Conflict and growth

A provocative report about children who have an enemy who torments the child raises an interesting question about the value of conflict. Can a tormentor help the child to grow into a stronger, healthier person? (Benedict Carey, “Enemies Can Be Good for a Child’s Growth,” New York Times, May 17, 2010). Obviously, the answer to that question depends upon a number of factors including the degree of abuse. Severe bullying, for example, can so overwhelm that it can push a child to suicide. But are milder forms of torment always bad?

Growth without conflict or overcoming obstacles is impossible. Hatchlings need the strength they derive from breaking through an eggshell. Physical growth demands energy, cells consuming (“burning”) carbohydrates and other nutrients, a form of conflict that transforms one set of molecular structures into another. Emotional growth demands that a child differentiate self from mother and then self from the world, processes that inevitably entail struggle to overcome attachments. That process continues through adolescence and sometimes into adulthood. The failure of a child to launch successfully into his or her own life is a source of humor but also of a life that never achieves its full potential.

How many individuals and how many organizations are conflict averse or even conflict avoidant?

Conversely, some people and organizations continually seek conflict. Genghis Khan by all accounts was one such person, unable to live at peace and only happy in war. In my service as a military chaplain, I met many individuals who thrived only when their life was full of drama; mental health professionals sometimes refer to such people as “drama queens” and “drama kings.”

One does not have to read very much of any of the four gospels to recognize a pattern of constant conflict in Jesus’ life. However, Jesus avoided conflict at the wrong time or when it seemed pointless, e.g., declining to go to Jerusalem before his time and apparently not explicitly teaching that the second-class status of women was wrong (although his actions clearly communicated that message).

The challenge in following Jesus, it seems to me, is to enter into conflicts that seem likely to offer an opportunity for growth, personally (for self or another) or organizationally. Conflicts that offer no realistic hope for becoming an occasion of growth seem pointless, adding turmoil (emotional or otherwise) with no payoff.