Week 51: Got Beef? (Part 2)

This week, we're continuing talking about number #41 on our list - RECONCILE

And that can be a hard one depending on the situation. That can cause a lot of emotions, might make some of us a little uneasy or anxious thinking about how things might go down. That's not the goal. The goal is to bring healing and peace and freedom and to bring you and the person you might need to reconcile with to a good place and a positive resolution where a weight is lifted off your shoulders.

This is actually part II of our "Got Beef?" Message about reconciliation. Our key verse for this part of our Fifty Things series has been Matthew 5:23-26. Jesus is preaching to a bunch of people during His Sermon on the Mount and He says -

So if you're presenting a sacrifice on the altar in the temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God. When you are on the way to court with your adversary, settle your differences quickly. Otherwise your accuser may hand you over to the judge who will hand you over to an officer, and you will be thrown in prison. And if that happens, you surely won't be free again until you have paid the last penny.Matthew 5:23-26

Now, we handled the first part and talked about what it means to reconcile and the steps involved with reconciling last week. This week, we're going to talk about this second part about being on the way to court with your adversary.

Now, this sounds like a very specific situation - and in some ways it is - we're talking about settling actual legal disputes in an ancient judicial system - but it also has bigger implications regarding reconciliation whether we're going to court or not. And the root or reconciliation - the takeaway that we're gonna be focusing on today is this -

Settle your differences quickly.Matthew 5:25

And here's why…

BECAUSE CONFLICT COMPOUNDS

Or at least it can. This is why this is such a powerful and helpful passage, because Jesus isn't just giving spiritual advice, He's giving practical advice. And this is the intersection where the spiritual and the practical meet. It can even mean in a spiritual setting… like, I don't know… a church? Relationships within a church? I mean, not exclusively, of course, but some of us are aware of situations where at the beginning of a conflict it might start off with "we don't see eye to eye here." But if you let that go and you let the feelings and suspicion and let's face it, the 'bad faith' projection kick in sometimes then it gets to "hey - what you said or what you did really hurt me." And if that isn't resolved soon and it continues to fester, eventually you get to "You're wrong, Jesus may love you but I think you're a jackal and that's why there's 47,000 different denominations of Christianity!" Yep. Church history has entered the chat. Tell me I'm wrong.

Here's why that happens Because no matter what the original issue is - unresolved conflict gets more costly.

UNRESOLVED CONFLICT BECOMES MORE COSTLY

Emotionally. Relationally. Financially. Spiritually. Communally. Psychologically.

It snowballs.

Because if the conflict isn't resolved, the chan cos of the conflict staying between you and that person only is about 2%. Unresolved conflict develops it's own ecosystem where it thrives. And suddenly you've got other people, friends, foes, factions, Facebook groups, podcasts, angry cousins and even up to attorneys, judges and institutions involved.

Before you know it, there are people who don't even know YOU and they are furious about this conflict. You've got people coming up to you saying, "I don't know either of you personally, but I watched a two minute Tik Tok and now I have thoughts! (Snap)

Deal with the flesh wound while it's only a flesh wound. Don't wait until things escalate. Don't wait until the scratch becomes gangrene.

Why does this happen anyway? Why do we leave things unresolved? I've got some ideas and to share them with you, I will use an illustration, nay, an analogy from my own life that some of you may relate to. I wish this was not a true story from my own life, but alas, it is. Please don't judge me. That's another Fifty Things message entirely.

This is the story of the check-engine light.

Yeah, so I had a 2001 Mustang. And one day the check engine light came on. Actually, in this car it said 'Service Engine Soon.' So I saw that light and I noted - "Okay. There is a problem that needs to be resolved. What it is I do not know. Because my car did not tell me. It just said 'Service Engine Soon.' There is something that needs to be addressed. Okay. Now I'm aware that something needs to be addressed. Could be something minor. Could be serious. Not too sure. Now in the words of AWOLNATION, you can blame it on my ADD baby, (now ADHD across the board is the correct term) or you can blame it on me being a literalist - the idiot light said 'SERVICE ENGINE SOON' it did not say 'TODAY.' And now you know why they're called idiot lights. So I let it go… and every day I'd get in the car, and I'd see that little light, 'SERVICE ENGINE SOON.' Well. Again, I didn't hear a blaring klaxon going off - there were no red lights flashing saying - "Get into a mechanic now." And I had things to do. I had other things to do. Netter things to do. Things I'd rather do than deal with this. So I let it go. See the ELSA principle works for some situations, not all situations- certainly not THIS situation. And every day I'd see that light. Knowing that it was there. The reminder was there. There's something I need to address. But I didn't want to address it. Meanwhile - what's happening that I don't know about that I can't see? The unaddressed issue is getting worse. The problem is compounding and becoming more costly. Until one day, I'm taking someone home and the car… starts shaking… kinda like it's trying to do the truffle shuffle. Very weird feeling. And then the engine starts making this weird noise. And the guy I'm taking home, he goes - "That doesn't sound very good." Yes. This and other exciting articles in the latest edition of "Thank you, Captain Obvious" monthly. So I drop this guy off and by the time I get back, it is the most ungodly sound you've ever heard coming from a car. It sounds like an out of tune steel drum band is having a concert under my hood. And as with many steel drum bands, there was a lot of smoke… 2…3…4… I'm not gonna explain 'em to you… and truly, the car - it's not working real good. We're having problems accelerating… it's a mess.

