Caring Enough To Confront By David AugsburgerSample

Day Seven

Finding Our Way

Scripture: Micah 6:8

How we react to conflict reveals our core values about the spiritual journey.

If ours is a spirituality of self-fulfillment, self-discovery, and self-actualization, the conflict will focus primarily on the self, on its personal threat to safety and security or on the concern for avoiding shame or public defeat.

If ours is a spirituality of obedience to divine command and the pursuit of God, the conflict ultimately turns on what is right, absolute, and eternal.

If ours is a spirituality of love for neighbor as the practice of love for God, then we will have a deep concern for justice, mutuality, and the common good. 

The first of these three options considers religion a way of controlling and domesticating a frightening world. The second is the path of the standard religious life that works out a relationship of personal care that we call “salvation.” The third is the radical way of the disciple, the way of taking love, service, sharing, reconciling, peacemaking with total seriousness. 

Jesus placed love for the neighbor and concern for the self on the same level. He offered an alternative way through conflicts, a way of forgiving and reconciling.

Self-oriented spirituality sees forgiveness as a way to set yourself free from resentment and heal yourself. God-oriented spiritualities see forgiveness as a requirement for being forgiven, an obligation for us all if we hope to be released from our obligations that we cannot pay. 

A spirituality that seeks a balanced practice of love of self, love of God, and love of neighbor may seem terribly demanding. In reality it is incredibly rewarding. It may seem like a very costly pathway that requires giving up a part of the self. So it is, but the part of the self that is given up is a part we need to part with.

When a spirituality of equal love for self and other is the ground for working through conflict, you will seek to satisfy the interests of both sides with a commitment to find a third way—not my way, not your way, but our way. You will find that through caring about the relationship and taking care of working at the conflict, you are caring for the other person even as you confront them.

What struck you most about this week-long devotional? How will it change the way you view conflict in your home and work relationships?