Where Two or Three are Confronting

My HR colleague at work has just taken the staff through a process of dealing with bullying and other unethical behaviour. Unfortunately I missed the session because of illness. But I still have the notes from last year.

It’s interesting that a church organisation needs to provide this kind of training every year. However, from my experience, it’s vital that we have strategies for dealing with abusive behaviour rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, or throwing our hands up in despair and putting up with it.

A lot of the principles we have developed as an organisation (The Uniting Church in Australia) are based on this passage from Matthew 18: 15-20, in which Jesus gives very practical instructions for confrontation and reconciliation.

If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.

I tell you the truth, whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.

I also tell you this: If two of you agree here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you. For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”

So how is my behaviour being affected by Jesus’ words?

First, I’ve learnt that confronting someone for the first time, no matter how petty, is best done in the context of a private conversation, in which amends can be made and face can be saved. The fear of public humiliation makes it very difficult to achieve any change in behaviour without lasting shame and resentment.

I still remember as an eleven year old on a school camp being hauled over the coals in front of 60 of my peers for leaving a half eaten sandwich in my drawer. Oh, the shame, the shame, of being made a public example without any means of making things better!

However it’s no easy thing to confront a bully face to face when you suspect that your words will be ignored or set against you in return. I’ve learnt that agreeing to meet together in a neutral space makes a huge difference. In retrospect, I’ve also learned that it could be helpful to have a tape recorder ready at a moment’s notice!

I went through mediation with a colleague some years ago, as we discovered we were undermining each other. We clearly needed to sort things out if we were both going to be effective in our roles. We found someone who was skilled enough in mediation. In fact, two people. One to document and one to facilitate. As painful as it was, I highly value that morning when the two of us shared our stories, our experiences and values, and sought to find ways to understand the best way to work with each other.

Sometimes, more serious interventions are needed. I think of Edwin Friedman’s fable, The Friendly Forest. A tiger approaches the residents of a forest about coming to live with them. They are mostly quite excited – they’ve never had a tiger before. The lamb is not so sure. However they form a covenant in which the tiger must accept all the other residents of the forest. The lamb discovers however that despite not being eaten, the tiger is engaging in threatening behaviour that becomes unbearable for her. She tells the other residents that she must now leave. Some of her friends in the forest wonder what she’s doing to provoke the tiger. Others say she needs to just accept that tigers are by nature threatening and get used to it.

The lamb thought there was something wrong with the notion that an agreement is equal when the invasive creature agrees to be less invasive and the invaded one agrees to tolerate some invasiveness.
One of the animals, not concerned about being politically correct, suggests that there is only one way for a lamb and a tiger to coexist in the forest. Cage the tiger.

There is a time for corporate confrontation, in which unacceptable behaviour is named, along with consequences.

So how do we treat pagans and corrupt tax collectors? How did Jesus treat them? I suspect that it might involve starting all over again.