beatitude #7: how do you flourish when there’s conflict?
“You gotta fight, for your right, to paaaaaaaarty.” — Beastie Boys
One of the biggest obstacles to a flourishing life is conflict. Sooner or later, you clash with the people around you, whether it’s your spouse, your friends, your coworkers, or a larger group in society. No matter who you are, your life will contain conflict.
This creates a key question: how do you approach conflict so that you can flourish? The inability to solve conflict creates all kinds of problems, whether it’s a breakdown in a friendship, tension in a marriage, or a fight between opposing groups.
Not surprisingly, our secular culture and Jesus teach radically different ways to try to flourish through conflict. If you want to flourish, though, you need to know how to approach conflict, whether it’s between friends, coworkers, or countries.
part 1: the secular approach to flourishing
The secular approach to life teaches you that if you want to flourish in conflict, you need to do everything you can to fight and win the conflict. Our secular culture believes that fighting and winning the conflicts of our lives is key to securing what you need to build up a big personal kingdom and flourish. Flourishing are those who win every fight, our secular culture believes, for they will get what they want and need.
From our youngest years, fighting and winning feels like the best way to flourish. Just look at two toddlers; no one has to teach them to fight over the same toy to try to get control of it. Yet both of them believe that if they can win this fight, they’ll reach the pinnacle of three-year-old flourishing!
Our secular culture reinforces this fighting tendency in us, telling us over and over that winners flourish and losers flounder. And so we frame everything in terms of conflict, whether it’s you vs. yourself, you vs. your peers, you vs. your superiors (your parents, teachers, and boss), or you vs. society.
This causes us to see life as an adversarial conflict between competing parties. To flourish, you need to fight against the desires of other people and make sure that you win. Fighting becomes a strategic tool that helps us win over others and ensure we get what we think we need to flourish.
This causes the language of fighting to be everywhere. I recently saw a YouTube ad for a group fighting climate change. The narrator, a young climate change activist, tells the viewer:
This is the moment we’ve been fighting for, where winning is just the beginning; the moment where we turn the crisis of today into the victory of tomorrow.
The message is clear: if we can fight against the opponents of climate change and win, then we’ll create a flourishing world for all. This mentality pervades our culture, telling us that life is a fight, and if you’re going to flourish, you need to make sure you win.
Everywhere you look, life is framed to encourage fighting, whether it’s a group of talk show hosts arguing about the news or 25 single men fighting for the affections of one bachelorette. Everyone’s trying to argue with and attack others, hoping that they have what it takes to win the conflict.
And so we never outgrow our childhood impulses, causing us to view conflict as an opportunity to fight against others and win, with the hope that you can defeat opponents and get what you need to flourish. The winners of these conflicts are celebrated, rewarded, and studied, while the losers are ignored, dismissed, and excluded from life.
what do these fights look like?
Our society cloaks these conflicts under the guise of competition. While competition isn’t inherently bad, when it becomes the lens by which we view everything, it creates a pervasive culture of fighting.
There are two main types of competitions in our society: over and covert. Overt competitions are obvious competitions, which include things like sporting events, homecoming contests, valedictorian awards, job interviews, political elections, real estate offers, and court case verdicts. Everyone knows they are competing against another person, team, or group, all with the hopes of winning the contest.
But there’s a second type of competition that I call covert competitions. Covert competitions are hidden within the structure and events of our daily lives. No one acknowledges that they exist, but yet they often create the fiercest fighting.
Covert competitions are the secret battles in our lives for status, control, and power which cause us to fight over things like:
Who got into the best college?
Who is the most popular person in the friend group?
Who is the best dressed?
Who had the fanciest wedding?
Who lives in the nicest home and neighborhood?
Who does the boss like most?
Who is seen as the smartest?
Who pastors the biggest church?
Whose political party is in charge?
Who is the best parent?
These secret competitions, and the desire to win them, vary from subculture to subculture, and even though they’re rarely talked about, they drive so much of our lives. This is why we’re always comparing ourselves to others; it’s how we keep score and figure out who’s winning.
If you listen to the conversations in any coffee shop, bar, or party, they almost always follow the same subconscious fight-to-flourish structure:
I’m trying to flourish by winning these competitions in my life, but because of conflict with someone, either my boyfriend, frenemy, boss, or a political party, I’m not. So if I’m ever going to get what I need to flourish, I need to figure out how to fight these conflicts to ensure that I win. Then I’ll get the money, status, relationships, and opportunities I need to live my best life.
We believe that if we can outlast our peers and win these conflicts for status, power, and wealth, our little wins will set us up for bigger wins, and we’ll eventually create the flourishing life that we’ve always wanted.
why is it so important to fight and win?
