S2: Conflict, Yes Lets Talk About Conflict

Do we have to dance? No, I don't. Welcome to MU Talks, ladies and gentlemen, coming to you from the recording studios of Multnomah University, but not in any way affiliated with Multnomah, it's your friends Aline and Rob, two higher educators. Two educators in a higher education institution.

Nah, just educators. Okay.

We're just two people.

Very excited to be with you. This is Aline and Rob welcoming you to another episode of MU Talks, Season 2. Today we are talking about conflict. We are not going to have a conflict. We're going to talk about conflict from both our ordinary lives and as an academic exercise, something that should be present, or should it be present in academia? And because to. In. In our world today, we are surrounded by forms of conflict. Why not just talk about it? And so very excited to introduce to you. And this is a tradition in MU Talks. This is a tradition we need to keep up because it's important. Reverend Dr. Robert James Hildebrand.

Yeah.

James Hildebrand, absolutely. Welcome to another episode. It really is a pleasure. We are going to bring some guests, some exciting guests in the next seasons. We've secure discussions with them and I'm excited about that. But Rob, walk us a little bit through your opinion, your thoughts on conflict.

Well, it just. Let's start off talking about. It seems like there's just so much of it in the world today. Like, it seems like everything, you know, you make a social media post and it's. It's difficult to avoid. And this will be an interesting discussion because I think it sounds like you, you. You're of, you know, you're of the understanding that the. That conflict can be useful and it can be helpful. Yeah. I don't want to speak for you, and I'm coming from a, you know, a good Mennonite background Where, where can I hide from conflict? Can I run from it is how. I'm not trying to diss all the Mennonites here. I'm going to start a big fight. Mennonites are gonna get mad at me.

But they're not gonna conflict. They're not gonna come out.

Our whole history is leaving countries to get away from oppressive regimes. That's our. That's our story.

Like, you don't want us here. We're just gonna leave.

We're going to Canada. We're going to Russia. We're going to Mexico. I came to America so this, it could be interesting discussion.

Great country to run away from conflict.

What? Russia? America, Canada. Oh, yeah. Okay. So it would seem. L. Eh. Yeah. Yeah. No There's a lot of conflict. I mean, if you're on social media, if you're watching this thing on social media, you've seen people fighting about stuff yesterday. Speaking of fight. So I, I was reading along and somebody put an article on the, on the old Internet, on the old social media saying that there can be a financial advantage to having a single income family strategy. And I thought that's fascinating. Nobody would say that. Nobody says, I thought that's really interesting. So I thought I'm going to post that. So I posted it because that's kind of been. Leslie into my story. And then, and everybody was super gracious. But that definitely offended some people. They're like, you know, hold on. Yeah, wait a minute, are you attacking me? And I was like, oh no, I'm not trying to tell you what to do with your life. I'm just saying there's at least one economist in the world that thinks it could work. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying you should do it.

You're going for the math.

Yeah, but anyways. But it's just hard, you know, folks, you know, think about one thing and hear something and pretty soon everybody's mad. Why do you think, why do you think it is like it seems worse online? Does it or not?

Yeah, I think it's much easier. I mean there's a whole discussion and I'm, I don't think I'm a specialist in the psychology of how people communicate using technology and using social. But even in, even in ministry, Youth ministry.

Yeah.

Realize like kids that would never curse at you in like in your face. There's using fault language in, in online. Like there's, like it doesn't matter, like it just goes nowhere. Like it, it doesn't hurt anybody. And I always observe this personally. What's interesting so before we actually get in the thick of it, is you are not comfortable with conflict.

No, I don't like conflict.

Okay.

I want to hide in the closet.

I have, I, I am very comfortable with confrontation with conflict. But it's very interesting because I started with being very comfortable with it and I landed with the fact that I'm comfortable with it doesn't mean I have to go through every single one of them.

Right.

And now even though I'm okay with confrontation, you know, some people are strongly non confrontational, I'm okay with confrontation. If I have to tell you something, I would tell.

Yeah.

But these days I'm not, I would avoid as much as I can. If we have to Go through it. We'll go through it.

Yeah.

But I will do everything in my power and strength to avoid it. Even if I'm comfortable with it. The fact that you're comfortable with it does not mean that you should do it. That took me a few years to learn the difference between, well, if I'm comfortable, I'm just going to do it. No, no, no, no. If you're comfortable with it, doesn't mean the other person is comfortable with it.

