How Jesus Disarmed Conflict and Opened Communication

Part 1 from “Jesus, the Expert in the Law, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan”

During a recent time of prayer, I felt like God was saying to me, “Love wider.” I instantly understood what he meant by that unusual phrase. He was referring to loving in circles beyond the circles of people I care about, into the realm of loving people I don’t know (yet). I don’t generally immediately trust what I hear in prayer, so sought a Biblical context for what God seemed to be saying to me, as a confirmation of the word. I felt led to take a look at the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which is found in Luke 10:25-37. This is the first in a series of articles based on this passage.

Wijnants_Good_Samaritan

Let’s begin by taking a look at the first part of this passage, through the first words of verse 30, and let’s use the New Living Translation (NLT), since it does a nice job bringing out some of the nuances of meaning.

One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”

The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”

The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus replied with a story.

It helps to solve all of your relationship issues and lead a happy life with your beautiful female. http://robertrobb.com/2015/07/ order cialis online The diseases include diabetes, kidney issues, neurological and vascular pfizer viagra problems. Interestingly, a majority of impotence issues are completely unable to get a perfect penile erection even in presence of complete sexual sale of viagra stimulation. As not many cheap cialis tadalafil people have been studied on regarding this system, a conclusion cannot be derived. The first thing we see here is that Jesus was being tested. We’re not sure what the motivation or the goal of the testing was. Was it to see what kind of theology Jesus had — something we might chalk up as a asking a legitimate question or demonstrating a reasonable curiosity? Or was it something more malicious, such as to show Jesus up and embarrass him publicly? Perhaps there was some other motivation. In any case, Jesus knew that he was being tested and perhaps challenged in some way.

I learned a lot by how Jesus replied. In his approach, he didn’t try to show the lawyer how bright he was or how holy he was, as perhaps another expert in the law might have done — or as I perhaps would have done. Jesus’ ego wasn’t involved in the answer — he was secure in who he was, and didn’t need to prove his credentials or his worth. Instead, he reflected the question back to the lawyer, for him to answer. Reflecting the question back can be helpful when you see that someone is looking to start a verbal confrontation. First of all, many people really just want to tell their position more than they want to refute yours. Second, understanding is about listening, and listening can start with a question. This might be a good technique for all of us to learn to diffuse potential conflict in conversation — reflecting the question back, and then really listening to the response.
Continue reading “How Jesus Disarmed Conflict and Opened Communication”

%d bloggers like this: