Conflict Happens

Over the last five years, I have been taking Bible classes. During this time I have come to realize that what we are studying is what will be brought into my life. The latest class is "Conflict Management for Church Leaders." So what arises but conflict... at home, at work and at church. This gave me the opportunity to put the lessons of this class into action.

One question through out this study kept coming to mind... if we are one body, as the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 12:12, why does conflict happen? I have concluded that conflict happens because of our backgrounds, our personalities, our history, and our environmental factors. 

All out backgrounds are different. No one else has had the same experiences at the same time in the same place. You may have had similar ones but not identical. The experiences we go through help to shape who we are and what we believe.

Our personalities are all different. Are you a logical thinker? Do you crave conflict or avoid it? Are you negative or positive? Do you know yourself and what  makes you a better person? Are you a people person (social butterfly) or the opposite (social cockroach)? What makes you tick? Our personalities will encourage or discourage the types of experiences we are willing to expose ourselves to which in turn helps to make us who we are.

Our group(s) history affects our present and future. We are leary of situation that arise because of what has happened to us before. Are we willing to open ourselves up again? Are we able to do things differently? Are we able to remember the past but not all it to limit our future? Do we get stuck in "we've done that before and it didn't work"? Can we get beyond it?

Environmental factors are things that we cannot necessarily control... job lose, economic depression, lay offs, natural disasters. They are all things that at some point will affect us all, but do we allow them to control our lives? 

In answer to my question, conflict happens because we are all different. I guess the important thing is not why it happens but how we react to it.