In fact, sometimes maybe it's the people that are uncomfortable that should be doing it more because there's things that need to be said, and sometimes the guys that are comfortable need to back off a little bit.

And really, you know, somebody said you can only die on one hill, so don't, you know, choose it wisely because really, truly, you can only die.

I like that.

Right. Don't like, you know, choose the hill to die on. Well, you only die on one, so stop choosing so many. You know, all this. But the idea is that conflict. I actually am interested to hear your thoughts on it. And especially in the classroom, in the academia, in an environment where I think now the bar is set lower for what triggers conflict.

Yeah.

Even though we should be wrestling with all kinds of things in the classroom right now, these days, whether it's an online classroom or if it's. If it's a traditional classroom. I think conflict is redefined, is defined differently. I also think we have an infusion of reasons to generate conflict from racial tensions, from brokenness, from politics, politics, from collective trauma, from everything that is really happening right now has elevated the, the tension level to everything can spark a conflict. You don't even know where you start from. But here's. And I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Here's what I've always considered. There's a. There's a bell of conflict.

Right.

It starts from something and then it just. It just elevates, elevates, elevates. And then it gets to a peak conflict. All conflict, whether it's verbal, whether it's physical, gets to a peak in that conflict. And then it's. It hits something. Somebody threw a chair or something happened. Elevated and escalated so bad.

This is terrible.

And there is a peak to that conflict, and then it starts descending. Right. Some things are de. Escalating after something has happened significantly. And then you, you know, you kind of, you know, go down moderate. What is that? It's interesting, is the Canadian approach to health education. I've always. To health care. I've always, you know, prevention is more important than treatment. I've always liked that. So what do you do to kind of prevent the conflict? Because it's inevitable that it's going happen. So. So that, you know, you escalated. What is the peak? But the most interesting thing to conflict that I really enjoyed is the fact that what you do in the. This in the de escalation and the coming down on the conflict will determine if that conflict is going to come back worse.

Right.

And it's fascinating to me that we don't see it like that. We kind of de escalate. You know, you say something in. In a family argument or anybody, you escalated. It just explodes. You say something you don't want to do de escalates, and then you think you're coming back to normal. Not.

Yeah, something is already kind of end with a couple of digs or something. Yeah. Or what. Yeah. What are the healthy. What are the unhealthy de escalations? What are the healthy ones?

And then you actually don't go back to deal with what escalated this in the first place. What. How did I get here to this curve. And what do you do? Going down will determine what, you know, de escalating this will determine whether you apologize, you stop, you realize, hey, how did we end up here? You talk to it, you put some principles in place. I don't know what happens, but we rarely do that. Whether it's in the professional setting, what's in the personal setting. We rarely come back and say, you know what, let's figure things out, because this is not healthy. This is not. And then the next one is actually worse. So thoughts from your perspective. You don't have to respond to that. That was just my. That is the way I see conflict every time it's happening. I visualize it to say, this has been an escalation.

Yeah. Trying to understand, you know, from the other point, other person's perspective what's going on and why they feel so strongly about it. I've seen a lot of conflicts lately, and it's. It can be something as dumb as, like, I cheer for the Oregon Ducks. Go Ducks. And I'm always, you know, on the boards reading about what's happening with the offense or somebody's complaining about the coach or whatever. And. And it's been fascinating to me watching fans of the same team stare into each other for their opinions. And it seems like it's getting worse. There was a Netflix show that came out. I think we may have even talked about it. I believe it was called the Social Dilemma. And one of the big. Yeah, it's fascinating. Fascinating. You should definitely watch it on. On Netflix. Yes, we'll take an advertisement from Netflix revenue.

Yes, yes, it was. We should.

All of our viewers. Absolutely. No, sorry. Anyways, they. They.

Yeah.

