Creative Conflict-2

There’s no doubt that conflict and disagreement can lead to some very negative consequences. It’s my contention that those negative results are not inevitable, but they certainly are a possibility whether conflict happens in our marriages, our families, our friendships, our community or our church.

What can happen in conflict is that we focus more on feelings and personal issues. We become discouraged and depressed when we are faced with conflict. When we fail to recognize the part we play in problem and so we start to think of ourselves a victims.

Often blame enters the picture. If we blame others, we don’t look inside ourselves to see how we can change. Or we blame ourselves, loading ourselves with guilt and recrimination, feeling powerless to change. Either way, changes we need to make don’t take place.

Here’s a list of things that happen when our anxiety over conflict leads to into unproductive responses:

• We view conflict as personal
• We think that its all about me
• Emotions rule our behavior without being acknowledged
• We believe that we need to protect ourselves because we feel weak and vulnerable
• We deny our emotions, projecting them on others
• The situation escalates
• We disengage, avoiding people and situations
• We are easily annoyed
• We are resentful
• We procrastinate
• We resort to personal attacks on others
• We use alcohol as medication

James writes, “where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind (3:16). Conflict can easily become destructive. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In my next post, I want to talk about the benefits of conflict and disagreement and to follow that up with some ways that we can seek to make conflict truly creative.