Here's what happened. Did you know that you had to put oil in a car every so often? Maybe not the new EVs, but the old combustion engines… yeah… they need oil to run. It's a good idea to CHANGE the oil every so often. And I don't remember the last time I had changed the oil… probably on the 12th… of never. That was the original issue. That's very small. Service Engine Soon meant - "Hey, dummy. I need some oil. Go get an oil change. A cheap fix that someone else can do on your lunch break if you don't want to get your hands dirty." That was the initial issue. But I let it go. And I ignored it. And I let it fester. And I kept putting it off. And eventually what happened is that bad things were happening underneath that hood and it led to me throwing a rod and ruining my engine completely. A very costly and expensive repair that was not going to be done over my lunch break.

And it could've been avoided. If I had settled the issue quickly.

See, some of the conflicts we have with other people - it's like the tale of the Service Engine Soon light. We know there's a problem. We know there's some form of conflict. We know the vibes are off. But instead of addressing the issue and settling our conflict quickly, we ignore it. And the longer we ignore it, the bigger probability that a minor issue grows exponentially behind the scenes and does a lot more damage and before you know it, you can't move forward anymore, you're attracting attention because of the massive amount of smoke and clanging and people are passing you by going, "what the heck happened to them?"

Sometimes we don't settle conflicts quickly because we truly don't understand how quickly conflict can compound and get out of hand. I guess you can kind of call it

LACK OF UNDERSTANDING

Which is why I think Jesus is taking the time to teach this to His followers. He's pointing this out. Basically, "If you don't know, now you know."

Some of us we don't settle conflicts quickly.. we keep putting them off because like George McFly, we're just not good at confrontation.

DON'T LIKE CONFRONTATION

And I think this needs reframing. When you "you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person." That doesn't HAVE to be a confrontation.

CONFRONTATION

It can be a conversation.

CONVERSATION

"Hey. I think we're got something where we're rubbing each other the wrong way, or I've offended you. I don't want that to go unresolved and I don't want it to escalate over time. Can you help me understand the situation better so we can settle things and hopefully keep our relationship positive."

Some of us - we avoid settling conflicts quickly because of

WILLFUL IGNORANCE

See, you think my solving of the Service Engine Soon light was bad. And it was… but you ever seen somebody solve that problem by going, "I know how to fix that" and taking electrical tape and sticking it right over the light? Problem solved!

Yeah. Anybody want to admit to doing that? Confession is good for the soul.

Look - you can put that electrical tape over that Check Engine Soon light and pretend it doesn't exist, but whatever is going on is still going on underneath the hood and that light is still underneath the tape and even if it's something minor - you're not passing the smog test. When it comes to conflict, if we're taping over it and pretending it doesn't exist, we're not passing the Jesus test either. Test isn't the right word. We're not meeting the standard that He hopes we'll meet as His followers.

Lot of ways we wind up taping over conflict and pretending it doesn't exist. "We're fine. It's no big deal." TAPE. Maybe not from your point of view.

"I prayed about that and moved on." TAPE. Did you ever talk to the other person and make things right?

"That was years ago." TAPE.

Or we'll do this one - we'll try and convince ourselves that we fixed it. Just hang the ol' Mission Accomplished banner up while the conflict is still clearly going on. What? Too soon?