So the big idea, One of the big ideas is that these social networks are essentially, obviously, they're. They're businesses and they're trying to make money. And so they. They're not real cons. They're not as concerned with what they do to society and what they do with us as just the fact that we're still with them. And. And you've maybe heard if you're not being sold a product, you are the product. That kind of thing. Yes. And so there. What they were suggesting is that. That these algorithms, you know, create echo chambers because they know that we like to hear people that agree with us, and we'd like to hear our own arguments parroted back. And so they, you know, you're on your Facebook or whatever social media you're using, depending on your age, probably, and you're reading all this stuff, and then. And everything you see agrees with you, all the memes. And then if you don't like somebody, you hide them or you unfriend them, and that just reinforces it. So you got this echo chamber of everybody agrees with me. And then you start thinking, well, how can anyone disagree? Look, everybody's here. And then you finally run into somebody that disagrees with you, and you're like, oh, that guy must be an idiot. And. And that has happened in so many different issues, political issues, the virus, vaccines, masks, I mean, you name it, sports, it just. It goes on and on. And so to me, that's one of the. One of the leading causes of what I see as an expanded amount of conflict, a greater amount of conflict these days.

So I think one of the. One of the things you mentioned to me one time, it was a while ago, is how right now you can even post, like, baby milk on Facebook. And people can argue about that. I mean, they can legitimately. It doesn't matter. The. The fires, you know, in California when we had that, like, people argued and fought, like, the source of it. I don't think. Not like, not one subject is safe from generating some form of conflict.

Feels that way.

It does feel.

The sky is blue. Not for. Not. Except for climate change.

Yeah.

You know, it's gonna go.

So everything has. So I'm curious to unpack this a little bit with you. So I. You mentioned social media.

Yeah.

How much do you Think because I do have my own opinions about it. But I'm curious about how much do you think that can conditions the way people also interact in real life and how they treat certain subjects?

I mean it conditions. Interesting. That's a really interesting question. Of course everybody always says that, you know, you get away with stuff online because you don't. No one's going to punch you or you even don't see their reaction right away. Like in real life if I say something right now, I see you wince or.

Yes.

Or you're hurt and then I feel bad, pull back a bit, you know. But on social media you just, you know, you're mad and so you fling your fetchel and feculence. I love that phrase at the screen and you just blah blah, blah and then you kind of leave it and you go away. Then everything blows up. So you know, how much does that affect our in person interactions? I think, I wonder if the biggest way would be just the fact that a lot of people have cut people out of their lives. Like you don't believe in the vaccine, you're not my friend. Or you believe in the demon vaccine, you're not my friend. And then so then again the echo chambers are reinforced.

You can unfriend easily or easier. Yeah, because you know, I was, I participated in a discussion of artificial intelligence and it was a great discussion. I really enjoyed the topic. And the people that were there were the ones that actually invested significant time. One of the, one of the most fascinating comments that I've heard there was that in our generation, in our generation the most brilliant minds to known in our generation work. In what field do you think the most brilliant minds.

I have no idea.

Marketing and advertising.

Interesting.

So right now they're saying, you know, they can't get people to work in on, on scientific things the most brilliant or on artificial intelligence. That was the complaint that came from that because most brilliant minds right now went to develop either artificial intelligence or things in marketing and advertising. One, because the money's there and two, because the greatest developments and, and investments of time and energy in really figuring out formulas to actually convince people manipulate and all this are now happening in marketing and advertising. I don't think I've heard one piece of information that was a little bit more concerning to me than you have. The most brilliant minds right now investing their time and energy in something that's.

Unhappy to make life, to make us.

Need something insufficient with our minds. But it's also generating friction. It's also moving. I think the virtual Environment, the virtual world, deeper into our physical world, deeper into our face to face interactions. And the comment that came from that conversation that I thought it was interesting and I'm curious what you think to the conversation on social media was the fact that right now most of Facebook is ran by artificial intelligence.

Yeah, interesting.

It's. And, and the person that was saying that was saying look, and immediately you kind of felt the bent that they had and their, you know, their perspective. But they said from a perspective of increasing interaction and engagement in. On Facebook artificial intelligence that their artificial intelligence has been highly successful. It has done exactly what it was meant to do. But in the, the downfall of that was. So it was, it did what it was supposed to do, but it also disseminated a lot of wrong information and started policing things that were not and doing all these things. And, and this person was kind of saying towards the vaccine and non vaccine that it started disseminating. What if somebody posted it? It create. Took it through all the echo chambers and it kind of, it promoted that voice because it didn't see the difference between the content. He was just saying, oh, this is creating some movement. Yeah, I'm going to use this, go with it.

It's immoral.

