I offered on Sunday to email my ten steps for resolving disputes between “brothers” to anyone interested. quite a few people have taken me up on the offer so to make them more easily available, here they are. I hope that many will find them helpful.
If you have a dispute with a Christian brother or sister, if you feel you have been wronged or cheated (1 Corinthians 6:7-8), then here’s what to do about it: 10 steps that are a mix of commonsense and biblical wisdom.
1. Give the person the benefit of the doubt. This is hard to do. But if there is any possibility that you may have misunderstood their outward actions or inner motives then don’t jump to conclusions. You may think it’s obvious but unless you have a special super-power that gives you access to the mind and heart of other human beings, be humble and reserve judgment.
2. Pray about what has happened and how you’re feeling about it. This is hard to do too. But as you pray God’s Spirit will remind you of the gospel and you will see things more clearly. Ask God for humility, gentleness, wisdom and a willingness to forgive.
3. At this point, you may realize that you’re making a mountain out of a mole-hill and choose to let the issue go. This could be a good thing to do. Be careful though, if it keeps coming back into your mind then you haven’t really let it go and so you need to do something about it.
4. Don’t talk to anyone else about it. This is VERY hard to do. But when you tell someone else your sinful human nature will always cause you to paint things in a light that distorts the truth in your own favour even if only subconsciously. Telling someone else also puts that person in a difficult position (now knowing something about someone that will influence how they think about that person) and may actually cause them to fall into sin themselves. Indirect communication is one of the biggest barriers to God-honouring Christian relationships. So don’t do it.
5. Go and talk to the person in question, preferably face-to-face. This, of course, is hard to do. No-one likes to be confronted, most people don’t like confronting others. Most of us just want to keep things “nice”. But keeping things nice isn’t Christian either. If there’s a problem between two believers, the Christian thing to do is to sort it out by speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).
6. When you do talk to the person in question, don’t accuse them of anything. Instead, describe how you feel and what happened to make you feel that way. Ask them if they can help you to understand what has happened and why.
7. Work out if there’s anything you’ve done wrong yourself and if so, apologise for it and ask for forgiveness.
8. If it turns out that you have been wronged, offer to forgive the person without requiring them to say sorry first. That’s what God has done for us – remember: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9. Make every effort to restore a normal relationship with the person who has wronged you. It’s easy to say sorry and offer forgiveness but then to distance yourself from that person. True reconciliation will actually mean that your relationship is even better than it was before because you’ve experienced something that is at the heart of the gospel and therefore at the heart of all good Christian relationships. How incredible that by the power of the gospel God can strengthen relationships even through our own sin!
10. And finally, keep praying. Pray for both yourself and for your brother or sister – that you will both truly repent and genuinely forgive wherever it’s needed and that God will protect you from further disputes.