My Service Engine Soon light people - you ever driving along with the light on and you hit a pothole or a speed bump so hard that the light goes out? And then you convince yourself - "There must never have been a problem to begin with. Must've been faulty wiring." Which do you think is true? There was never a problem to begin with, or now there's two - including the wire that's not sending the ID10T signal anymore? We do this with personal relations though - "You know, I was pretty sure Jacoby had beef with me, but I saw him at the company picnic and he didn't come over and start a fight so we must be fine." "Pretty sure I saw him giving you kill looks while he was stabbing the air with the barbecue fork Norman Bates style." "Nahhhh. He's just farsighted I think. No problems to worry about here."

SETTLE YOUR DIFFERENCES QUICKLY

Because if you don't - things can get carried away. And it didn't come out of nowhere. The Service Relationship SOON light was probably on the whole time.

You know, part of the reason that conflict compounds so quickly and things can get costly so fast today is because we live in a culture that encourages conflict escalation. Especially in major cities like L.A. Don't believe me? Just drive down the freeway. You cannot go two miles without seeing some lawyer's face twenty feet tall on a billboard saying - "Injured? Call Me. We'll Make Them Pay." "We'll Get You The Most!" "WE'll Take Every Last Cent They Have!" "Their Children's Children Will Still Be Paying You For. Fender Bender on the 405." And they've all got their own gimmick. One guy's pointing at you. One guy's wearing boxing gloves. One lady's got a dog. Somebody is apparently a law shark. I didn't even know that was a thing. Everywhere you look it's Legal-Eagle Larry, Malpractice Maria, Angry Johnny, Sweet James, Sweet Jesus - I miss when the billboards by the road were just Burma Shave signs…. I'd at least settle for Coke Bears. (Coke Bear Lawyer- injured in a sled accident) My fault. Did not specify. Bill wants me to leave Sweet James alone? I know. He's got good commercials. No I get it. Dodger fan. I get it.

First - before I go on, let me just say this - okay - I'm poking fun at the conflict escalation that I see on these lawyer billboards in particular - but thank God for attorneys. That's not a joke. Seriously. There are situations where you need legal representation. There are situations where people HAVE been harmed, exploited, cheated, abused, ripped-off and legal accountability and financial compensation is absolutely necessary. Our God abhors dishonest scales and loves justice.

Isaiah 61:8

Psalm 37:28

Psalm 89:14

Proverbs 20:10

Proverbs 20:23

There are lawyers out there that work for justice and righteousness and fight for freedom and equality. Sometimes going to court is how justice is delivered. Okay. God bless those who work for those things. That's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm pointing out is this interesting culture that we've built around conflict. Because the underlying message behind so many of those billboards and commercials like the ones from from Logan the Legal Wolverine isn't "Let's fix this." "Let's make this right." The underlying message is "MAKE THEM PAY!" "They've got insurance. They've got assets! We'll make them regret the day they got their drivers license."

Folks, I don't know if you've noticed, but that very un-Christlike attitude has not remained exclusively on legal billboards. It has seeped into every part of our culture. Somebody hurts someone and their first instinct far too often is "how do I hurt them back?" "How do I win?" "How do I expose them?" "How do I embarrass them?" "How do I not only get even, but how do I squash them like a bug?"

There's a great movie from the 80's. Brian DePalma's "The Untouchables." It's about Elliot Ness going after Al Capone. Great mobster movie. Great suspense thriller. And Sean Connery is in it. He actually won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this role. He plays a street-wise veteran policeman who assists Elliot Ness and at one point he lays out a very harsh strategy for dealing with mobsters. He tells Ness, "They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"

Okay. That may be the tough reality of what it takes to squash mobsters and violent criminals. But most of us aren't squashing organized crime. We're just trying to squash beef with our neighbor down the street. You know, the one Jesus told us to love?

Love your neighbor as yourself.Matthew 22:39

Most of us aren't trying to rid the streets of dangerous criminals… we're trying to rid ourselves of conflict with a brother or sister in Christ. You know, like the ones we read about in 1 John 4:20 where scripture says,

If someone says, "I love God," but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don't love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?1 John 4:20

Jesus tells us to settle our differences quickly.

Settle your differences quickly.Matthew 5:25

Jesus says Seek conflict resolution. As swiftly and as painlessly as possible.

But our culture that encourages conflict escalation says, "Have you considered escalating this into a six-part Netflix documentary?"

(Minor Grievance - Title Card) (Josh putting on microphone for Netflix doc.)

Those are very different instincts. Very different approaches. But I'll tell you, if everybody who claimed to be Christians followed Jesus advice to settle our differences quickly, we'd be looking at a lot less lawyers on the side of the freeway and a lot more Coke bears.

