Joy Blogger

By Barbara Moon

All real relationships involve conflict and confrontation. I find that it’s difficult for many people to resolve either very well, mainly because of immaturity or unhealed issues from the past. The Life Model encourages us to work on both immaturity and unhealed issues. I believe that along with growing and healing, we can learn some skills that will help us with conflict resolution, as we stop taking the easy road after a fight. Most of us either act like nothing happened or we hold grudges and build walls. I want to suggest some skills that will help us return to joy more easily after distress and disagreements, will help us be able to “fight” more fairly, and will encourage us to “speak the truth in love” when necessary. Some of these skills can be applied to both conflict and confrontation, but for my purposes here, I will speak of them separately. I am considering that conflict can erupt at any moment for diverse reasons, while confrontation is more planned and thought out. Then during a confrontation, conflict can arise.

Both resolving conflict and confronting in love are Adult level skills involving mutual satisfaction and returning two or more to joy at the same time. Adults with earned Adult, Parent or Elder maturity can usually work through issues without a mediator, but those with Infant or Child maturity will often need a third party. In relationships where one or both people are chronologically adults but Infant or Child maturity, these principles can be modeled and taught as part of helping grow maturity. If the concepts are modeled and taught to children as they grow up, they will be on the road to perfecting them as adults.

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In the Life Model we are encouraged to live from our hearts instead of the sark. Before I knew about the Life Model, I used different words when talking about this concept. These words have helped me apply the concept. Perhaps expanding the semantics here will make it easier for others to apply this truth as well. What I learned years ago helped me not only live from my own heart, but it helped me love others unconditionally. That is the emphasis I would like to make here.

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For a long time now, I have been trying to find a way to describe the extent of the difference between Christian Formation and traditional forms of discipleship training. It’s a much bigger paradigm shift than many realize, and communicating that difference is something of a challenge. Because much of the terminology is familiar, it is easy to think that Formation is just another program like all the rest.

I think perhaps the difference between sailing and rowing provides an excellent analogy for the difference between Formation and older forms of discipleship. So I have written an article with that in mind, with the hope that this will make for a better understanding of how significant this paradigm shift really is. Please download the document from this link and then feel free to offer your comments here.

—David