So it's completely immortal. And he used that as a, as, as triggering friction. But now, and, and it was built specifically to create some form of tension. So now people approaching subjects. I think this is, this is just me connecting two dots that might not be there and that's why I'm open for critique in this. But the way I see people interacting on social media is now becoming, you know, it's easier to unfriend somebody if you don't like what they're saying. This already produces tension. Instead of opening your mind to say why, why do they think like that? I'm actually curious. I find that it's definitely that tension in that environment that was artificially created to get whoever's in there to create friction.

Yeah.

And engagement is now bleeding into our daily life.

Yeah, no, I would buy that for sure. Yeah. It's interesting. The algorithms or the AI, it's like they've monetized outrage and they've monetized conflict and they're using these things because they know that they trigger us and they get us excited and then people start engaging and watching. Yeah. It's capitalism at its worst. And I'm not an opponent of capitalism. But this is. Sometimes society evolves in ways to its detriment. And this would, I think, be an example.

Yes, Dr. Domani Pothen.

Yeah.

Define capitalism as legalized envy. And I thought it was. It was an interesting definition, but let me take us in a different.

Yeah, sure.

Question for you. So we're talking about conflict. Interesting subject. I love the fact that we're able to talk about conflict without having conflict. That's really good.

Has not come to blows yet.

Yeah, it does not come to any. We don't apparently disagree too much.

No, not yet.

But. Not yet. But here's something that I remember and it actually put me in a direction of. I think a good question, but you're going to be the judge of that.

Sure.

Traveled and worked for a while in South Sudan. South Sudan has experience from 1950 to 2005. They've only had 11 years of peace from 1972 to 1981. So you have generations, generations that were born into conflict and conflict at the worst of the worst nature. What was interesting when I interviewed a few for. For a research project, a few of the elders from the tribe is in the Dinka tradition, if somebody attacked their tribe, they spent. So they got attacked by a different somebody. Doesn't matter who attacked them after the attack. They never retaliated. They went under the tree and talked for three days. They said. It took three days to say, why did they attack us?

Yeah.

Did anybody do anything?

Right.

They did a discovery process. There was a process very well embedded in the Dinka heartbeat to say, we cannot retaliate after they have exhausted all options. And they realized and got to the conclusion that this was an intentional attack. This was a deliberate. This was all this. At that point they formed and. And they got, you know, people to ask the other tribe. There was. There was a process by which they knew retaliation to any kind of instigation had to be processed before any response was given.

Yeah.

And after that they went and said they attacked and they realized, okay, we were attacked with, you know, no reason. This was a deliberate thing. We need to now protect ourselves. And I found that to be fundamentally important and leads me to the conversation. Is there. Because I find that there's no more framework or principles by which now we frame conflict. If somebody touches me in anything, I have to respond instantly if it's a social media or in person, if there's no organized or perceived framework by which. By which whether. Is from. From a ministry perspective do we speak about, how are we. How are we supposed to. To respond to conflict? Is turning the other cheek working every single time. And how does it work? And what do you do? Who do you turn the other cheek to. Is there is this the of sort discussed and trained.

Yeah.

Or are we left everybody to figure out what is really an appropriate way to deal with any instigation or anything that we get poked at?

Yeah. I, I taught on Turning the Other Cheek yesterday actually for an hour. And we were talking. It's a church min. Class Introduction to Church Ministry. And we were talking about. I'm in a series on seven things that knock people out of working for churches. You know, just having worked in this job for a while, you run into a lot of folks that have had difficult experiences and sometimes made mistakes or got caught up in things. Things like just letting their life get out of balance or, or honesty or jealousy. Things that, you know, crazy things. And one of them is. And the biggest one by far is conflict, church conflict. Because anytime you put humans together, we're all selfish, we all want our own things. And you're going to have, you know, you're going to have rivalries and people, you know, people are going to be competitive and there's. Sometimes people just rub you the wrong way and there's going to be conflict. And so what I was telling him is, man, if you, if you decide to work for a church, you have to understand right now there will be times when people are nasty to you and people will be mean to you and, and honestly, the folks that survive long term are the ones that can take that and the ones that can't get out because it's going to happen whether you deserve it or not. People are, some people are not going to like you. Try as hard as you want to make people like you, you will not be able to. And so you have to decide what to do with it. And now here's my good Mennonite theology. Lots behind it, but just a sermon on the mount. You know, like, I think you have to be able to take, take a wrong and, and not retaliate. You know, you have to. And to do that requires the understanding that, you know, there is justice and there are sometimes when people do things wrong, but God is able to clear that up and God is able to judge and he doesn't need you to do it. You know, we want to retaliate so badly. That's not to say that you shouldn't address things or if there's issues that are problems, you can't talk to people or confront people. I like the idea of the sitting under the tree for three days. It's, it's not a bad idea.

