Are you a Peace-Maker, Peace-Breaker or a
Peace-Faker by Dave Wilson with Linda Parker
Linda serves as the Team Leader for the Missionary
Care Team here at Trinity Church. She is a licensed Marriage and Family
Therapist who helps her clients from a Christian perspective. She specializes
in Peace-Making which is a biblically based model for conflict resolution.
Matthew 17-19
Peace-Making,
Peace-Breaking or Peace-Faking are three words I have learned from Linda about
conflict resolution and true humility. You may be familiar with the concept of
making peace, but there are two other alternatives that are destructive and
damaging to living at peace with one another. Peace-Breaking is when you stand on the side of ‘right’ and attempt
to win an argument, while at the same time you lose the relationship. Peace-Faking is when you mistakenly
accept an absence of conflict for real peace. Instead of confronting a problem
or an offense, you overlook it. The problem is that there is still no real
peace, just a calm that may not last.
Matthew 18:15-20 gives us
an excellent model for Peace-Making. This process has church discipline applications
as well as personal peace-making principles. The first step to peace is to
confront the person who has committed an offense. The confrontation should
always be with humility and with the purpose of restoring and maintaining the
relationship. This should be a private meeting where you agree to never discuss
the offense with others. You should make every effort to come to a peaceful
resolution without the knowledge of others, but if that does not work then
bring along someone else. You should bring someone who is impartial; not
someone who will only defend you, but someone who will stand on the side of
peace. Remember, your goal is to restore the relationship, not to win the
argument. The next steps include official mediation which should be the last
resort and should only be done if absolutely necessary for resolution.
Life in Christ demands
that we live a life of peace and humility with others and with God Himself. But
true peace (just like true love) takes work. A lot of work! And the most
difficult part of peace is humility, because it requires that we set aside our rights,
our passions and all of our selfish pride for the benefit of making peace. In
light of this process, think about the context of the next few verses when
Jesus teaches on forgiveness (70x7) and divorce.
