the church.  It flies directly in the face of the Judeo-Christian worldview that holds there is no essential difference between any of us.  The Scriptures teach that God “made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,” Acts 17:26 (NKJV).

Though some might like to think that others are intrinsically second-rate, this is patently false.  The Scriptures couldn't be more explicit regarding our moral deficiencies, “for there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:22-23 (NIV).  Soviet dissident and Pulitzer Prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who became a Christian while in a Russian gulag, later wrote with great insight,

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.  But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Illustration
A dramatic illustration of this comes from a surprising source, the television program, “60 Minutes,” and the segment entitled, “The Devil is a Gentleman.”  The story is about Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust.  Mike Wallace posed this question near the beginning of the piece, “How is it possible, you ask yourself, for a man to act as Eichmann acted, do as Eichmann did?  Was he a monster?  A madman?  Or was he perhaps something even more terrifying: was he normal?”

A riveting answer came during Mike Wallace's interview with Yahiel Dinur, a concentration camp survivor.  He was called to testify against Adolf Eichmann at the Nuremberg trials in 1961, some 18 years after the Nazi personally sent him to Auschwitz.   Wallace observed that the sight of Eichmann by Dinur at the trial, “unleashed a shattering, disabling response.”  A film clip of the trial was replayed on the broadcast.  Dinur walked into the courtroom.  Upon seeing Eichmann, Dinur was overtaken by emotion and fainted.
 
Wallace remarked, “Why did Yahiel Dinur collapse?  He says it was the realization that the Eichmann who stood before him at the trial was not the godlike army officer who had sent millions to their death.  This Eichmann, he said, was an ordinary man, an unremarkable man.  And if this Eichmann was so ordinary, so human, says Dinur, then he realized that what Eichmann had done, any man could be capable of doing - even Yahiel Dinur.”  Dinur asserted, “I saw I am capable to do this.  I am capable exactly like he.”

Of course, countless thousands were involved in Germany's campaign of annihilation.  Eerily, the conclusion is the same.  “It was not crazed lunatics who created and managed the Holocaust, but highly rational and otherwise quite normal bureaucrats” (Ritzer).  As 60 Minute correspondent Morley Safer reminded viewers in a different Holocaust story, “evil can have a very ordinary face.”  This is because there is a line dividing good and evil in every human heart.

Elaborating on his metaphor of the “line,” Solzhenitsyn added,

“During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish.  One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being.  At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.”

This is akin to what William James stated over 100 years ago.  James observed that a man “has as many different social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares.  He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups” (Lemert).  It underscores the fact that how we act or the “face” we put on changes in the various circumstances we encounter.  The truth is our totality of personhood is more than words we speak or any given act we engage in.

Keeping The Proper Perspective
Yet in the midst of interpersonal conflict, we tend to stereotype our adversaries by their worst behavior. We tend to inaccurately characterize others by deriving from one or more callous acts an all-encompassing negative view of that person.  The remarks of one of the great Christian thinkers of the 20th century, C. S. Lewis, are relevant here. Commenting on the dictum, “hate the sin but not the sinner,” he stated,

“I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.  For a long time I used to think, this is a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man?  But years later it occurred to me that there is one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself.  There had never been the slightest difficulty about it.”

There's probably not a psychologically healthy person on the planet who can't identify with these words.  In essence, we all have established in our minds a wall that separates who we are and what we do. Why?  Because who we consider ourselves to be and what we do at a given moment in time are not necessarily the same.  Consequently, to accord anything less to others is to engage in hypocrisy. 

Therefore, when we attack another's personhood, not only do our all-inclusive assessments of negativity invariably miss the mark, but they also make conflict more intractable.  One person's reductionist view of the other disputant will inevitably be rejected by the one who is being attacked.

For Discussion:  What are your thoughts or comments to the above presentation.  Do you agree or disagree, and why?

FOR OTHER ARTICLES BY KEN ON CHURCH CONFLICT... click here

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  © 2005 Kenneth C. Newberger
Ken Newberger, an experienced church conflict resolution and development specialist, earned his Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, has ten years senior pastoral experience, and is in the dissertation phase for his Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Nova Southeastern University, one of only two accredited doctoral programs of its kind in the United States. If your church needs help resolving conflict, if you need individual coaching, or if you would like to develop a communicatively healthy church,  please visit Ken's website  at www.ResolveChurchConflict.com  or call 301-253-8877.

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