Yeah. I mean, imagine how much would because most conflicts come from. There have to be two parties for that conflict, right? Yeah, there has to be a little.

Yeah. And, and, and I mean, the cultural narrative right now is, you know, what do you do? And I asked the class, what do you do if there's a bully? Everybody in the, in North America that watches movies would say, the movies would say, what you need to do is stand up to the bully and punch them. And that's. Does that work? Yeah, unless the bully brought a knife. You know, I mean, you look at our world, it doesn't seem to be working. I think my theory is that God knows human beings really well. And the reason he goes with the turn the other cheek thing is just because human beings. I don't want to go too long, but we're such. We're created in such a way that we strongly. We have this proclivity towards self deception. Like we want to believe that we're good. This is a Jungian thing. The whole idea of a shadow. Like, there's stuff about us that is bad, but we don't want to think about it, so we push it into a shadow. You know, like. And again, I don't go crazy, but like our society, what we do to animals or chickens, for example, I don't know if you've ever seen, you know, a slaughterhouse.

Yeah.

Terrible things to animal. We don't think about it. We just don't. You know, we. Because we want to imagine ourselves to be good, we think back on a war and I'll be even more careful, like World War II. And, and we're real open about the bad stuff the other guys did. But we're. You haven't seen a lot of movies on Dresden, you know, in North America. You don't see. We see a lot of movies about the consequences. Concentration camps, because those guys are bad. But, you know, so we push stuff into the shadow, you know, we want to believe we're good. The example I always give my students is you ever been walking down a mall and all of a sudden you see a mirror that you didn't know was coming, and then you get a look at yourself without preparing yourself to realize you're going to see yourself. You know that feeling. And you're just like, especially as you're older, you're like, oh, yeah. And, and because we don't want to be, you know, it's like seeing a picture online. Someone took of us and we weren't ready for. And we're like, oh, what a terrible picture. No, it's an Accurate picture. It's just. You didn't have time to get your head just right. So we wake up in the morning and we look at ourselves. We're like, oh, I don't like it. And we do our hair or makeup or whatever, and we stand just a certain way and we angle our chin so you don't see the double chin. And you got everything perfect. And then we walk away from the mirror. We want to believe that that's us. We prefer the illusion. And I think the same thing happens in conflict. So we get into a situation where. Where someone's bothered us and we just, you know, we want to make them the bad guy and we want to believe that. So if you ever had this. And I'm almost done here. And so you've ever had this thing where you're lying there at night, you're mad at somebody, and you just keep going over stuff you're mad about. Like you just can't sleep because you keep going, oh, they did this. And, oh, it's like, oh, I'm right. You're just getting more fired up and more fired up. I mean, not us, because we're, you know, guys. But of course, people that get mad.

We don't have large shadows.

But no, no, you know, you're lying there. You're just getting super, super frustrated. And. And my question is, why, if. If someone has done something wrong, why do you have to keep going over it? Why can't you just go, yeah, they wronged me, and move on? I think on a subconscious level, we realize there's two sides to the story and we desperately want to vilify the other. Because when we vilify the other, then we can justify our retribution, our revenge. And to me, this is what's happening internationally when countries are fighting each other and they're like, well, we don't want to drop an atomic bomb on you, but you did start it and you did this. And so, yeah, we're gonna, you know, incinerate your children or things that human beings probably shouldn't do. It's fascinating, the levels to which we go. And I think self deception is at the heart of it, which is why. And it's the very last thing. Which is. Which is why the teaching of Jesus is so brilliant. Because if you turn the other cheek, then you just bypass that whole thing. You're just like, no, I'm gonna do good to my enemies. I'm gonna, you know, someone was nasty to me on the social media or whatever. I'm just gonna let that Go. I'm going to trust God to judge if he wants to judge. And I'm just going to move on. I'm going to forgive, I'm going to act with kindness. It works. That's my, there's a step back from.

