That God desires His children to live in peace and exhibit genuine love towards
one another is an essential dogma in Christianity. The need for agreement among
believers is so crucial that God, through Amos the prophet, asked, “Can two walk
together? Except they be agreed” (Amos 3:3). It can be sufficiently said that majority
of us are aware of, and would really love to live harmoniously with each other.
No matter how we try however, jealousy, hatred and contentions set in and some
even become more fierce and deadly than we ever imagined they could be. The end
result is that friendships are destroyed, relationships broken, and members of
families turn against each other. This is something we are often not
particularly happy about. The need for conflict resolution thus comes to play.
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In this little write up, we are going to look at two important keys that
the early Church, particularly, Apostle Peter, used to resolve a contention
that ensued between himself and “the apostles and brethren at Judea” ( read
Acts 11:1-18). I am of a strong believe that these conflict resolution keys, which
have been discussed below, are particularly applicable to resolving conflicts
between Christians, Churches and even organizations.
1. Patience
The first key to
resolving conflicts among us is patience. In Christianity, many a time those
who contend with us do so because of great concern either for our present
situations as well as future and eternal consequences. This is why patience is
extremely important. The "apostles and brethren in Judea" (Acts 11:1)
were unhappy and ended up contending with Peter about his dealings with the
gentiles because there was an outstanding instruction in the Law of Moses
that Jews should not mingle with the gentiles. Moses faced a similar contention
from his brother Aaron and sister Miriam when he married a foreigner (an
Ethiopian woman, see Numbers 12:1).
Now before anyone rules
out the "apostles and brethren at Judea's" attitude as misbehaviour,
we must be reminded that they did what they did because they were very concerned
about the Word of God being fully obeyed and also concerned about Peter not
erring from the faith.
I am confident that Apostle
Peter was fully aware of their concern for him and that is why he exhibited
patience in handling the situation. The scripture says, "But Peter rehearsed the matter from the beginning, and expounded
it by order unto them..." (Acts 11:4). This is sheer patience at work.
Peter had other choices such as brushing them off, or even counter-contending
with them for disputing with him for doing the Will of God. Instead, he chose
to use patience by taking his time to explain the whole issue from the
beginning. This clearly depicts to us how powerful and necessary it is for us
to exhibit patience when resolving conflicts among ourselves.
2. Details matter
This is yet another
great lesson that Peter left for us. In addition to being patient he was also
detailed in his explanation to the apostles and brethren that contended with
him. He actually told the story from scratch, told every detail, and ensured
they were orderly presented. He explained to them the trance he had about the
"heavenly vessel" (see Acts 11:5-10), then spoke about the vision
that Cornelius had and the subsequent action that he took which led to the
involvement of himself with Cornelius, and also gave details of all that went
on when he visited Cornelius (see Acts 11:6-17).
Guess what happened
after Peter told them all these details of the matter? The Bible says, "When they heard these things, they
held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles
granted repentance unto life." (Acts 11:18). Hallelujah to that! Many
times people dispute and fight things they don't understand. It is therefore
not surprising that after expounding everything to them in detail, they now
held their peace and glorified God.
As Christians, it is
imperial that we live together and in harmony with each other. However, things
get screwed up sometimes and we find ourselves contending each other and
disputing among ourselves. I believe God, through these two conflict resolution
keys would help us settle our differences and live harmoniously as Jesus want
us to be (see Psalm 133:1, Acts 2;44), and we would be blessed as take
practical measures to avoid conflicts, resolve existing ones, forgive each
other and live peacefully with one another.
