Embrace the Chaos

Navigating the Riptides of Conflict into True Community

I fondly remember the third small group I joined. I was in my early twenties (as was most of the group). Within the first few weeks, we went deep quickly. If there’s such thing as too much authenticity, well … we may have crossed that threshold. We opened up with levels of vulnerability and transparency that would even make Brené Brown blush. I shared bravely and honestly. Perhaps lacking some discretion, I held little to nothing back. I opened up about the good, the bad, and the ugly. I tried to let my darkness be seen so that by bringing it to the light I would heal. I wasn’t the lone wolf in the pack. Everyone shared, everyone bought into our radically-open ethos, everyone tried to follow Jesus into this brave new honesty. It felt like we had discovered the great secret to true community.

Almost two decades later, I still look back on this group with love and admiration for our audacity, our willingness to go to places often hidden, and the ways we embraced, encouraged, and challenged one another. I also met Julia through this group … so I am quadruply grateful. But our group jumped in the lapping waves of the ocean not realizing there was a riptide. Quickly, we were pulled in over our heads. Before long, we began to experience a range of conflicts: how should our time be structured, who should teach, appropriate boundaries, differing opinions, comments made that hurt feelings, etc. These conflicts slowly escalated and began to cast an ominous cloud over the group. What were we doing wrong? I thought we were a true community.

In writing this article and reminiscing about this wonderful group of people, I decided to re-read some of our email chains. I was impressed by how we named conflicts. We brought up issues and faced them head on. That took guts. I read some of my own messages and groaned. I certainly had my own part and custom-made contribution to the challenges (that I was blind to at the time). I admire the collective earnestness of our group trying to figure it out. We stumbled through our conflicts making messes and amends.

But that’s my perspective now.

Back then, the conflicts felt difficult, sometimes overwhelming, even hopeless. It wasn’t easy for anyone. I got to a point where I was ready to leave the group. Enough is enough! This isn’t how Christian community is supposed to be! The group was no longer meeting my expectations, my needs, my desires—time to go. The challenges we faced seemed to be breaking apart the true community we had once experienced. Fortunately, my friend persuaded me out of my folly and I stayed. I’m all the better for it. Thanks, Alex!

The Inevitability of Chaos Giraffe

The kind of openness and honesty we sought as a group inevitably brings about difficulties and conflict. Yes, inevitably. You want to get real? You want true community? Get ready for conflict. Dr. M. Scott Peck talks about the four stages of building community: pseudo-community, chaos, emptiness, and true community. This is the pathway. We can’t get to true community without chaos.

Back the point. Our group believed we had unearthed true community—a goldmine! We obtained the shortcut: open up, get real honest, and done. But we were only in the pseudo-community phase. This doesn’t mean the community we experienced was inherently inauthentic or fake. But it was only the fledgling beginning of a true community. In the pseudo phase, everyone gets along, people are open and honest, relationships are easy and exciting. But this is only a limited slice of our humanity. Inject a little chaos and it seems to “mess” everything up.

When I think about the role of chaos, I now think of Tyler Myers of the Vancouver Canucks. On his bad nights fans deride him as ‘chaos giraffe.’ He is very tall and sometimes behaves like a giraffe would if strapped to ice-skates. This is what we are like when we start a new community. We glide in thinking everything is going great and then our feet go in opposite directions, we stumble and fall and take our teammates, and then lose the puck.

When a community is disrupted by chaos, we can react in a few different ways. In the case of the Canucks, fans cry out, ‘Trade Myers! Or at least, bench him!’ In other words: give up on him. In a small group, some people, like me, might want to hit the eject button. “This isn’t true community because true community gets along.” Or so the reasoning goes. Another person becomes the aggressive housekeeper trying to sweep it all away, “Let’s just get along and get back to the way things were.” And on and on we can go, trying to find ways to avoid the chaos so we can stay in the safe comfort of pseudo-community.

This early stage of pseudo-community is a building block toward true community. But it is particularly vulnerable to the tyrannical reign of idealism. We want an easy-going, conflict-free, fully-united group. As I’ve often heard as a pastor, “I want it to be like a New Testament church!” Great! Go hang out with the Corinthians for awhile and get back to me. Maybe all the conflict indicates that you already have a New Testament church.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer aptly warns in his book Life Together that we can love the dream of Christianity community more than the community itself. Idealism, left unchecked, will inevitably destroy any chance of community. So, if we want true community, we must face a community of frail, broken, sinful humans as a reflection or ourselves.

Here’s the hard truth: Christian community must disenfranchise you. It will bring you to a place of chaos and bewilderment. Stick around enough and it will empty you of your idealism. But, rest assured, this is not the end destination. Because when we stay the course and wade through the chaos we enter into the next phase: emptiness.

That sounds promising doesn’t it?

Flushing Idealism into Emptiness

When we enter the emptiness phase it’s not a depressive state. But it is an emptying of our expectations and ideals. It is not so much about adjusting from selfishness to selflessness. It does involve reconfiguring our egotism and self-centric attitudes to be sure. But it’s more like moving from selfishness to self-with-ness. It’s about re-orienting ourselves toward one another in/with Christ. We pour out our idealism and expectations (as we are able) and begin to relate to the actual people around us—as they are and as we are. We don’t give up on the hope of what a true community could be. But we try to empty these expectations and start with the community that really is. In this emptying, we also accept that it might not ever be what we thought it would be.

