Not Needing To Be "Right"--July 27, 2022

Not Needing To Be "Right"--July 27, 2022

"When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints?" [1 Corinthians 6:1]

Sometimes you have to stop and ask yourself, honestly, a question like this:  "Do I really want to resolve this conflict I'm in, or do I just want to be proven right?"

We often tell ourselves, when we are dealing with a strained relationship in our lives, that of course we just want to avoid a knock-down, drag-out fight, mend fences, and move on with our lives... but deep down, some part of us is actually spoiling for a fight--because we want to win it.  We want to be victorious, and we want the people we're having a dispute with to lose, and to lose publicly.  And for that to happen, we need to make our conflict into a battle--with a winner and a loser.  And like all trials by combat, the "winner" will be judged to be in the right, and the "loser" will have to take their defeat as a verdict that they were wrong.  

But once we've headed down that path, an insidious change has already begun, quite possibly without our even noticing it.  Once we tell ourselves that what we really want is to be shown that we're the winners, we've shifted away from achieving actual justice or restoration of wholeness... and toward a winner-take-all zero-sum game.  And the trouble with making every conflict a clear-cut war with two opposing sides in which one must be the champion and one must be defeated is that it reduces all of our interactions as human beings in to black-and-white, either/or binaries, when real life is often a lot messier and has shades of gray, not to mention a whole spectrum of colors.

That's the thing about a trial in a court of law: it is generally set up as a forum to determine winners and losers, rather than to recognize that in a lot of our conflicts, everybody has been wronged a little, and everyone has contributed to the problem.  And once we are committed to a mindset that frames our conflicts as battles with one winner and one loser, it is really hard to imagine it being anything else.  Like the saying goes, to the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  If you decide the situation you are in is a fight, you are automatically going to do whatever you must to be the winner rather than the loser--and sometimes that makes people willing to destroy their relationships with other people in pursuit of being declared "the champion."

This is actually something I usually spend a good bit of time discussing with couples as they prepare for marriage, because the way we frame a conflict has a way of narrowing the possible outcomes we will accept.  If my spouse and I find that we cannot agree on where to go out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary, say, and I am determined to see that as a conflict to be won or lost, I could end up demanding my choice of restaurants at the cost of harming the person whose relationship I am supposed to be celebrating.  That treats the victory of restaurant choice as more important than the people with whom I am in relationship.  I would hope that my example makes it obvious that the relationships in our lives are worth cultivating more than "winning" an argument or a debate in most cases, but so often we miss that same dynamic in the rest of our lives.  In a culture like ours that is so hell-bent on looking like a "winner," we forget that sometimes the cost of victory is not worth the fight.  Maybe we need to be reminded that some things don't have to be battles in the first place.

I think that's what Paul has in mind here as he changes gears in his letter--it's the idea that maybe everything doesn't have to be framed as a fight with a winner and a loser, or where one side is wholly innocent and the other is entirely in the wrong, either.  Part of the trouble with taking disputes to court as our go-to reaction ["You'll be hearing from my lawyer!"  or "I'm going to sue you and make you pay through the nose!" or that kind of thing] is that we are already setting up the situation to be that kind of black-or-white binary, when chances are the real situation is messier and more complicated than that.  Rarely does one friend just out of nowhere deliberately harm or upset another friend.  Quite often, whatever erupts in an argument or dispute has been simmering for some time, or is festering and ignored because people don't want to deal with the issues between them.  Quite often, each person has done something to contribute to the current impasse.  And on the flip side, quite often there is a resolution to the conflict out there in which each person can get their needs met, where both parties also contribute to setting things right.  But that's not going to happen if both sides have come with an army of attorneys looking for victory and blood.

Look, I don't want to be naive and say that every dispute can be figured out with a friendly chat while some church folks listen in.  But I do think that Paul wants us to make use of the gift of community that we have in each other rather than immediately turning every disagreement into a legal battle.  I do think that at least some of our conflicts between one another can be resolved by talking with one another and seeking the good of all, rather than framing everything as a do-or-die ultimatum.  I do think that our culture has found a way to commodify even conflict, so that we will turn arguments into litigation that pays legal fees and destroys relationships.  And I do think that Paul would direct us first to talk things through with each other, and even to have wise and trusted voices of other followers of Jesus to help mediate.  And when we use those kinds of conversation to ratchet down the pressure, we can shake off the false assumption that our disagreements must always be fights to the death.  We can, in those kinds of conversations, stop and question why we have gotten suckered into making everything an us-versus-them contest that only one side can win, when maybe there are ways everybody can get what they need.  At the very least, we can ask those kinds of questions and see where it leads.

A long time ago, someone taught me that sometimes saying you are sorry is a way of telling the other person you are more interested in keeping a friendship than you are in being right.  And if that is anywhere close to the right ballpark for the wise course of action, maybe today can be a day we stop and pause to mend relationships rather than unthinkingly letting ourselves get swept up into making every disagreement into a death-match.  Maybe being proven "right" in front of others isn't all it's cracked up to be.

O God, give us the patience and self-awareness to pause and find creative ways to resolve conflicts together, rather than making everything into a fight to be won or lost.