Why do we believe that it’s so important to fight and win these conflicts? Because our culture approaches life through the fundamental viewpoint of scarcity: there are a scarce number of opportunities, relationships, and possessions available, so if you want to get what you need to flourish, you have to beat out your peers.
Scarcity thinking causes us to believe that there isn’t enough to go around. There’s a limited number of good jobs, comfortable homes, attractive people to marry, and most importantly of all, spots at the top of the social hierarchy. And so we fight with other people, groups, and cultures, trying to win our way to flourishing.
We see these battles over the scarce yet desirable ‘wins’ as a zero-sum game: for me to win, you have to lose. This kind of zero-sum thinking creates a winner-take-all mentality: if I don’t win the overt and covert competitions of life I won’t get what I need to flourish.
how do you fight?
Once you learn what conflicts are most important to win, then it’s time to fight to win against the other side. Most people will deny that we spend our lives fighting against other people, but let’s be honest, you do. You fight against your spouse or roommate to get them to change your behavior. You fight against your coworkers to get your plan enacted. And you fight against the other political party to help your party win.
But what does it look like to fight in our current culture? There are four major ways that we fight to win in our culture. We fight through:
Narrative tactics, where we use stories to attack other people to defeat their ideas, beliefs, and goals. Narrative fights show up anywhere there are discussions or arguments (social media, news shows, meetings) and involve using half-true stories as strategic lies to stir up conflict, paint others in a bad light, and rally popular opinion to our side.
Psychological tactics, where we attack other people’s emotions to get our way. Psychological tactics show up in relationships, families, and friendships, as we use emotional tools to battle against others. We name-call, shame, exclude, disparage, and make fun of others, hoping that by emotionally damaging the other person, we’ll ensure our win.
Political tactics, where we use institutional power and legal tactics like court cases, laws, and taxes to defeat others within our cultural systems. These tactics show up in every organization, whether it’s the local school board or the U.S. Senate, as we use the political machinery to cheat, bend the rules, or manipulate the game, all to punish others and ensure our victory.
Physical tactics, where we use force, or the threat of it, to intimidate, bully, and ultimately eliminate our opposition. Physical fighting starts with pushing and shoving, but often escalates to punches and weapons and ultimately ends in murder and war.
We use these tactics to tear down our opponents, making it easier for us to win the competitions of life. We drop bombs on other people, whether it’s through words, emotions, or airplanes, hoping that we can get the wins we think we need to flourish.
but I’m a nice person?!?
At this point, you might be saying, “But I’m a nice person, I don’t fight…much.” Most of us feel a tension: we know we shouldn’t fight, yet we still want our interests to win out. So we’ve developed two techniques that give us plausible deniability that we’re good people, yet still help us win the important conflicts of life.
The first technique is passive-aggressiveness. We mask our fighting attitude in passive tactics, hoping no one will notice the aggressiveness of our backhanded compliments, subtle sarcasm, or faint praise. David described this technique in Psalm 55:
His speech was smooth as butter, yet war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.
The second technique is the use of champions. A champion is someone who fights on your behalf in the arenas of life, whether that’s the government, pop culture, or social media. You cheer your champion on as they enter into the fray and try to destroy the other side, sharing their content and supporting them financially.
Champions are often media pundits, talk show hosts, politicians, pastors, or activists who offer their services as proxy fighters in the larger culture wars of our society. Supporting and cheering for them allows us to maintain the self-image of being a good person while still getting what we want in our conflict-based culture.
why do we think winning will create flourishing?
Why are we so convinced that winning the conflicts of our lives will create flourishing? Because we think being a winner will help us:
Create material security: we believe that winners will gain control over the resources and possessions that will eliminate all insecurity and risk in life. We will have enough money for the best healthcare, safest neighborhood, dream retirement, and will never have to worry again.
Gain access and acceptance: if we win at life, we believe we will gain access to the social circles, positions, and institutions we need to be accepted and welcomed into the areas of power, wealth, and status.
Establish self-worth: we believe that if we’re a winner, we’ll differentiate ourselves from other people and gain recognition in the world. We’ll find our place in the world, proving that our ideas, techniques, and causes were right and that we have more value than the losers.
Achieve immortality: we believe that winners will be remembered forever and will achieve the secular version of eternal life, whether that’s being thought of as the GOAT, induction into a hall of fame, or getting a building named after you. We know we can’t live forever, but we hope that if we become the greatest winner of all time, our legacy will carry on long after we are gone.
