Conflict
by
Pastor B.J. Knefley
Do you like conflict? I don’t and I’ve found that most people don’t. I have met some that seem to flourish on it, but they are the exception.
Conflict comes about when we don’t agree. We all experience it in our families, relationships, work environment, and general everyday activities. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering unless we allow it to go too far like the road rage incident that I heard about on the news recently. A simple moment of conflict led to disastrous choices and one person dead.
Conflict can actually be a good thing if used properly. It doesn’t have to be all bad. It can cause us to think and learn. It can challenge and provoke learning and understanding. But then again, we have to exercise choice if we’re going to allow it to work out good things in our life. The problem is often that when we’re in conflict there are other things going on. Conflict can invoke feelings of disrespect, devalue and insignificance in such a way that the issue becomes secondary to the protecting of our emotions and feelings.
Conflict has a way of entering into people’s lives in all sorts of ways. Social media has become a platform for people to create conflict. Text messaging can lead to a host of problems related to miscommunication and misunderstanding. Conflict arises when he said, she said, create disagreements and hard feelings, usually over nothing. None of it is new, even Jesus said that we’d have conflict in this world. The question is what to do with conflict. Personally I like to ask a simple question, “In the scope of eternity, how important is it?” Funny how unimportant things become when put in their proper perspective. What might have been conflict in one moment, becomes irrelevant in the next.
Got conflict? In the scope of eternity, how important is it? Think about it.
