Difficult relationships build God’s character in us

Ignore the one who irritates.

Banish the one who offends.

Avoid the hard work of peacemaking.

Our comfort-craving selves so often tell us to disengage from difficult relationships. The pull to be free from fractured relationships, either briefly or permanently, is both powerful and primal.

It’s also a damaging, defiant rejection of God’s best.

For Christians, the consequences of bailing on relationships are serious. The church, a visible expression of Jesus Christ in the world, is weakened each time we choose a grudge over forgiveness, indifference over love, selfishness over unity.

When the world around us sees us bail, the church’s witness is tarnished.

The Bible suggests that relationships are not only a blessing for our pleasure, but tools he uses to build his character in us.

God forgives; we learn forgiveness by refusing to give up on those who’ve disappointed us. God loves; we learn to love by enduring in friendship with those who are at times unlovely. God is gracious; we learn grace by blessing others when they haven’t earned our blessing.

For relationships to work as God intends, we’ve got to get rid of the silly notion that his primary desire is that we be happy.

Actually, God’s primary desire is for us to be holy. And we grow in holiness, in part, by staying in relationships with people as imperfect as us, straining ourselves to love, forbear, forgive, serve – all the stuff that Jesus did when he walked this Earth.

The Bible borrows an image from the world of architecture and construction to describe God’s plan for relationships: “So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another” (Romans 14:19 – NASB).

Relationships among Christians are like construction sites; each person is being built up spiritually, made more and more like Jesus. God is doing this work, and the tools he uses include our interactions with one another.

When we disengage from difficult relationships, it’s like leaving the construction site. We miss out on the opportunity to grow in our likeness to Christ through the very difficulties we so desperately want to avoid.

The notion of pursuing peace is critical. It suggests that harmony is something we ought to crave so much we’ll chase it down at great expense to ourselves.

Obviously, a primary obstacle to growing in our relationships is complacency – simply not caring enough to do the hard work of forgiving, accepting, forbearing. It is, after all, so much easier to disengage, ignore, marginalize.

I know myself well enough to recognize another obstacle to stronger relationships – plain old selfishness: “Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself …” (Romans 15:2-3 – NLT).

Strong relationships – relationships that are not merely pleasing to us, but actually benefit us and others – require that we be increasingly “other”-focused. Self-focus kills relationships.

If you’re normal, you’ve got relationships that need work. No need to run from this – it’s actually God’s design that it be this way. It’s one way that he makes our character more like his.

As you’ve read this column, perhaps God has brought a specific person to your mind. Now you’ve got a choice.

Will you ignore? Banish? Avoid?

Or will you trust in God to help you be the kind of friend to others that Jesus Christ is to you?