Jesus said

When you are on the way to court with your adversary, settle your differences quickly. Otherwise your accuser may hand you over to the judge who will hand you over to an officer, and you will be thrown in prison. And if that happens, you surely won't be free again until you have paid the last penny.Matthew 5:25-26

And He's being very practical when He's sharing this illustration of kind of a worst-case scenario. The difference between conflict resolution versus conflict escalation. Jesus is detailing how costly conflict escalation can be. And how rapidly it can gather momentum. Like a snowball rolling down the hill.

Think about that for a second. The snowball starts at the top of a hill. It's small enough to hold in your hand. You get pelted with it, it might get your attention but it's not gonna do much damage. But start pushing it down the hill, it starts rolling, gathering momentum, and it gets bigger and bigger and starts picking things up along the way, more snow, sticks, rocks, an unfortunate squirrel in the wrong place at the wrong time…

Conflict does the same thing in a different way. And like a snowball rolling down the hill, momentum is not the only thing that conflicts gather if they're not halted quickly. They gather assumptions. They gather resentment. They gather other people. They gather screenshots. They gather lawyers. They gather church boards. They gather angry cousins.

Never underestimate the angry cousin. They don't even really know what happened. They weren't there. They don't even fully understand the conflict but they hear that that their cuz has beef with someone and they're like "I never trusted Sasha." "You don't even KNOW Sasha!" "I don't need to!"

And then before you know it you've got a conflict level you're trying to lower and bail money you're trying to raise.

You laugh but I've seen it happen - not the angry cousin thing.. okay, actually, yes the angry cousin thing… but I mean the whole thing - the whole conflict escalation thing. The snowball effect. I've felt its effects firsthand.

You know at the beginning it was "Josh said something I didn't like." Then if it goes unresolved it becomes "Josh insulted my beliefs." Then it's "Josh was insulting me." Then somebody else hears that and says, "You know, Josh did something similar to me in 2017." Are you serious? We're subpoenaing 2017? We're calling 2017 to the witness stand? There's no statute of limitations on people being offended. But see, now a single incident has become a pattern. And then, "I heard somebody else say…"Now we've got hearsay involved. And then other people chime in - "I've always had misgivings about him." And now the pattern becomes a judgment of character. And then somebody says - "Do you know who he won tickets to on the radio in 2004?!" And now the character judgment and the 'evidence' becomes an identity whether it's accurate or not. And then it just keeps going until it's "Josh is a heretic." Then it's "Josh is a pawn of Satan." Then it's Josh is the SPAWN of Satan." And lemme tell you, if I have one more well-meaning exorcist show up to my house while I'm watching Saturday morning cartoons, I'm gonna start answering the door naked. I'll show 'em what conflict escalation really looks like.

And it all started with a tiny little snowball. Deal with it all starts going downhill fast. Deal with the conflict while it still resembles the thing that actually happened. Have the awkward ten minute conversation today, so you don't have to bear the cost of a devastating ten year conflict later.

Cause conflict escalation gets expensive relationally, it gets expensive communally. But it can also get expensive financially. Ask any divorce lawyer out there. When Jesus says,

When you are on your way to court with your adversary, settle your differences quickly. Otherwise, your accuser may hand you over to the judge, who will hand you over to an officer, and you will be thrown in prison. And if that happens, you surely won't be free again until you have paid the last penny.Matthew 5:25-26

essentially I think if you applied that to modern times and modern ideas, He's saying "don't turn every disagreement into a war. Don't spend $40,000 dollars fighting over something that could've been resolved with $400 dollars and a little honesty and humility. Don't burn down a family because nobody would say, "I was wrong." Don't destroy a church because everybody was protecting their ego. Don't let pride escalate the conflict and make it more costly than it has to be.

You know, ironically, lawyers and some financial institutions can profit from unresolved conflict. But there's another institution that does not. The church. There is a spiritual cost and it's a heavy one when it comes to unresolved conflict and conflicts that escalate. And I'm not even talking about individuals having differences in the church, I'm talking about conflict at an institutional level.

Folks- the church AT LARGE is an institution where conflicts has escalated… time and time again. The whole of church history is ugly. In a lot of ways. Throughout a lot of times. There are so many times that large portions of the church world have gotten it wrong and refused to reflect

REFLECTION

On our attitudes or our positions or the state of our hearts. Instead we rejected the idea that we could even be wrong.

Where instead of settling conflict with others, we escalated it until our hearts weren't filled with

REPENTANCE

Instead they were filled with resentment.

