Good conversation keeps happening on the Ministry Share Overture. Someone raise the issue of conflict. Why always, perpetual conflict in the CRC? I suggest that conflict is important, and if done right healthy and productive. The CRC will die unless we figure out how to do conflict well. Avoiding conflict doesn’t help us. I think that we’ve had too little conflict on this subject. Here is an illustration of a marriage.

Both were raised good dutiful CRC folk. young of course, had kids. She ran the house, was probably controlling. Conflict threatened the peace of the house and the way she liked things run. He went to work, brought home the check, tithed, paid Christian school tuition, etc. There was no conflict in the home. Everyone knows parents fighting hurts kids. This goes on for 30 years. Kids grow up, make profession of faith, get married, start families of their own.

One day the father/husband quits. Walks out. Has another woman. He’s finished, finished with it all. Still loves the kids, wants to be a grandpa, but is done with the marriage. Pastors, friends, children rally. “How can you do this? Why would you do this to us?”

Dad’s been submitting his whole life. Never had a voice. Never felt he had any influence. Even small suggestions with the wife were either stonewalled or she threatened in subtle ways and he withdrew.

Don’t imagine that even though the kids were grown, starting their own families that this divorce wasn’t traumatic and damaging to the kids and their own marriages. The wreckage was great, but like the original marriage, quiet.

They both were. Marriage is hard like that. Quite likely the wife needed to get a handle on her fears. No, things didn’t always need to be THAT certain way, that way that she imagined was right. She didn’t need to control everything. Was it a spiritual problem? Of course. She was her own savior and lord and the lord of the home. God didn’t reign in their house, she did. She might have felt she was getting her instructions from God as to how the house should be run, but no, it was her.

Where was his fault. Why didn’t he fight her? Fear? Duty? Her spiritual throne needed to be challenged. He wasn’t a faithful husband because he didn’t help her to see her sin.

Now all of us know that helping another to see their sin is a terribly ticklish business. The Holy Spirit must do this and we are only possibly an assistant, but assist we must. He can’t make her have ears to hear, but he did need to speak even to the point of threatening the “peace” of the home that was no “peace”.

Is it a spiritual problem?  yes. As with many spiritual problems it is legion. Can we administer our way out of it? No. We need the Holy Spirit to break us all, in the ways we create the problem together on lots of levels.

Is it the same kind of problem as Belhar or WICO or gays? Yes and no. It’s again like a marriage. Money is usually a manifestation of other things. Money is a whore like that, she’ll play for anything. Money is also a wonderful diagnostic tool. It reveals our hearts.

There was always conflict in the marriage, but they thought that not fighting was the answer. They were wrong. They needed to know how to fight. Their individual idols needed to be challenged.

Her idol was “things need to be right” which meant “things needed to he her way.” This isn’t to say that there isn’t right and wrong. It is to say that she wasn’t God. Her self idolatry needed to be challenged. There was still no guarantee she’d listen, but you can’t listen if nobody speaks.

His idolatry of submission, or duty also needed to be challenged. “If I just keep doing the right thing then things will be OK.” No. He’s been given agency as well in the household. He needs to speak. She needs to listen. There might be yelling. They might learn from that. They might discover that emotions are important, something to be respected, but not feared or allowed to become masters. Their marriage failed because they didn’t know what conflict was and how to use it for God’s sake.

So we need conflict and it’s scary, but we need to figure out how to do it well. We actually are given some impressive tools. Sometimes we change classis meetings in order to make them more attractional, less painful, have taken deliberation away from the members. It actually has the opposite effect. Turning classis into a seeker service doesn’t let the church process what it needs to. It doesn’t let the church have a chance at healthy conflict. Same with Synod. Now when a real conflict arises the seeker service goes out the window and they get down to business, bloody hard business that is unpleasant for all. Any marriage that doesn’t test you isn’t really a marriage because it lets your idols remain.

So let’s have this conflict, but let’s try to do it well. Many of the people contacting me personally about this are like the father of the failed marriage I told you about. Unlike him, instead of going out and finding another denomination or making up a new one, they are quietly creeping up to their wife and saying “can we talk about this?” Actually that has been happening but the husband feels the wife isn’t listening, so he’s starting to raise his voice.

Now as with a marriage there are no guarantees here. Will she listen? Will her idolatry be so entrenched and her resistance to the Holy Spirit so determined that she’ll simply maintain her tyranny? Will the man bolt early and find someone that will meet his needs, or will he simply reset the clock on his relational patterns with another woman? All of these things happen of course. Again, it’s like a marriage.