Creating a Secure CHURCH
PART 4 : When Things Go Wrong
Chapter 16 : Secure after Conflict
16.4 If you are the OFFENDER
A word to the Offended
If you are the person who feels they have been offended, you may think you can read through this Part and use it as ammunition against the person who offended you. You can’t! They alone are responsible for their side of things and you must leave God to speak to them. You have your side of the conflict to deal with and that is just as difficult, so start reading the Part 16.5 which is for you!
You, the Offender?
In probably the majority of instances when someone was upset, when you initially spoke to them, it had not been your intention to cause upset. Very often people act and speak with the best of intentions and are then most surprised at the upset that ensued. For this reason the likelihood is that you do not see yourself as the initiator of the conflict. Indeed you probably feel quite upset at the hostile reaction you got from the other person, and would see yourself as the slighted party.
Acknowledging Error
We’ll deal with the above situation in a moment, but it may be that in the cold light of day, when you look back on what you said, you may be able to see that the words you used, the way you said them, or the time you chose to speak had not been the best! Even if our intentions were the best there are few of us who can say that we were 100% perfect in what we said and the way we said it. If you’ve even got a 10% chance that you weren’t exactly right in what you said, you’ve got grounds to say sorry.
But what about their response?
Whether or not you came with a right intention, it’s very common in such upsets for the other person to have responded very badly. They were hurt and so they lashed out! Now when we view these things as the party who set the ball rolling, at this point we use their bad reaction as an excuse why we shouldn’t be the one initiating resolution. We now claim to be the offended party and our self-righteous defence mechanism kicks in to protect self and justify our part in it all. We need to recognise this for what it is and not use it as an excuse from the enemy to stop us initiating resolution.
Why did they blow up?
We said just now that it is quite likely that you didn’t intend hurt or upset so let’s now assume that that was so. So why did that other person blow? The answer, whether we like it or not, was that they felt ‘attacked’. Yes we know that’s not what you were doing but it was what they felt. If they hadn’t felt it they wouldn’t have reacted in that way. If their reaction was violent then they obviously felt under severe attack
The Straw that broke the camel’s back?
The likelihood is that what you said wasn’t of itself a big deal, yet it did manage to create a really hostile reaction. So why? The probability is that what you said was simply the final straw on top of a whole load of things that was already weighing down on them. If they had been feeling cool, calm and collected, they would have used assertiveness tactics to handle what you said, e.g. quite calmly, “I’m sorry but I’m afraid that’s not actually how it is. I’m afraid I’m unable to accept that”. Instead you got a volcanic eruption!
How did you handle yourself?
They have just exploded, so how did you cope with that? Most of us would act defensively at that point. We need either to have received assertiveness training or to be very whole in our personality and character, able to express to loving confidence of Jesus, to have avoided being defensive.
WWJD
What would Jesus do in that situation? Well of course he would never have got himself into it, but assuming he did, how would he respond to the outburst? In what follows below are some suggested guide points:
1. Understand the person
Well first of all he would understand what was going on in that other person. He would know the burdens they were carrying, the worries they had, the stress they were finding in life and therefore the complete cause of their reaction. (Of course knowing that he wouldn’t have spoken as you did) As we look back on the situation, can we fully understand all that was going on in the other person and have Jesus’ compassion for them? Can we try to understand why this conflict arose in the first place, and not be defensive about it?
2. Reach out to them
Second, and this is very important, he would seek to meet them at their point of need and show he understood what they felt. To achieve this we need to overcome our defence tactics and overcome the desire to flee, either literally or behind defensive excuses. As we said just now it takes a fair measure of wholeness or maturity to have coped with their reaction to you, but we should be looking to God for grace to have that. If we don’t have it, we’ve failed to be Jesus to that person. In fact we’ve just failed.
Signs of Spiritual Maturity
The situation has happened, so what can we do about it. Self is screaming, “It’s not my fault”. Instead of going to the Cross, Jesus could have said, “It’s not my fault” and walked away from the human race, but instead he took our sins. In that he gave us the classic example of facing responsibility, facing the will of God, facing the right and only way of clearing sin.
The sign of spiritual maturity is being willing to face the thing, being willing to carry the can, being willing to say, “I didn’t get it right, I’m sorry, please forgive me for where I failed you.” Being spiritually mature means we take responsibility for where we acted less than perfectly and failed another. In this case the areas of failure are likely to be:
- We were insensitive to the state of the other person
- We spoke insensitively and caused hurt
- When they reacted we
- reacted back and
- didn’t seek to understand why they were responding like they did, and
- didn’t seek to reach out to them to help them in their pain
Our responsibility
Where we have been the ‘offender’ we mustn’t worry about the other party acting first. We must simply do what is right before God in the ways outlined here.
