Fighting Fair

Hello, friends. I have something to say to you that I only get to say once a year. You ready for this? Here it is. Happy New Year! This is Dick Foth with stories to make sense of it all and we are charging into 2022 with great hopes and dreams. And I'm going to go back and continue reading the book that Ruth and I had the privilege of writing a few years ago. We're on chapter 12, it's taking us a while to get through because we drop other podcasts down in the middle of it. But I just think it would be a good place to start 2022. And the chapter title is called Fighting Fair. Now we don't want to start 2022 with a fight but it actually has to do with the subject of conflict. And conflict is a neutral thing as we'll find out and it's just what happens when we live our lives. Listen to this, this is how it starts. If you actually succeed in creating a utopia, you've created a world without conflict in which everything is perfect. And if there's no conflict, there are no stories worth telling or reading. Veronica Roth. Here's the chapter. You have to say I'm sorry a hundred times fast before I'll let you come downstairs. Jenny said to Susanna. Our daughters were six and three saying I'm sorry a hundred times fast was a little kids version of saying rubber baby buggy bumpers. Impossible. When I asked Ruth, why did the kids scrap and squabble so much? She gave me one of those looks that said if you would take the time to remember or perhaps to think in a straight line, you'd know the answer to that question. There are kids. We discover early that life is more than affirming words in your face stuff happens over things large and small things of consequence and of no consequence. People see life from different angles everywhere we turn tensions flare around the globe. A cemetery may be the only place devoid of conflict. As far as I know, every human relationship will involve conflict. If there is none, there is no stake, no investment. Each person brings his or her uniqueness to the table with feelings and ideas and passion differences pop up, but friendship finds a way to work through the differences to another good day. Because I like to be liked. I'm going to say that again. Because I like to be liked. My tendency has always been to avoid conflict. Because I spent my teen years in a home retention bubble just beneath the surface. Again, my tendency is to avoid conflict. Because I'd rather love than fight. My tendency is to avoid conflict. I'm not alone in this. There are many people just like me. Resolution lies in this question. How do we see conflict? For much of my life, I saw it as a negative because of how it made me feel. I was wrong in that assessment. It is neutral, neither good nor bad. My response to it makes it good or bad. Response takes conflict out of neutral and puts it in gear. The gear we select will move us either forward or backward and we get to choose. David Augsberger, who served many years as a men and I pastor in Washington DC, has some insightful thoughts on conflict. His book, caring enough to confront, was pivotal in helping me see conflict and confrontation and new light. He lists five ways we usually respond to conflict of the five options and conflict situations. Number one is, I win. You lose. Number two, I want out. I'll withdraw. Number three, I'll give in for good relations. Number four, I'll meet you halfway. Number five, I can care and confront. The last is the most effective, the most truly loving, the most growth promoting for human relationships. But often, it will not be the starting point, but the long term goal. Here's how it works. I'll get you. This response is the most visceral and natural. You confront me and I attack you. From the school yard to the boardroom, we know this action. You push me and I push back. Sometimes, when we know conflict is imminent, we can even make a preemptive strike. When we say in our heads, I'm right, you're wrong, and I'm going to get you. I'll done it, right? Second is, I'll give in. This approach is a typical avoidance mechanism. You're always right. I'm always wrong. I'll just curl up in the prenatal position over here on the floor and eat some worms. The person who always yields to the other to avoid conflict is not helping the relationship. Third, I'll get out. Nothing makes our point better, we think, than walking away. That's how you're going to be. I'm out. We think that getting away from the offending party is the ultimate way to avoid discomfort. Actually, if the confrontation is intense, taking your break and stepping away temporarily may not be bad. But to get in the habit of leaving is of no help. Let's meet halfway. It's the fourth thing. Compromise is always promising. Means each party comes halfway toward the other. It ease his tensions immediately. But the last one, the best one is I care enough to confront. My tendency is to confront the person I have an issue with. But there has to be a better way. My tendency is to confront the person I have an issue with. But there has to be a better way to deal with problems besides shouting. Who's the idiot who left the diet Pepsi on the end table in the family room? When I do that, I assassinate someone's character with the sake of a watermark on the table. In my view, caring and confronting in simplest form is affirming the person and confronting the issue. We see Jesus do this several times in the Gospels. John 13 and 14 record him, engaging some guys might leave you, but I never will. Simon Peter on the night before the crucifixion. Peter asked, Lord, why can't I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you. And Jesus answered, will you really lay down your life for me? I tell you the truth before the rooster crows. You'll disown me three times. He confronts the issue that affirms all the disciples in the very next sentence. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my father's house are many rooms, but we're not so. I would have told you I'm going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. My very favorite example is the passage that begins John 8. Sometimes contested because it's not found in the early manuscripts of the Gospels. This passage speaks volumes about who Jesus is. At dawn, here it is, that dawn he appeared again in the temple courts where all the people gathered round him and he sat down to teach. