This year our school theme is “Seeking Shalom.” We’re looking at what it means to attain shalom—God’s fullness, justice, mercy, and wholeness—individually and as a community. Our cultural divisiveness is one of the greatest impediments to seeking shalom in our day. We’re conditioned for it, aren’t we? Social media anonymity allows us to make comments directed toward others we would have never previously made face-to-face. News media programs are designed in a quick debate format, with people on either side of an issue arguing in sometimes personal ways over social, political, and cultural issues.
In a post-COVID world, it seems we’re shorter with each other, more likely to take offense, operating on a quicker trigger. We’re conditioned toward incivility, toward suspicion of one another. Our first instinct becomes to attack rather than to listen and understand.
Last year I wrote about an article from David Brooks in The Atlantic entitled, How America Got Mean. The article addresses why, among other things, anger, divisiveness, and abusive behavior have become cultural norms. Brooks notes that the reasons commonly offered for this condition—social media, the breakdown of community and resulting isolation, or increasing diversity has the majority culture panicked, or that high-income inequality forces people to withdraw and lose hope—are only partially true.
The underlying problem, according to Brooks, is a failure to form our people’s moral fiber from one generation to the next, whether in our schools, churches, or homes. Because society and its institutions have neglected to help people learn to restrain their selfishness, teach basic social skills, and find purpose in living, we no longer know how to treat each other with kindness and compassion. Selfishness has free rein.
For years, our school community has served as a beacon for a different way. One of Grace’s hallmarks over the years has been its sense of community—the way people love each other. Our people who are struggling or in pain over loss or illness often comment about how our community rallies around them, loving and caring for them well. This sense of community draws people to our school and keeps them here. It also provides a culture of love and caring, operating as a catalyst for great learning at Grace.
But this culture of community, of shalom, doesn’t just happen. We have to pray for it and fight for it. We must overcome our innate fear and suspiciousness and our tendency to fail to trust and think the worst of each other. In other words, we have to make the decision not to treat each other as consumers but to love with Christ’s love. And, by “to love,” I mean to make the conscious decision to be all for each other.
That’s not easy to do in a contentious culture, where our hearts are preconditioned for divisiveness. We need the supernatural grace of Jesus to change us into something new.
Being united people in a contentious culture is not a novel problem. James, the brother of Jesus, addressed similar issues in the Jerusalem church. James 4 admonishes the church community, observing that their infighting stemmed from unfulfilled desires:
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet, but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures….don’t you know that friendship with the world means being an enemy of God?…Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
What James says is so true. When you think about it, whether it’s in our school community or elsewhere, almost all fighting, quarreling, or divisiveness comes from either wanting something we don’t really need or shouldn’t have, or using illegitimate means to get it, like manipulation, force, intimidation, or anger. Often it’s both of these things.
I see this play out in our community at times when we’re concerned with our kids’ grades or with watching them endure some degree of hardship in their lives. There are times when we must advocate for our child’s safety, ensuring it is legitimate and not a result of our overprotectiveness, or when we truly need to stand up for their rights. But, so often, their hardship is God-ordained, sent to them in a Genesis 3 world to help them grow and be transformed into all God wants them to be. And we must have the wisdom God promises when we ask it to discern which is which.
As Paul David Tripp says in New Morning Mercies, “But here’s what you have to face. God, for your good and his glory, has chosen to keep you for a season in this broken-down world. He has chosen to use the hardships of this world to complete the work he has begun with you. He does not leave you alone…he blesses you with new morning mercies.” God has created opportunities for our children to develop and learn to rely on Jesus for these mercies, a necessary practice for them to become healthy, flourishing disciples of Jesus for the rest of their lives, long after we’re gone.
We do them a grave disservice when, in some misguided attempt to secure an outcome we deem desirable for them, we rush in and try to protect them from God’s work in their lives instead of coaching and praying them through what God is doing. What’s even worse, when we try to manipulate, force, or intimidate the other adults or children within our community to achieve that result, we’ve not only stood in God’s way in molding and shaping our kids, but we’ve damaged the community that is helping them flourish and grow. This is not resisting the devil, as James warns, but yielding to him.
It’s not easy to know when to stay out and when to step in. That requires a lot of prayer, wisdom, and discernment, as well as seeking the wise counsel of others who we know are godly people who have gone before us. But, it’s almost never good and healthy for the Christian community or for ourselves to go “scorched earth” on the adults and children in community with us when we do step in. Intimidation, manipulation, anger, and suspicion are almost always sinful ways of resolving conflict, or of trying to heal, restore, and create a culture of shalom.
So, what are we to do? How should we avoid divisiveness in the community and seek to resolve concerns and issues in healthy, God-honoring ways? James tells us to purify our hearts and humble ourselves. This means to do the heart work of going before the Lord and submitting my concerns in prayer before him first. Sometimes this can look pretty “psalmic,” like David crying out to the Lord, it may involve expressing hurt or anger to God. It always involves praying for the people I’m dealing with, not only to change their hearts, but also to change my own heart towards them. This process allows the Holy Spirit to work on us first, giving us the spirit and mindset to be shalom-seekers and peacemakers, rather than demanding or harsh, when the Lord does lead us to confront.
I’m also encouraged in how to engage conflict in community-honoring, transformational ways by Isaiah’s prophecy of Jesus in 42:1–7. In the midst of proclaiming the Messiah’s almighty power and authority, Isaiah tells us, “a bruised reed he will not break and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.” This prophecy points to the gentleness and meekness of Jesus.
In a great article on this Isaiah passage on the Desiring God website, Sam Alberry notes that, “Part of the wonder is that Jesus is able to combine what we so easily separate. In our experience, those who are gentlest often lack strength and force when necessary, while those who are strongest often lack the capacity for gentleness and restraint. But Jesus exemplifies perfect gentleness and awesome strength. No one is crushed by mistake. There is never any friendly fire or collateral damage.”
The beauty of following Jesus is that we can trust the Almighty God to fight our battles for us; we can trust him to bring justice and vindication where necessary. He has all of the universe’s power at his disposal, and he will see perfect justice done. Every act of surrendering justice to him, of not trying to take it on ourselves (we almost always will muck it up), is an act of trust in him. It then frees us up to be gentle and meek, seek to understand and listen, persuade where persuasion is necessary, forgive and seek forgiveness, and release into God’s hands. All these things release pain and bitterness in our lives, teach our children a better way, promote biblical community, and glorify God.
Every manifestation of Christ’s Church, including this school community, aims to exemplify a better way for the world, attracting those who are unfamiliar with Jesus with its charm and beauty. But a community is made up of people, and our community includes you. Your decisions, toward Jesus or away from him, shape who we will be. We trust you, and we need you to choose his shalom.
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