I have a friend that said she once reached a point after a season of suffering that she asked herself if she really wanted to keep being a Christian -- did it really make a difference or mean anything in the end. She found herself in the book of Psalm 32, where is says "Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit," and realized that if there is one thing that distinguishes a follower of Jesus from a non-follower, it's that they will always know the freedom of forgiveness.
With a month of conflict behind me, some with even my best friends, I say hell-yeah. Though most people avoid conflict like the plague, there is actually no greater way to say I love you than be willing to confront it -- and no greater way to say I don't care than to continue ignoring it and let the natural course of a person becoming more and more distasteful to you run its full course. I have friends that I've lost or grown distant from because of maybe a word I said or something I did to hurt that I was unaware of -- simply because they chose not to tell me. In this month's issue of Vanity Fair, Angelina Jolie says of Billy Bob, "We just looked at each other one day and we had nothing to say to each other." That doesn't happen overnight.
And on the other side, one of my best friends is a person I've had more conflict with than anyone I know. Though there are plenty of Christians who don't cash in on the cow that brings new freedom, depth and understanding to relationships, I also must note that both of my above personal experiences are with people who are not followers, either in a partial or full sense -- no hating, that's just a fact. We're people and we all have a limit. We know it takes balls to engage in combat -- why don't we get that the same would be true about engaging in conflict?
Mr. and Mrs. Smith -- for how long?
