Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76Plough Quarterly • Summer 2015 57 neither would Paul, one of the members of our household. So Paul skipped town to start another ministry, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves. As I got to know Joe, I learned that he was a victim of the 1960s drug culture. He had not only stoned himself into a semi-permanent stupor, he also started to hear voices. He decided to live in a teepee in the foothills on Denver’s outskirts to become a hermit. He had gone insane, he told me, and might well have died but for his parents’ intervention. Joe’s conversion to Jesus, however, led him out of insanity. It also brought him among the emotionally dysfunctional people who lived under bridges and in the back alleys of Denver’s “skid row.” He admitted that he was still battling the voices, but the voices now lived in society’s rejected and abandoned. He was now their defender; they were his sheep. My encounters with Dale and Joe got me thinking more about conflict and what to do about it. I had learned as a child to avoid any kind of friction at all possible costs. Dad exploded one too many times, so I learned to hide. I tried everything I could to eliminate conflict in my life. But I soon found that this would not be possible if I hoped to have mean- ingful and lasting relationships, the kind I read about in the New Testament church. If avoiding conflict was not the answer, and neither was a winner-take-all style of confronta- tion, then what was the answer? It gradually dawned on me that though conflict is inevitable, it isn’t irredeemable. Jesus not only came into a world ridden with conflict, but he also shows us how it can be overcome. Because of conflict we can know the blessedness of being peacemak- ers. Because we hurt each other we can practice Jesus’ command to forgive seventy times seven. Because of our differences we can come to know real unity. Christ shows us how instead of avoiding conflict, or escalating its damages, we can follow him through it. In Our Journey Home, Jean Vanier writes, “Community life can become a real school for growth and love; it reveals differences – differ- ences which irritate or are painful; it reveals the wounds and shadows inside us, the plank in our own eye, our capacity for judging and rejecting others, the difficulty we have in listening to and accepting others. These difficulties can lead people to run away from community . . . or lead them to work on themselves and understand and serve others and their needs better.” Relationships by their very nature breed conflict. But in Christ, conflict is a school in which love can be tested and refined, where we learn to forgive and be forgiven, and where the illusions we have of ourselves can come into the light and be transformed. Several years ago my wife and I were helping to oversee a fledgling community in Albany, New York. Living quarters were tight, the tasks endless, and the personali- ties of the twenty individuals differed widely. I kept butting heads with a fellow member, James, who was several years older than me. Our conflicts mostly revolved around practical matters. One day I blew up. James simply didn’t do what we had agreed on regarding the fencing project in our backyard. I had had enough. But instead of walking away, we committed ourselves to working things through. We were bound to make good our pledge to always place Christ’s honor above being in the right. In the process, we got to know each other as we really were. I saw anew how my need for control was not only unhealthy but stood in the way of true camaraderie. James shared how much he suffered under a fear of authority, but that he didn’t want that fear to be an obstacle to our life together. Amid conflict we found each other’s