If I got a problem with you…..I will bring it up with someone else

I often wonder how quick problems would be resolved if we brought them up directly.

It's so easy to go to others before going directly to the people we have a problem with.

When did this happen?

Is this the way it has always been?

Are Christians honestly better at this then non-Christians?

Jesus gives us the biblical way of handling conflict in Matthew 18:15-20.

Verses 15-16…

"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses."

There's a process of how we are supposed to handle conflict that Jesus gives us.

1. Go to the person yourself.
   
2. Bring someone neutral in to mediate.
   

Yet how often do we do this?

This is one of the major problems I have seen in Churches, people chose not to do this.

When someone has done this the right way with me, I greatly respect them.

Yet mostly I have experienced the other side of this.

This is one of those times…

Someone had a problem with me and the way something went at Church.

Rather than talking to me directly, they called the senior minister of the Church and spent time talking about how unhappy they were with me.

I didn't know there was a problem until the senior minister is telling me the next day in staff meeting.

The senior minister then came to me with the mentality of…

What can we do so you can change and be better with this family?

They completely skipped step 1 that Jesus gives completely and went to step 2 without me.

Pretty hard to resolve a conflict when half of the parties aren't involved (Just my opinion).

I was then told what I needed to do to make things right.

This was about the fourth time going through a scenario where the senior minister did this.

After the first time I went up to him and said, "Listen, I don't think this was handled the biblical way that Jesus gave us. You should have sent the people to me first then mediate."

I gave him the example of Ron Otto.

Otto said this from the pulpit then (From working with him) I saw him back this up through the week.

If someone came to Ron with a problem that didn't involve him directly, he stopped them in mid sentence and made them go to the person directly.

So many headaches were solved from this.

The response I got was along the lines…

"Joel, I am not Ron Otto and I am not going to do things just his way."

I stopped backing up that he was going about this the unbiblical way, I went back into my shell and just dealt with it.

I found myself becoming more and more into a shell and less and less like the person God wanted me to be.

Why do we do this?

Why don't we go to people directly?

Jesus gives us a great model, yet we rarely use it.

As a proclaiming Christian, we claim to be more like him.

This result is us trying to be more like him when it comes to other people.

What do you think?

Have a great day.