The pulpit now here, you know, to, to look deep into the source of conflict. Somebody, somebody defined pride as coming from a massive insecurity. So you would think what pride would come from confidence. But pride comes from this massive insecurity and self worth. You question your own worth and you had to fill that gap with, with pride. And I think conflict does come from an unsettled heart in which you need to battle for the things, you need to go to war with the people around you for the things that you believe because if they question them, they've questioned you and you need to defend those things. They come from an insecurity, a deep insecurity. And, and, and there's, there's never been a time when I think personal freedoms or opinions are protected. Now it doesn't matter what you believe, you know, we're going to do this, you're going to do that. And I think it heightened the desire. And this is where I see a role for academia. The academia should be, and, and across the, across the United States, across the world should be the greatest sandbox the humanity has ever created for us to wrestle and learn principles of dealing with hot topics and really mechanisms, whether it's. We start a three day process of saying, you know, hey, three days, you're not allowed to go after this person to see if, if your passion does not cool off in two, three days. And what's left is just an argument.

That you can just more reasonable and less angry.

I was, I was always fascinated by people to get into fights in sports.

Yeah.

Especially if they're not pros. Right. I mean, you're playing, you know, behind your house with three neighbors and all of a sudden somebody starts throwing rocks and I'm like, hey, this is not your salary. Why are passionate about this? Right. Why, why is this generating such a violent reaction? I never believed, but I think it becomes, you know, it comes from this, from this, this place of, you know, if I'm not right, you know, somebody, if somebody's right, somebody has to be wrong.

Yeah.

And it's, it's problematic thoughts for academia and conflict or anything else.

No, I mean, I love that, the whole confidence thing, like, you know, if somebody's. And sometimes, you know, when you're criticized or something like that, you know, we're on the YouTube with the Chateau. And so we get some really good comments and then we get some every once in a while, crazy ones. Like someone will say like, oh, it's the spirit of the old French guys living in your chateau or something. And I don't, I'm not kind of like, nah, I think it's a spider, you know, like it's not. I don't think that's what it is. Or the other day, oh, your, our live video ended, by the way. Yeah, the other. Or, or perhaps somebody will make a criticism that's just obviously not true. If you know yourself and, and when you're confident you're like, well, I know that that's not actually the truth, then you don't have to be quite so defensive. And you can not, not just result to the ad hominem attacks. You know, the smart guys can always deal with the issue. That's what I like. I like, you know, deal with the issue instead of come back with an. Instead of the person quip or something like that or some meme that's, you know, half accurate.

And it does take a lot of self discipline for you to do that, for you to not. And, but it also takes practice. I don't think people understand. That's why for me, academia is like for somebody to be in a university setting and to be able to talk about very, very different subjects that you're not comfortable with. But practice, what does that mean? How do you react? What have you seen, you know, what have you seen yourself do? When you're exposed to something that you're really passionate about, sometimes you do more conflict with something that you're more knowledge about, knowledgeable about. You think, okay, I own this topic. Don't you dare come into my lane. And sometimes you do, you do conflict for things that, you know, you're not comfortable. People are hurting you because they talk about something that it's sensitive to you, that you've been through some experience and you feel that they're insensitive to that. There are many, many, many things. But just to learn about yourself and put yourself in a position for people to say different things. I think academia should be the, the largest sandbox created so we can actually wrestle with that.

A little bit more dispassionate.

Yeah, I, we are almost at time. I wanna, I'm gonna do my concluding thought and then I want to hear your, your thoughts. There's much that can be said about this, but there is a passage that I always go back to.

Yeah.

Because it Convinced me. It doesn't elevate me. It convicts me in, in a very deep way.

Right.

And this is, this is in second Timothy. Right. Last book that Paul wrote, the last letter, and it's kind of like know his last concluding thoughts. And he's talking about this, but he said, a servant of the Lord.

Yeah.

Must not be quarrelsome, but must be kind to everyone. Oh, that hurts me, man, because I don't know really, I mean, everyone, like, you know, some, most. But yeah, it said able to teach.

Yeah.

Patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

I like that. Right.

