As community grows and develops, one of the things that grows and develops right alongside that community it would be the many new opportunities for conflict. These conflicts are of two kinds.
The first has to do with ordinary Christians with ordinary blind spots trying to get along with other ordinary Christians with ordinary blind spots. Issues will arise, and misunderstandings will abound, and the selfish ones will think they are being selfless and the selfless ones will think they are being selfish. The problems will include irascible fathers and disobedient children, difficult investors and irresponsible entrepreneurs, and those who are theologically obtuse colliding with others who are theological obtuse in a different area. When you want a community to grow, this is what it is that you want, and so we should enter into all of it with a good will—eager to cover all kinds of things in love. “The discretion of a man deferreth his anger; And it is his glory to pass over a transgression” (Prov. 19:11). Do you want the glory of God to rest upon your endeavors? Then start overlooking transgressions. You’ll know that you are doing this in the right spirit if when you discover that the actual transgression was yours, and that other people had been covering it graciously for you because they love you, you simply bow your head in humility and gratitude.
But the second source of conflict is harder to address because it arises from a malevolent spirit. The origins of conflict here would be bitterness, malice, envy, ambition, insecure vanity, and more bitterness. Some kind of spiritual rat lives deep inside the soul, and is quite busy chewing everything up. The goal of this kind of person is to be close enough to be a parasite to the host community, but distant enough to be able to deny having anything to do with it. This is the kind of conflict that James addresses in the fourth chapter of his epistle. Where do conflicts come from? They come from a desire to be friends with the world (Jas. 4:4). There is no solution to this kind of conflict apart from the bitter one simply repenting of that friendship with the world and the bitterness it necessarily engenders.
A helpful distinction, and one that is usually not hard to discern. Thank you.
Q: Is it possible to reprove a particular sin and at the same time overlook it?
This post is like a golden nugget. A gold nugget that grandma told you she was going to give you, passed away without doing so and was found three days before your house foreclosed, and having been found is of more value than when grandma first told you about it. Thank you.