We believe that if we can fight and win the conflicts of life, then we’ll be able to create a personal utopia where we have everything we could ever want: we’ll be popular, wealthy, successful, and powerful, able to control everything and experience the flourishing that we so badly want.
why does fighting to win not lead to flourishing?
But despite our secular culture’s belief that winning will provide us with acceptance, security, and immortality, in real life, this approach to conflict doesn’t lead to a flourishing life or society. Why? Because when fighting to win because our ultimate goal, we end up destroying our peers, our society, and ultimately ourselves.
Why is the secular approach to flourishing so destructive? Because it leads to:
Chronic fear and anxiety: we live in a constant state of fear and anxiety over whether we’re going to win the scarce prizes of competitive life. We’re terrified that we’ll lose and will be unworthy of love, acceptance, and self-respect.
Hating and destroying others: since we are always competing with others, we sabotage and tear down anyone who threatens our ability to win. We refuse to cooperate with them, and instead either withhold help or actively seek to destroy them,
lest they claim victory over us.
Lack of morality: in a winning-based culture, the only real standard of morality is whatever helps you win. The goal of winning justifies any means, whether it’s a dishonest political ad or a bending of the rules. And so people in power game the system through laws and lobbying to ensure that they win and other people continue to lose.
War: war is the ultimate end of the fighting-to-win approach. We seek to destroy the other side, whether through political, economic, or military force, and eliminate their ability to win. While historically wars were international, we currently have more intra-national wars, as different political parties fight each other in the United States, Europe, and the rest of the world, resulting in bitterness and division.
The results of building a culture around fighting to win are disastrous. Approaching conflict with a fight to win perspective destroys relationships and leaves people full of hurt, distrust, and animosity. As Jean Vanier wrote:
When you live in a society of competition, where you find yourself seeking only your own success, you may gain power and money, but you will end up losing what is most valuable in becoming human: to be in a relationship with another person.
Fighting might create short-term wins, but in the long-run it creates so much personal, relational, and societal damage.
What is the root problem?
So if approaching conflict through a fight to win perspective is so destructive, why do we still do it? Why do we fight so much, despite the damage that it causes in our lives?
According to our secular society, the reason we fight so much is because of the exclusive truth claims found in intolerant religions like Christianity. In his enduring hit Imagine, John Lennon sings that if we could just get rid of all belief in religion and heaven and hell, then humanity would live as one.
But if a belief in Christianity, heaven, and hell causes all of the world’s conflict, then why did the Beatles fight and break up? They were rich, popular, and had similar worldviews, so why couldn’t they get along? Because the real reason our lives are filled with conflict and fighting isn’t exclusive truth claims, but rather because we all are at war with God.
When God created the world everyone and everything lived in perfect harmony. Adam and Eve lived in total peace with each other and God, caring for a flawless world where there was no conflict.
But when Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit, they rejected peace with God and declared war on Him. They followed Satan’s lead and rebelled against God, dissolving their peaceful relationship and choosing to fight Him instead.
When God confronted them about their rejection of Him, he told them that because of their sin there would now be enmity (hostility) between every human being, causing all kinds of tension, conflict, and fighting.
Why was conflict and fighting the inevitable result of our rejection of God? Because:
We are now alienated from God: without a relationship with God, every human being feels radically insecure. This causes us to try to be our own god, hoping that if we win and dominate others we can create a sense of security and safety. As David says in Psalm 14: the fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
Sin corrupted our hearts: sin changed our hearts so that we hate God and are antagonistic towards Him. Now, seeking out conflict and sowing strife comes naturally to our hearts. Our hearts delight in stirring up conflict and creating division. As the prophet Isaiah said: The wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet and its waters toss up mire and dirt. There is no peace for the wicked.
We were never meant to exist outside of a relationship with God and so without God, we have lost the security and safety that we need to thrive as human beings. We fight to win, hoping to regain some semblance of physical and psychological safety and thinking that if we can build up our personal kingdoms, we’ll be able to flourish apart from God.
We’re like a swimmer outside the safety of the ropes, drifting through the ocean, flailing for anything to hold onto. We fight against others over the driftwood of life, trying to use jobs, homes, money, and relationships to stay afloat. These pieces of driftwood might keep our heads above water on the sunny days, but can’t keep sustain us through the storms of life.
This is why the secular approach to flourishing doesn’t work. Without God, we are radically insecure yet also drawn towards conflict, creating a cultural cocktail that’s always ready to explode. A little friction creates a spark and the world burns on.
Part 2: Jesus’ approach to conflict
When Jesus gives us his seventh Beatitude, he’s confronting our secular culture’s belief that flourishing comes through fighting and winning. Jesus uses His seventh Beatitude to teach the exact opposite perspective:
Flourishing are the peacemakers, because they shall be called sons of God.
