Growth Through Conflict

How ironic that three things we attempt to avoid provide the most fertile soil for our ongoing journey to maturity. Our tendency is to abhor and avoid those situations or people that bring discomfort. When forced outside our personal comfort zone we protest to anyone who will listen at the unfairness of life. And, we cross off another person who dares bring us discomfort.

But what are we to do with the reality that we live in a world not always (or ever) under our control? Nowhere is this more apparent than the fact of having to interact daily with the other. Difference, whether from personality, ethnicity, politics, religion, or gender, is as inevitable as death. Though we try to draw boundaries and erect parameters of safety we cannot control the behaviors and beliefs of others. The awkwardness we experience around the person acting differently from our expectations compels us to either distance ourselves or attempt to convert the other to our way of experiencing life. If discrepancy persists we often proclaim “those others” as aliens and construct a fence or mentally vaporize them so we can continue unimpeded by “troublemakers.” Governments and religions are particularly adept at this move. So are domestic violence perpetrators.

Institutions are apt to deal with relational discomfort by weeding out those who do not fit. This is done under the guise of protecting the common good, a form of utilitarianism that patronizes and uses people as long as they don’t sully the good name of the institution. Removal can also be seen in cultural situations when attempts are made to preserve the purity of a cultural or ethnic line. For example, those who cross the line by entering a cross-cultural marriage know the power of scorn and contempt that comes with “polluting” a family lineage. How ironic then, that at the perverse extreme of inbreeding, inter-family marriage produces deformity rather than familial health. Even biologists affirm that variability is a key to a healthy gene pool.

Why do we struggle with difference? One reason is our tendency to grant privilege to the familiar and to judge or even deplore the unfamiliar. Isn’t this part of our inherent predisposition to tolerate one’s own foibles but to judge as sinful those of the other? (As an aside, it is interesting to note that in the history of church music, when a new style of music makes inroads to the church it is labeled as demonic! The familiar is called sacred. Thus, stylistic differences are turned into moral categories.)

Growth and maturity presuppose a conflict to overcome or a problem to be solved. Points of conflict become alien places that literally force us to engage ever-increasing depth within ourselves in order to bring coherence to that which appears disparate. In a relational context, psychologist David Schnarch says that maturity develops through “the process of grinding off our rough edges through the normal abrasions of long-term intimate relationships.” Could it be that abrasions are not only normal but necessary? Though I may not appreciate the answer to the question, I must come to a place where I make peace with its reality.

So what role might conflict or discrepancy play in our development? Psychologist/theologian James Loder saw a pattern that he termed the logic of transformation containing five steps: conflict-in-context, interlude for scanning, insight felt with intuitive force, release and re-patterning, and interpretation and verification. To cut through the technicalities, transformation of persons necessarily begins with conflict, either internal or external. This discrepancy offers the opportunity to engage reflectively and with honesty those areas under the surface of appearances. If self-aware we notice both the other and our reaction to the other. Upon honest reflection, a new observation may give birth to a legitimate new insight. This fresh thought might require the relinquishment of a long-cherished bias or pattern. If sentiment obstructs the abandonment of the old for the new, we are stuck! When relinquishment does take place, however, a new world of possibilities emerges and we are invited to take the next developmental step.