Dealing With Differences (Pt. 1): Beyond Fear And Anger Series

Dealing with Differences (Pt. 1): Beyond Fear and Anger

Series: Making Relationships Work: Love, Sex & Marriage

October 1, 2017 – Brad Bailey

Today…we are continuing our fall focus on Making Relationships Work: Love, Sex, and Marriage. Began with God’s declaration that it is not good for man to be alone….and then the significance of understanding what the purpose of marriage was and wasn’t…and last week…the need to renew recognizing that not only were we created as male and female…but that we were created a complimentary counterparts to be a gift to one another.

Most of us experience something of that gift…but not without some conflict. We want to connect with others…but we generally don’t want the conflict. The truth is that to care for another person is to accept the cost of disagreement and disappointment. The meaningful connection we want… requires navigating conflict.

So today…first of two weeks focused don how to work through conflict in a positive way.

Now each of us have different feelings that arise when the conflict is spoken of…

Depending on our past and personalities… including our culture and family background… we may have very different feelings about conflict and anger and how it’s expressed.

Imagine the Italian guy taking his Asian girlfriend to a family diner. From her cultural and family pattern voices are rarely raised to parents… and the family may quietly gather around the table with respect for the father in particular. She walks into his home and… everybody is shouting… with the intensity of a bar room about to break out into a full brawl… then mom shouts dinner and they all sit down as if nothing happened. The poor girlfriend is now shaking with fear while the rest are laughing it up. For her she just entered World War Three… for him… it’s just a family dinner.

Consider for a moment: How was conflict and anger expressed in your childhood household ?

My family – conflict was safe but quite avoided…and my wife knows that effects my comfort of relating to conflict.

Families carry a lot of patterns that can be helpful…but also not so helpful. Our households shape how we relate to every aspect of life…including money…sex…and conflict.

And every family has been managing conflict ever since we began hiding from God.

In that poetic summary God provides in the beginning of the Scriptures…God includes most of the third chapter to capturing the beginning of conflict.

God describes how human life separated from God was uncovered… no longer shameless and secure… and they are depicted as hiding in their shame…and now deflecting in with blame. Separated from God…we have all been operating with fundamental insecurity… and from it we blame and shame. And that is the nature still at work. [1]

God offers some perspective…. that if we will understand…will help us.

When any two or more people work together as a team, there will be differences which can lead to conflict.

• different beliefs, opinions, and points of view leading to disagreements.

• different needs, desires, and expectations leading to disappointments.

SO the first thing that may be helpful is to…

1. Understand that conflict is a natural part of connecting with others who are different.

If we can accept we are different…we can accept that there is going to be some basic conflict.

Every relationship is always managing basic differences…and therefore some potential conflict.

Marriages in particular will find it helpful to recognize that lifelong relationships will develop two levels of relating and conversation… the daily ‘functional’ and the underlying ‘relational’… each of which needs to be valued.

In the midst of our daily life there are many types of issues which we may need to resolve immediately in order just to fulfill what is at hand (meals, plans, purchases, etc.) We can refer to this as the ‘functional’ level. It is what is involved with managing life’s basic daily demands and practical needs. There will be conflicts involved… maybe even daily… but there is a practical reality in terms of the limits of time and energy that will only be able to resolve these conflicts at a functional level.

Meanwhile, there is a level below the surface where our underlying relationship is being developed and defined… and could be referred to as the ‘relational’ level. Here lies what has been developing between us amidst all the functional living. It’s the deeper answer to the question “How are we doing?’ This level may be engaged reasonably often early on in the relationship and marriage….….but over time the dotted line that separates the upper functional and underlying relational can become more solid and steady. Careers and children simply leave little time and energy. We get settled into patterns of avoiding issues that we simply don’t know how to resolve in a positive way. This is where the more underlying level of conflict waits too be given the time and attention to keep the relationship positive.