We didn't

RENDEZVOUS

With those who we hurt - Instead we gate-kept and we repelled those who we hurt with our attitudes, we refused to let them be a part of our community or at the very least we severely restricted their participation in it.

And without a desire to take

RESPONSIBILITY

Those conflicts hurt untold amounts of people across several generations. And the longer those conflicts went on, the longer they weren't settled, that harder those relationships have been to

REPAIR

The harder it's been to

REBUILD TRUST with those who we have harmed.

Maybe we need a

REMINDER

Of just a few of instances of institutional harm that the church has been a part of over the years.

This is where it might get a little uncomfortable.

What happens when Black Americans point toward large parts of the church's participation as an institution in the practices of slavery and segregation?

What happens when Indigenous communities talk about atrocities and genocides committed in the name of Christian mission and the doctrine of discovery. Where Christians believed they had the divine right to do such things and that bloodshed was fine and necessary if the locals refused "God's plan according to papal decree?"

What happens when the LGBTQ+ community says the church hurt us through systemic exclusion, by promoting programs that induced psychological trauma, by lobbying against equality and civil protections and by fostering rejection of individuals who God loves through our preaching, polemics or policies?

What happens when survivors of church abuse - a problem that has affected SO MANY PEOPLE - what happens when survivors of church abuse say - the institution protected itself instead of protecting us or seeking justice?

For so many of us, our first instinct might be to get defensive and blurt out - "Well I didn't do that."And maybe that's true. Maybe you didn't. But it is possible to inherit something without creating it. If you can inherit a house you did not build and money you did not earn, then you can inherit traditions you did not start and an institution with a reputation you did not create. You can inherit a system. You can inherit an institutions prior role in history. And it is possible to inherit damage. And suspicion. And distrust. And broken relationships with large swathes of our community.

And when we do -= the question that we should ask ourselves isn't 'did I personally cause this? And make it all about us. It shouldn't be 'how do we protect the image of the institution?' We all love protecting our images too much. We're not a brand. We're a church for God's sake. Literally. At least we're supposed to be. The question that we need to ask ourselves is

What

RESPONSIBILITY

Do we have now

To

REPAIR

What was handed down to us?

"What responsibility do we have NOW to repair what was handed down to us?"

In case you hadn't realized it yet, this is our

REMINDER

And our impetus to do something about it.

In the Old Testament, in books like Daniel and Nehemiah and Ezra and Joel we're given examples of whole religious communities confessing and desiring reconciliation with God and between man. We see where the whole community gathers and says "We were wrong. We have sinned. We have failed. We have acted wickedly. We have not acted in the way God would want us to." And that's interesting because sometimes the people leading the confession weren't personally responsible AT ALL for what the community as a whole was confessing to. But

REPENTANCE

repentance was still on their lips. So what do we do? Where do we go from here? As individuals? As a church? As representatives whether we like it or not of a larger institution? We

REMEMBER

What Jesus told us to do in the first place. Remember where this teaching began.

If you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.Matthew 5:23-24

There's a religious ritual that's about to happen. Even a sacred ritual in that time period and community. And Jesus says - in essence -

The person is more important than the ritual.

You've got a gift or a sacrifice to present at the altar? Leave it. Leave the gift. Leave the sacrifice. And go be reconciled

RECONCILE

To that person.

And if part of the ritual or the institution is preventing you from taking care of that person… leave it. If optics are preventing you from taking care of that person, if reputation is preventing you from taking care of those people, if pride is preventing you from taking care of that group, if politics are prohibiting you from settling your differences, if tradition is causing you to trade away the chance to show the love of Jesus to an individual or a group that He created and loves, then for the love of God and in the name of Christ - leave it all at the altar with your gift and go and be reconciled like Jesus asks you to do.

The church exists for people. People do not exist for the church.

Individuals before Institution… Always.

And when we genuinely listen and take responsibility and reconcile, then we as an institution and as individuals need to do what John the Baptist says in Matthew 3:8 -

So produce fruit that is consistent with repentance [demonstrating new behavior that PROVES a change of heart, and a conscious decision to turn away from sin]Matthew 3:8 (AMP)

When we talk about producing fruit, we're often talking about producing the fruits of the Holy Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And these are the natural outpourings of a changed heart and a changed life when Jesus is the one we're walking with and living for. They are evidence of His Holy Spirit working in our hearts.

Until next time, may we be a people who don't let conflict grow, instead, we let the love of Jesus have the last word. God bless you! Have a great week!