There are few goals in society more popular in the abstract than world peace. But while society might not immediately cringe at this Beatitude, people still want nothing to do with Jesus’ message. Why? Because while we want other people to be peaceful, when it comes to conflict in our own lives, our desire for peace disappears and is replaced by a lust for victory over others. We scold other people when they fight, but see our conflicts as righteous wars that we need to win.
But according to Jesus, the only way to flourish is by being a peacemaker, someone who works for peace in a broken and conflict-ridden world. Jesus doesn’t act like conflict doesn’t exist or encourage us to succumb to an easy idealism, but says that if we ever want to flourish, we have to be peacemakers in God’s kingdom, not winners in our own kingdom.
what is peace?
To understand Jesus’ approach to conflict, we first have to get his meaning of peace. To our secular culture, peace is the absence of conflict that occurs when the two sides have stopped fighting.
But that’s not what Jesus means by peace. When Jesus uses peace, he’s referring to shalom, the Hebrew word for peace. Shalom isn’t just the absence of fighting, but according to theologian Cornelius Platinga, is:
The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight — a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be."
To Jesus, peace isn’t just a break from conflict and fighting, but rather a state of wellbeing where the conflict has been resolved and the relationship is fully restored. Shalom is more than just a ceasefire between enemies, it’s an embrace between friends.
So what does it mean to be a peacemaker?
Jesus’ promise of flourishing, though, isn’t for those who want peace or love peace or hope for peace, but rather for those who MAKE peace. When we see or experience conflict, we are to resist the urge to fight and win and instead are called to resolve the fight and bring restoration to life.
Too often, though, we reject peacemaking and settle for peacekeeping. We try to keep the peace and will do anything to keep conflict from bubbling up. But this leads to all kinds of unhealthy behaviors towards conflict like:
Apathy: if it doesn’t affect me I don’t really care.
Avoidance: I’m going to avoid this problem and hope that it’ll go away.
Appeasing: I’ll just compromise and try to keep everyone happy.
Peacekeepers too often seek to maintain the status quo, settling for an artificial peace. They hope that if we ignore the hurt and anger and conflict in society then it will eventually go away. Peacekeepers are like the false prophets that God talks about in Jeremiah: They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.
So what is peacemaking then? Peacemaking rejects the desire to try to win every conflict, but rather seeks to resolve the conflicts of the world and bring restoration and healing to the relationships.
Peacemakers build bridges to and between people, working to solve the hatred and tension and fear. Peacemakers don’t approach conflict with a “fight to win” perspective, but rather want to heal the tension and reconcile the opposing persons or groups. How do they do this? They…
Initiate the conversation: peacemakers cross the divide between the two parties and start the conversation. They don’t feed the tension by avoiding the other person or waiting for them to make the first move, but like Jesus teaches in Matthew 18, they go to the other person first.
Pursue the whole truth: peacemakers seek to uncover the whole story and talk through the wounds with both humility and vulnerability. A peacemaker works towards a complete truth by understanding both sides, knowing that “the one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” (Proverbs 18:17)
Work towards reconciliation: it’s not enough to just be truthful, peacemakers love their enemies and practice forgiveness as they pursue the healing of the conflict and a rebuilding of trust. We are to “bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Colossians 3:1)
But peacemaking is more than following a list of actions, it’s also having the right attitude. A peacemaker is someone who is:
Slow to anger: A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention. (Proverbs 15:18)
Avoids gossip: Without wood a fire goes out, without gossip a quarrel dies down. (Proverbs 26:20)
Responds with gentleness: A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. (Proverbs 15:1)
Peacemakers don’t pour gas on conflicts, but rather act as a fire extinguisher, helping to stop the burning and start rebuilding. As God’s followers seek peace in the conflicts of life, truth is discovered, forgiveness is offered, and relationships are restored.
Where do we get the ability to be a peacemaker?
So how do you stop trying to solve conflict by fighting to win and instead live as a peacemaker? Lots of people try to become a peacemaker through human efforts, by trying harder to be a nice person or building their conflict resolution skills.
While these aren’t bad things, they don’t ultimately work because they don’t go deep enough: they don’t solve the root problem of sin. Until your alienation from God has been fixed, you’ll recreate your conflict with God over and over with everyone around you. As the monk Thomas Merton said:
We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.
So how do we make peace with God? That’s the problem, we can’t. We’re not capable of ending our rebellion against God and making amends for our sin.
But that’s the beauty of the gospel: we couldn’t make peace with God, so through the death of His Son, God made peace with Himself on our behalf. Paul explains in Colossians 1 that:
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.
