We live in a world where ‘friend’ means someone who can look at your pictures on Facebook, and with a click of a button we can just as quickly be ‘unfriended.’ Many times, we find ourselves being isolated in our individualized world. We cannot control the world around us, but we can make changes in how we live our lives and how we treat others. Ask yourself this question: In my life, which is more common – creating conflict or resolving conflict?
Often, the biggest threat to finding healthy community is us. We don’t know what it looks like. We don’t know how it feels. We don’t know what to do or how to pull it off. All of us experience conflict; the healthiest people know how about resolving conflict in a peaceful way.
Romans 12 reveals four principles that can help us experience and even create healthy relationships.
4 Keys to Resolving Conflict Peacefully
1. Think differently.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will. – Romans 12:1-2
Once we follow Jesus, we are part of a new family that has a new way of relating to others. Paul is writing to say: “It doesn’t matter what your biological family did or how they related to each other; there is a new way to do things!”
Earlier in this letter to the Romans, Paul described the difference in the way he now saw things. He explained that the Gentiles were being grafted into the family of God. In a culture where the oldest male in the family was THE most important person, he mentioned the story of Jacob and Esau where the tables were turned. The younger brother received the blessing. He tricked his dad to get it, but Paul says God the Father can choose who He will love, and He always loves beyond who we want Him to love. “I will have mercy on whoever I want – including the Gentiles.”
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A new way of thinking means moving from excluding others for their differences to actually inviting them into this new family. Throughout the Scriptures, we discover that those in this new family of God are to become “reconcilers” and “peacemakers.” (See 2 Corinthians 5:16-20 and Matthew 5:9)
If you are a follower of Christ, can your family and those closest to you tell by the way you treat them? Is there a difference in your relationships? Or do you continue to operate the way the world does – complain about others behind their backs with gossip, slandering others, cutting them out of your life, defriending them, and so on?
2. Act with humility.
‘Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment…We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us…Do not be conceited. – Romans 12:3-6, 16
Paul is reminding us that we are all important to each other’s lives. The moment we think we are better than another person is the moment we lose the opportunity to learn from them. Everyone has value. Everyone has unique strengths and talents. No one has failed a spiritual gifts test!
Can you see the unique ways God has crafted those around you? Do you help them maximize who they are, or do you just look to see what you can get from them?
“So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.” Romans 14:19
When we see others through God’s eyes, we begin to see that what we have in common is that we are all loved by God and need God.
We need to expect the best in others and avoid judging people at their worst moments.