The emptiness is the place where the Spirit hovers over the waters. It is where God speaks something new into existence. The Word speaks, and a new kind of community emerges, not by the exertion of our will, or by any rabid idealism, but by the power of Spirit at work in us, among us, and through us.

In this place of emptiness, the ample “one another” instructions throughout the pages of the New Testament start to make sense. Because you can’t “one another” yourself. You need a community. In fact, you need a broken community to follow these commands.

Let me explain:

We are commanded to love one another (a command that occurs at least 16 times in the New Testament). Let’s do it, who’s going to object? In the same way, we want to “greet one another” and accept one another” and “care for one another.” Any objections? Probably not. But what about “serve one another.” Ignore that Christian reflex that rises up with an immediate ‘yes.’ Think about it practically for a moment. It will likely require that you’re inconvenienced to some degree. It’s quite likely that serving someone will go beyond your threshold of inconvenience. It’ll exceed the favour to help someone move. At some point, this command will be onerous.

But let’s up the ante:

We are commanded to “forgive one another.” Now we are talking. Any resistance? To fulfill this command requires something to be done that requires your forgiveness—an offence, a hurt, a letdown, something. There’s nothing easy or convenient about this command—and it’s not possible to live it out without a community of people who will hurt you and need forgiveness.

What if we try this command on for size: Bear one another’s burdens.

The Greek word for burdens indicates ‘hardship which is regarded as particularly burdensome and exhausting.’ Ooph.

In the midst of chaos and conflict lies the crucible where true community is forged, where authenticity thrives, and where the Spirit of God moves among us, shaping us into a fellowship marked by love and burdens.

My point isn’t to disenfranchise anyone. I do not believe Christian community is joyless drudgery. My point is that experiencing the joy of true community is not a walk in the park, it’s not easy-by-default, because it’s through the chaos and in the emptiness of our human limitations that God dwells among us and forms us.

In the Radical Disciple, John Stott writes:

I sometimes hear old people, including Christian people who should know better say, ‘I don’t want to be a burden to anyone else. I’m happy to carry on living so long as I can look after myself, but as soon as I become a burden I would rather die.’ But this is wrong. We are all designed to be a burden to others. You are designed to be a burden to me, and I am designed to be a burden to you. And the life of the family, including the life of the local church family, should be one of ‘mutual burdensomeness.’ [As Paul writes:] ‘Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ’

Consider these words from the Reformer Martin Luther:

This is the summa of the Gospel: the kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of mercy and grace. It is nothing else than continuous bearing of [each other’s] burdens. Christ bears our wretchedness and sicknesses. Our sins he will take upon himself and he is patient when we are going astray. Even now and forever he carries us on his shoulders and never tires of carrying us.

Or more eloquently, think about the truth in this reflection from Antoine de Saint-Expuéry:

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.

True Community

I look back on my third small group with great affection. We made a lot of mistakes together. We would have benefited from some more experienced members. Even so, beautiful things happened as we stuck it out together. When I re-read our old correspondence, yes, I felt some embarrassment. But I also had fresh eyes to see how the Spirit was at work in the midst of the good times and the challenges. Having stuck it out, the result is that I’m still friends with many people from this group even though we now live in different cities. But these lasting Christ-centred friendships didn’t happen without conflict or hurt feelings or burdens. It turns out, the truest community is a community of love and burdens.

I don’t want to deny that there are times to hit the eject button and leave community. Abusive situations, authoritarian leadership, and so forth. Neither am I encouraging you to put up with the sort of person who seeks out conflict for sport. Of course there are appropriate limits to what kind of chaos is appropriate or tolerable. And the exhortation to “bear each others burdens” is not an invitation to be overbearing, let alone demand someone carry your burdens as you see fit. I could keep adding disclaimers. I hope you can see I’m only talking about the mostly normal situation of a group of Christians figuring out how to be a community together and the challenges that come with it.

What I’ve just said might not appear like true community. Idealism can distort our vision. But a clear heart in Christ will see that love and burdens go hand in hand: Jesus gladly bore our burdens because he loves us. We walk in this light, which is why we will be a burden and we will be burdened in community. It will feel like chaos at times, it will empty us, but God will also fill us as he builds his true community.

I suppose what I want to say is that chaos and conflict are part of our ordinary lives in the aftermath of The Fall and remain part of our ordinary lives in the community of faith. So, if you’re in the thick of it with some people—friends in Christ—and you’re wondering: Is something amiss? In most normal situations, the answer is likely no. When things go awry: it can be a sign that you’re moving in the right the direction. It’s okay. It might even be a work of the Spirit (the Spirit of the living God who confused the languages of Babel so humanity would fulfill their creational mandate and who isn’t afraid to use persecution to get the church moving in the right direction). God can be a little bit of a disrupter. So, don’t give up on your people just yet. Because maybe you just got knocked over by chaos giraffe. It’s uncomfortable, even annoying at times, but he’s part of your team.

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P.S. Did you listen to our recent podcast episode On Being Peculiar Trees? It’s worth another 6:46 minutes of your time … and a new episode is coming your way soon!