Church Conflict and "Reading the Bible With Gospel Eyes"

I've been in ministry long enough now to have seen - and been part of - all the church conflict I need for a life time.  For many of my unbelieving friends, church conflict born of pettiness or self-righteousness is sufficient reason - in their minds, at least - to step back from anything church related.  I'm sympathetic, but not convinced.  Sadly, church conflict becomes for them the noise that drowns out the music of the Gospel of grace.

Recently, I was on the phone with a friend from another state trying to help him sort through his response to matters boiling up around him in the church he serves.  He was - rightly so - very concerned with attitudes and actions of some people that were "unbiblical," and wanted to make sure that his own attitudes and actions were "biblical" in response.  That is all correct and commendable in so far as it goes.

As we talked and I heard him struggle with his response, I was drawn back to my own times in very similar circumstances.  As I prayed and listened, I realized how often my concern for "biblical" and "unbiblical" attitudes and actions had really been simply my own desire to use the authority of the Bible to justify my own attitudes and behaviors at the time.  Occasionally, I was able to let the Bible speak and shape my own attitudes and actions.  But I began to see in a fresh, new - and painful way - the depth of my own self-righteous motivations.  I wanted to win the argument, and wanted chapter and verse to hammer someone.

That was back when I was much more prone to see the Bible as an "owner's manual" from God to me about how to fix or maintain my life.  It was filled with principles and instruction on how I should live and think and feel.  The challenge for me was to identify and understand those principles - with God's help, of course - and then put them into practice.  Only then would everything work out.  I would have God's blessing.  Or so I thought.

As it turns out, this assumes that my own heart is both neutral and able.  Neutral in that I can hear and understand the teaching of the Bible without my own, usually self-serving bias.  Able in that I could live out what truth I could see without an equally self-serving motivation.  Turns out that - according to the Bible - both of those are a sure bet to loose.

So what to do?

I think the answer is to "Read the Bible with Gospel Eyes."  That is the term I use at Christ Covenant for what theologians call a "christocentric hermeneutic."  It is I believe - to be brief and simple - how Jesus teaches us to understand the entire Bible when He talks with His friends along the road to Emmaus after His resurrection.  (Luke 24:27)  "He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself."  So I've given up my "owner's manual hermeneutic" and am "Reading with Gospel Eyes."  Every passage I read tells me about Jesus and the unswerving work of God to rescue me from my own brokenness, change my heart and give me new life.

Now conflict for me is not so much about evaluating the attitudes and actions of my opponents and making sure that my own responses score higher on my scale of "biblical."

I am - or hope to be - more concerned with loving people, even if they betray me, because that is what my savior did.  Even when I confront people, I do it with the hope of them being drawn to the Heavenly Father's grace, and not simply me winning.  It's trusting that even when I "lose" I am secure, and free to keep living and loving.  I can give my life for people who oppose me, without taking theirs, because that is how Jesus pursued me.  That's the Gospel of grace.