Under Fire from the Enemy // Dealing with Difficult People, Part 2

We all have some difficult people in our lives. You do. I do. So how do you deal with them – especially when you’re under fire from the enemy?

 

It’s Easy to Fight Wars

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but dealing with people, sometimes difficult people, is a big part of life, at home, at work, socially. And conflict can take its toll. Sometimes we feel as though we’re under pressure - as though we’re under fire, maybe through circumstances, maybe through what other people are doing - and right in the middle of that difficult space, we still have to deal with those difficult people, under fire. And in one of those perverse twists of life, in a sense there’s meaning in conflict; in a sense there’s meaning and dignity when we sacrifice in the midst of a conflict.

Most nations, my own, Australia and in fact, New Zealand, celebrate the sacrifice of their soldiers during war. In Australia it’s called ANZAC Day - the Australia New Zealand Army Corp and increasingly, that celebration is growing.

About twenty or thirty years ago people said, “oh it’s all war mongering and it’s all about this and that and it’s going to die and we can’t possibly continue celebrating war. And it’s funny, but we celebrate a day, in ANZAC Day, which is a day of great defeat. It remembers - maybe celebrates is the wrong word - it remembers that eighteen and a half thousand Australian soldiers were wounded or missing and seven and a half thousand were killed. Five thousand New Zealanders wounded and missing, two and a half thousand killed in this Gallipoli campaign in World War One which was such an enormous disaster.

And social commentators are saying, “look, the reason that these celebrations, right around the world, the reason that these sorts of days are being remembered, right around the world, where we are looking at our soldiers who were lost in battle, is that - well it’s not about war any more, it used to be about the glorification of war - but today it’s about sacrifice and hope. It’s all about the triumph of the spirit not about the victory in the battle.

These sorts of days, where we remember fallen soldiers, say with a voice that grows louder each year that we expect to find something good to happen, that we are still capable of becoming the kind of society that would justify the sacrifice of those who thought we were worth fighting for. In other words, people today are looking back on the sacrifice of the soldiers of their countries and saying, “You know, there’s meaning in that sacrifice, you know there’s humility, there’s giving, there’s something spiritual when these men under fire, were prepared to sacrifice their lives for me.”

There’s a large shopping centre near where I live, quite a new one - very ritzy, glitzy, you know - enormous, expensive clothes. And you see people milling around in that shopping centre, day after day, week after week, and that whole shopping centre - mall, shopping thing - is like an icon of our time. Yet as ritzy and glitzy as it is, it doesn’t have meaning and people are looking for meaning and it seems that in celebrations, like ANZAC Day, they’re finding that spiritual flame - that cenotaph, that bugle, that cool morning air, that shrine, that spiritual experience - people are finding meaning in sacrifice.

Now you might ask, “why don’t they find that in Jesus? Why don’t they find that in church?" And you look at the public media image of the church, with this denomination fighting that denomination and the systematic cover-up of child abuse and Christians who don’t look any different, actually, from the rest of the world. The salt, at least in its public image, has lost its flavour. The light has stopped shinning when people look at what Christianity is through the media. And let’s face it, we construct much of our reality about life through what we see in the media - it may not be fair, but that’s the perception. So I can’t imagine why they’re not knocking down the doors of our churches searching for the truth, can you?

A man whom I admire enormously, Michael Frost, once said to me - he said, “Holy living is mission.” In other words, the way that we live our lives as Christ followers, needs to be missional. We need to be salt and light, loving one another and as the shoppers are swilling around these shopping centers, what are they looking for? They’re looking for spiritual authenticity. They’re looking for sacrifice and love and community and acceptance, as they find on ANZAC Day. But you just don’t find that in shopping centers and as much as the ANZAC Day style of celebration around the world is a spiritual experience, it can never replace Jesus.

Why are we talking about conflict and battle? - because life is sometimes conflict and battle and when people look at the church, when people look at you and me as Christ followers, and they say, “Is this person for real? Is thi