Through the cross, Jesus made peace between you and God, reconciling you to Him and killing off all of the hostility. This reuniting with God brings the wholeness and security to our hearts that we have spent our whole lives searching for.
But Jesus’ death and resurrection does more than just restore your relationship with God. It also changes your heart so that you no longer live out of your old desire to fight and win, but rather are renewed in the peace of the Holy Spirit:
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
Now, as a new creation in Christ, you are entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation: you are at peace with God and are tasked with making peace in the places of conflict around you by introducing others to the forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration that is available with God through Jesus Christ.
This doesn’t mean that peacemakers never fight, but rather that they fight against Satan and sin, not other people. As Paul says in Ephesians 6:
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Peacemakers also have realistic expectations. They know that sin will always exist in this life, but heed Paul’s command in Romans 12:
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Peacemakers, having been reconciled to God, fight against sin and introduce others to the reconciliation available in God, so that everyone may experience the flourishing that comes from a relationship with God.
but why do peacemakers flourish?
If you’ve ever been caught in between two friends or groups who are fighting, you know that peacemaking doesn’t feel like flourishing. So why then does Jesus say that peacemakers flourish? Peacemakers flourish not because they’ll be loved by their peers or because they’re guaranteed success, but because they’ll be called sons of God.
Peacemakers flourish because they are recognized as God’s children and will be welcomed into His family for all of eternity. God is the ultimate peacemaker, and so when God’s children make peace, everyone will see their family resemblance and recognize that they have a new Father and a new nature. Peacemakers are no longer of their father, Satan, who comes to steal and kill and destroy, but rather are like God, who is always working to bring shalom.
But why does being a child of God lead to flourishing? Because when you are reunited with your heavenly Father, you can trust your heavenly Father’s promises to provide, eliminating the anxiety, insecurity, and scarcity thinking that causes secular people to approach every conflict with a fight-to-win perspective. As Eugene Peterson writes:
When we are God’s son we feel secure in his family. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.
When you know you’re secure in God’s family, you can trust Him to provide everything you need to flourish. As Jesus says later in the Sermon on the Mount:
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Peacemakers rest in God’s abundance, knowing that He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and will give them everything they need to flourish.
And so peacemakers use their lives to pursue peace, not wins, because they know that God will ultimately give them His eternal kingdom. They trust Jesus when he says:
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
They know they’ll be welcomed into the perfect shalom of the New Heavens and New Earth, where the lion lays down with the lamb, just like it was in the Garden of Eden.
so how do peacemakers flourish now?
But peacemakers don’t just sit around waiting for a future flourishing, they are partnering with God to work towards flourishing right now. Peacemakers help create the wholeness and flourishing of biblical shalom because they:
Live with a spirit of cooperation, not competition.
Operate out of a spirit of abundance, not scarcity.
Enter into the mess of society, rather than avoiding it.
Seek to restore relationships between divided parties.
Introduce others to Jesus’ reconciling work on the cross.
Peacemakers bring healing and restoration in a broken world, not by being a savior, but rather by pointing other people to their Savior, working to usher in a spirit of reconciliation and harmony.
As peacemakers work towards God’s vision of shalom, everyone flourishes. Grievances are worked through, relationships are restored, communities are made whole. They reweave the fabric of society where it has been ripped apart by sin, creating an interconnected community where truth and love work together to allow people to live God-glorifying lives.
where do we get the power to be peacemakers?
But there’s just one catch: where do you get the power to do something as difficult as peacemaking? Being a peacemaker is scary and costly and will put you in the crossfire between the fights and wars of our culture. You’ll be attacked by both sides and called a coward and a compromiser and a cop-out.
So where do we get the ability to put the concerns for our temporary safety aside and find a willingness to step into the fray? By remembering what Jesus did on your behalf. Jesus came to earth to die not for people who loved him, but rather for his enemies. He volunteered to go on God’s peacemaking mission not at the risk of his life, but rather at the cost of it. He knew that as he worked to make peace between God and his lost children, that he would be rejected, spit on, abused, and ultimately crucified. But yet he still came because of his love for you.
Because Jesus died for us while we were still sinners still fighting against God, we can extend our love to those who are still at war with God, knowing that Jesus paid the ultimate price so that we could experience the reconciling love of the Prince of Peace.
If you are of a certain age, you might remember the tagline of the 1990s kids movie The Sandlot: “Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.”
A famous example of this is from the 1994 Winter Olympics, when figure skater Tonya Harding had her boyfriend attack fellow figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, in hopes of eliminating her from the team and ensuring that Tonya made it.
