The Church Series: Our Conflicts

Christian Hip Hop has gotten me through some pretty rough times.  It was first gifted to me during the depth of teenage depression, Shai Linne's "dark night of the soul," assured me that despite my sorrows God was still faithful to see me through.  In college Christian Hip Hop taught me that my Christianity required  community.  Once in that community,  CHH  provided a  refuge for my black Christian  identity in a predominately white campus ministry that often made me feel displaced.  As I matured, so too did CHH.  I  increasingly gravitated to artist like The Breaxx, who spoke with  deep Christian conviction and refreshing honesty.  CHH  still continues to develop in some much needed ways.  I believe one of the most promising areas of growth and development exist with artist such as Propaganda and Amisho Baracka, who address the sociopolitical nature of the gospel with nuance  and grace.                                                                                                                                                                    

  It's truly been a blessing to watch, expierence, and participate in the vibrant community that is Christian Hip hop.  Yet in recent days the community has expierenced something quite familiar to many communitues of faith, conflict.   Since its inception Christian Hip Hop has been a dynamic community, bringing a diverse set of ideologies, theologies, and various dogmas together.  It is this very aspect of the community that has made it so compelling.  Yet the question of evangelism has often been a surprisingly consistent sticking point.  Since it's origins many in the community have held the view that the primary purpose of Christian hip hop is to "evangelize" the lost.  This view often assumes that the most effective means to evangelize is to make music that explicitly teaches about theological doctrine,   or tells stories that directly point to well established theological concepts.  There are numerous artist who have opposing views but perhaps the most compelling being the view that essentially suggests that if  Christ be at the center of the artist exsistents than all subsequent expressions will be deemed as such.   Furthermore, many of these same artist have often felt that the label of Christian artist comes with both unneccesary explicit & implicit limitations, i.e Christian music can only be played on Christian stations and sold to Christians and or Christians should only play at Christian events.                                                                                                                                                                

 These conversation are as old as the church,  an endless rehearsal of a modern variation of the sacred v.s secular discourse. Yet it occurs to me that this moment in CHH offers the church at large an amazing opportunity to think through conflict.  Without question the most entertaining part of this debacle has been the numerous "diss" tracks that many of my favorite CHH artist have created (For more on that peep Shai Linne's RT3 and Ruslan's RT4).  These tracks embody much of the churches approach to conflict.  Approach "A" suggests that Christians having an issue with a brother no matter what the nature or proxemity of that relationship, are to create biblically sound critiques and may continue to state those critiques publically if not heeded privately.  Approach "B" suggests that what is needed in the church is refreshing honesty. Moments of clarity where both the critic and crtitiqued acknowledge their full range of  brokenness, much like approach "A" this too should be done publically if not privately heeded. These approaches are not inherently wrong, in fact depending on the context, they maybe exactly what the spirit desires. Yet  these moments reveal to us just how unprepared we are for conflict, that much of the church lacks theological imagination as it pertains to conflict.  Much of our understanding of conflict seems to be rooted in a court room dialogue.  Even biblical scriptures such as Matthew 18:15 that call  us towards intimacy, are depersonalized and  made into punitive protocols. An optic of legality  has distorted the churches perception of conflict, and has often resulted in demphasizing reconciliation, love, or justice.  I believe that if the church continues to view all conflict as a courtroom exercise we'll continue to look like and function much the same way that punitive justice systems do, esteeming intellect and wealth as spiritual virtues. 

Re-imagining conflict is no simple task, yet our churches have been yearning for it.  From  heated discussions about theology,  race and politics, to simple conversation about discipleship or church governance, the body has been crying for a revival of the ways in which we do confrontation.  That said, I won't pretend to have the solutions or imply that my limited writing skills can bring about such a revival, however I do believe that whatever the answer may be, or however the revival starts, it begins and ends with our ability to re-understand the church as primarily the family of God

 The word family is pretty dense, and can trigger a myriad of feelings.  Many of us come from backgrounds where the word family and conflict our antonyms.  We hail from verbally abusive and physically abusive households that have permanently distorted our understanding of the family of God. Nevertheless the language of family offers us our only hope for a recovery of our understanding of conflict.  Perhaps one of the most important concepts embedded in understanding conflict through the lens of family is the understanding of patience and long-suffering. I find that Christian confrontations are often filled with short sited solutions or rigid ultimatums that reek of a demonic impatience. Our legal optics tempt us to set up kangaroo courts which expedite relational and spiritual "justice." This sense of urgency doesn't necessarily hail from a bad place, as conflict is difficult and the desire to resolve it as soon as possible is necessary. Yet sometimes the urgency bypasses the necessity of studying the situation, empathizing and seeking mutual understanding, seeking wisdom from others in the body, praying and giving space for God to speak. Such actions can be tenuous, and may be unnecessary for more simple conflicts. However anyone who has had a big conflict with a family member understands that conflicts can be extremely complex and attempts to oversimplify and expedite a resolution typically only cause more strain.

Long-suffering and steadfastness are fruit of the spirit. When we see the church as family these virtues become the Apex of what Christian conflict looks like, not good oratory skills nor supreme intellect. The church as family recognizes first that we are bound to one another, our strengths and weakness tied together in divine covenant the moment we chose to follow christ. It is out of the fullness of this revelation that we work through conflict. Addressing and Resolving conflicts with a heart flowing with reconciliation. I think it's telling that you hear the least about Jesus conflict with the disciples, as he spent most of his time with them. Now there are a couple of ways to interpret this, perhaps it says that because the disciples were close to him they were portrayed as hollier and sinless, although Peter might take issue with that. It might just suggests that the writers of the text were themselves the disciples and chose to omit any unfavorable information , yet again Peter might take issue with that. Or it may just mean that Jesus and his disciples were constantly in both conflict and resolution just like a family. It's easy to imagine that Jesus being God, might have seen every single shortcoming in all twelve of his disciples and perhaps the other 100's of folk that he was surrounded by at all times, constantly admonishing and correcting. Sometimes he might explicitly call a disciple like matthew, judas or all of them out. Other times, he might provide a gentle reminder. Jesus saw first the beautiful imago dei present in all of his followers, not just unreached potential , but fully present awesomeness.

It's hard to say if the above sentiments provide resolution to the curious case of beef stewing in CHH or even the conflict stirring in our own churches. Yet if we sit with the full weight of the critic, we understand that part of the issue with our church isn't a lack of solutions, or even voices, rather we have a problem of posture and how we hear and speak those voices. So many of our church conflicts resemble shouting matches between estrange factions. It is permissible to shout, it is permissible to scream, to be passive aggressive, but it is unacceptable for us to pretend that we are not family.