God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and, and they may come to their sense and escape the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. But the level of how many times Paul is telling is telling Timothy, like, not quarrelsome, kind, gentle, able to teach and just take it easy and do not react, do not get into this. Right. I find it to be like, I always come back to this past message because it talks about, I think it's a mandate for the new mission statement for who we should be in this world. Right. And it's difficult I'm the first one to tell you, especially for somebody that is okay with confrontation. This verse right here, it's like, I need to read it daily to start my day with. But it's, it's when you think about the bigger picture of who is basically behind this conversation. God may perhaps give them repentance. I, I really love this concept. Concluding thoughts.

That's beautiful. Yeah. I woke up with the same verse in my mind. The Lord's servant must not quarrel or must be not be quarrelsome. And you know, the passage about, you know, where do these fights and quarrels come from? You know, and even Philippians 2, how Jesus put others first and think about himself. Some beautiful stuff in scriptures. I know. I, I, I agree. I think practically speaking, practically speaking, a couple things. You know, when I'm in the middle of something online, sometimes I just take it, I make it unpublic for a day or two and I just, you know, I'm just like, ah, let's all cool down. I'm gonna cool down. I'm not gonna worry about, you know, because sometimes on online you're worried about what people are making you look like, like somebody said something. Yeah, look bad. And so you just take the whole thing off and calm down for a day. And then, and then when I can come back to you, I can be a little More reasonable. And you're not typing in anger, which. That's not good stuff, that typing in anger. That doesn't help anybody.

Yeah. It's never a good idea.

So just a practical thing. And I guess the other thing for me is choose my fights. Look back to you. I love that line you had about the others. You can only die once on a hill, so. Which hills again? That's great. Never thought of that before. It's good. You know, I. There's a lot of times I have weird opinions on stuff. I'm actually a bit of a contrarian. Doug Shack told me the other day, he's like, I think you're a contrarian. I said, no, I'm not. That's funny.

That went away, that argument.

There's no. Anyways, but, like, so I am a disagreeable kind of guy, even though I'm a Mennonite. And. And so I. But then at the end of the day, I'm kind of like. Like, the things I care about are not, you know, Covid or some treatment or some policy in government or some scientific climate. Like, I don't. That stuff doesn't. I mean, it's important, but it's not. A, it's not. It's not really in my lane. And B, it's not the ultimate thing I care about. I don't want to get into a fight on social media that's going to make people not respect me. And so when I talk about something truly important, like the scriptures, people are like, oh, that guy.

Yeah.

You know, with his crazy views. So I'm just gonna let that stuff go, you know, I don't know if your school makes you wear a mask or something. Whatever, you know, I don't like it. It's maybe a good policy. Maybe it's a dumb policy, but. But it's not my fight, you know, I'm gonna stick with the stuff that matters.

There's the fights.

Yeah.

You know, there was a. There was a fighter, actually a renowned fighter that became a Christian. And some people in there, in. In this person's neighborhood found out that he became a Christian and he walked out of his house, and they slapped him over the face.

Wow.

And he looked at them.

Right.

And he was really good. I mean, he was actually a really good fighter.

No doubt.

And he turned the other cheek.

Yeah.

And those. Those guys hit him again.

Yeah.

And said, well, gentlemen, the Bible doesn't say anything after this.

You've hit your limit.

It only says turn the other cheek. It doesn't say, just keep doing it. It doesn't say it, but I do think the Bible implies it. And there is, you know, we sometimes we do all kinds of things because we read and we want that text to justify what we want to do. And I, I think this is, this is a call for us to really allow ourselves to understand if we care more about winning that argument or really showing and displaying a grace for that person. So I think I wanted to leave you with this. What does the Bible say? Well, it only says that, but, you know, I'm pretty sure the rest is implied of brokenness and loving those people. We are here at the end of another episode and we've made it through this episode with no conflict. Ladies and gentlemen, if that is not an achievement for people that are still, it just still shows me that I'm live.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Still shows me that. Yeah, it shows me that I'm live. And we still had so few people with us.

Should have kept trying to look pretty.

Let me allow, Let me allow our respectable Reverend doctor Robert J. To land the plane with a very important disclaimer. Stay with us for the disclaimer.

This is going to be smooth.

Oh. Oh, I got you.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for listening to the MU Talks podcast with your friends Ali and Rob. The views and opinions expressed on the show are in no way related to Moment University. I hope you have a good day.

Have a good one, everybody. Talk to you soon. Sa.