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say? They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. We don't know what Jesus wrote in the dirt. It's been suggested it was names and addresses of women the accusers had been with. Whatever he wrote, after he finished, he stood up and said, any of you who has never sinned, far away, hit her with the rocks, stooped down again to keep writing as the crowd hushed you hear the thud of rocks being dropped. When Jesus stood up a second time, the crowd was still there, but the accusers were gone. Their scattered rocks amute testimony to their hypocrisy. In my mind's eye, I see him reach over and tilt her chin up so that she is looking straight up at him. Her face is a study in pain. The smug coal lining around her eyes tracks down her cheeks. Her eyes have the flat dull look of someone used up and discarded. Then she hears this question, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? She turns her head and sees no one holding a rock. There has to be relief and wonderment in her voice because that simple fact takes her from death to life. No, no one, sir, she says. I see the broad smile spread across that tan carpenter face as he says, me neither. Go and don't do that anymore. Or to phrase it another way, you are a great lady and that's not what great ladies do and light sparks behind her eyes. I don't know if the crowd cheered, but they should have. He was talking to them too. Vegas. Here we come. The warm California spring day is Dave Householder and I drove the 90 miles inland from coastal Santa Cruz to Los Bannes in the central valley of California. Dave had been friend for some years since he finished his PhD at the University of Illinois with an emphasis on how people learn. He and his wife Linda had spent many years in South Asia and their cross-cultural gifts for stellar. This was about to be one of those cross-cultural days. One of our friends connected to Los Bannes high school had asked me to come there to speak on building relationships in a time of conflict. The conflict at that moment happened to center on race. The farming community, numbering about 10,000 at the time, had a historic mix of Spanish, Portuguese, Basque and white populations with smaller groups of Asian and African American students. The high school had seen some tension as the racial composition began to change. That week Dave had been visiting the college where I was president so I asked him to come with me to Los Bannes and bring a few of his friends. On the way over Pacheco Pass we were talking about his unique gift as a ventriloquist. I've never heard of better ventriloquist in my life and certainly never one that held a doctorate. I told him we're going into a setting that's a wee bit tense and I need all your skills. When he asked me how that might work I explained Dr. Augsberger's five approaches to conflict and by the time we drove up to the high school day was ready to go his quote friends end quote came along in the suitcase he carried into the classroom. Atmosphere is a word that's hard to define but it's easy to tell when it's tense. It was abundantly clear that the faculty and coaching staff who were there for this in service experience would have given most anything to be someplace else at 4 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon on that lovely spring day. The principal introduced me but the atmosphere remained a stony silence choosing to address the elephant of the room I said well seems we have something in common none of us really wants to be here at this moment. Then with something of a force grant I said so let's try to make it fun like you to welcome my friend David householder he's here from Nepal. He's brought some friends he stepped forward to have harder to pause. David proceeded to talk about the very different country where he'd been living for 10 years country populated by very different people. Then he said I actually here brought one of them with me historically he's been challenging to connect with and quite reclusive but by great good fortune we have become friends where upon he flipped open the class on the suitcase and before he could open it a muffled voice said hey what's going on there. David replied well I'm here with some new friends that I want you to meet oh I don't know about that the voice said what are they like well come see David said as he brought a large green shaggy arm sock out of the suitcase. This fine fellow is my friend the Yeti we were looking at a bright green cousin of sesame streets cookie monster my friend the Yeti is an abominable snowman quite rare and quite shall we say different David continued. So how has it been coming to America how have you been received well the Yeti said when I came to New York when people saw me all green and shaggy like this children screamed and men tried to attack me parentheses I'll get you and quote and parentheses parentheses I'll get you and parentheses. Then when I got to Chicago it was Christmas so I thought I'd try a different tack being green like I am I hired on as a Christmas tree but it's so tiring standing stock still for hours on end with your head tilted back in a star on the end of your nose parentheses I'll give in in parentheses. A couple of the teachers chuckled so how was it when you got out here to California David asked really interesting the Yeti said after all the judgment I felt in New York and the strain of Chicago I was pretty anxious but you know the greatest thing happened I visited the University of California at Santa Cruz and nobody even seemed to notice me in that moment the faculty. From this quite conservative section of the state exploded in laughter David had them the coaches in the back row of the tiered classroom who had expressed boredom lighting up cigarettes and gazing absent mindedly out the windows to their right turn toward David and stubbed out their smokes. The older teacher who had been coming through a book because she had been here done this hundred times before closed her book and looked up. David said so what do you do and the pressure just builds up how do you handle it. Well said the Yeti when I really feel beat up and hurt and just can't take it anymore I climb back in that suitcase with my other friends. Then we talk about how hard it is to do what we do and how unappreciated we are and how nobody really understands how valuable we are. What do you call that place David said Yeti looked up at him and out at the audience of about thirty teachers and said well we call that the puppets lounge. It was dead silent for two beats then the room erupted in cheers and applause. At the end of the hour the tension was gone and we had a new set of friends the older female teacher walked up to David and paid him the highest of compliments. I was in Vegas a few weeks ago and paid big money to see somebody who wasn't nearly as good as you you've missed your calling. What might have become conflict piled onto other conflicts had become a window to resolution and friends had been gained. Friends can count on conflict and friends can count on resolving it. That's it for today going forward I'd encourage you not just to react or pull away when you hear the word conflict. Conflict is neutral it's natural and it's an opportunity to see some really positive things happen if we stay patient take the time and understand what we're about as we enter that arena. Have a wonderful week going forward and let's go out with some happy music. Catch you next time. You