How can we end conflict?
Text: Proverbs 10:12
Hosts:
J. Kent Edwards
Vicki Hitzges
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Kristin Norman
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2026 CrossTalk Global
Kristin: We are pretty good at restoring things that are broken. If you break a tooth, a dentist can use dental bonding, porcelain veneers, and crowns to restore function and aesthetics. If your car is badly damaged in an accident, a good body shop can straighten a bent frame. Locate new body panels, install a new engine, and give it a paint job that makes it look as good as new. If your house burns down, a contractor can build you a new and improved version in just a few months. Time and money can restore most things, but repairing broken relationships is often far more difficult. When someone we value violates our trust, betrays us, or damages our reputation, our souls are wounded. The hurt can be so deep and painful that our instinct is to lash out and hurt them back. But fighting fire with fire is not a solution. It only makes the mess bigger. What's the alternative? Listen in as Vicki Hitzges, Nathan Norman, and Kent Edwards take note of King Solomon's advice on how to restore a broken relationship in Proverbs 10:12. Welcome to Crosstalk, a Christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible, but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life into all our lives. I'm Kristin Norman. Today, Dr. Kent Edwards, Vicki Hitzges, and Nathan Norman continue their discussion in the book of Proverbs. If you have a Bible handy, turn to Proverbs 10:12 as we join their discussion.
Kent: Vicki, Nathan, have you seen healthy relationships broken?
Vicki: Oh, we all have.
Kent: Mm-hmm.
Vicki: I was talking to a girl today. She got married and she was so happy. And she told me she was divorced in 3 years. And I said, wow, that's a record. And she had married a man who beat her. Just a sweet little tiny gal. He beat her. And she said what the deal breaker was, she was sitting in a rocking chair doing absolutely nothing, just rocking her baby. And her husband came up and threw her and the baby across the room.
Nathan: Oh my gosh. What?
Vicki: Yeah.
Kent: Oh, wow.
Nathan: Yeah, that's horrible. That's horrible. That would break a relationship.
Kent: As it should.
Vicki: That would do it. That would do it.
Nathan: As it should. I can remember I had two pastors that I knew and they were best friends and they worked very closely together. In fact, they were such like an tight-knit inner circle. People complained that they couldn't kind of like break in and have conversations apart from one or the other. And then, um, and then it just, it just broke. Um, I, I, I'm not even 100% sure what happened. They both told me, but one felt betrayed by the other. Uh, I, I think it kind of came down to just kind of expectations in their jobs and what their friendship was. But I don't know, they both felt like each other had betrayed each other in the ministry and it went south really quick, like very, very quickly.
Vicki: Oh, that's so sad.
Nathan: It split the whole church.
Kent: Yeah. Relationships are often broken at home, at church, in the workplace as well. Do you remember that TV show, the comedy The Office?
Nathan: Sure do.
Vicki: Yeah.
Kent: That's what it specialized in. People doing stupid things one to another, causing conflict, speaking badly about them. It's not unusual for workplaces to be filled with strife, and it's tough for a boss to solve those problems because it's not the same as a family or a church. How do you help people in a workplace get along with one another? But if it's stuff in the workplace, can you imagine the many kind of interpersonal issues that Solomon must have had to deal with as a king? Hmm. I mean, do you remember that famous episode where two women come with one baby?
Vicki: He handled that well, and the mother handled it well, too.
Nathan: I can't even imagine. Can you imagine? Right? Like, just what— how do you even respond to this?
Vicki: I don't know, but unless— to refresh your memory, listeners, if these two women came, they both wanted the same baby. They both claimed it was their baby. And Solomon said he was going to divide the baby in two. He was going to cut it in half so they could both have half. And one lady was fine with that. And that's a weird thing. She was like, okay, good idea. And then the real mother was like, no, no, no, let her have the baby. Because she loved the baby. And so Solomon knew she was the mother, and that's how he solved it.
Kent: That's a legendary story.
Vicki: Legendary story.
Kent: I mean, talk about a relationship genius. That's Solomon, which is probably why we should pay attention to his insight in Proverbs 10:12.
Vicki: He says, "Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers all wrongs." Hmm.
Kent: The topic of this proverb is conflict. That word in the Hebrew means to quarrel or argue. But it's not just small little disagreements over unimportant things. It's talking about bitter discord. Oof. Which means that disagreement is so deep and so bitter that reconciliation seems impossible. As you've mentioned, this takes place everywhere, including the church, doesn't it, Nathan?
Nathan: Sure, yeah, obviously in the church. I know Tom Rayner has some observations about what he has anecdotally observed. The corporate worship time has changed, right? So that would cause—
Kent: Ooh, that would be a problem for people.
Vicki: —strife, absolutely.
Nathan: Members disagree on how to handle a pastor or staff member involved in a moral failure. Yeah, yeah. You have people who want to just kind of sweep it under the rug. You have others that want to air everyone's dirty laundry.
Kent: And still others saying there should be no consequences because that's forgiveness, right? Right. Right.
Nathan: That, that person's gifted by God. You have a number of members complain about the length of the worship service. Mm-hmm. Yep. Too long, too short.
Vicki: Too short? I doubt it.
Nathan: Listen, when I was pastoring the Orchard Church, I must have been in an epistle. It was a pretty short sermon. Someone actually complained. They said, "Oh, that was—" I think it was probably someone from the children's ministry because they didn't have enough time to do whatever they wanted to do. So they, "Oh, that was too short." So I remember getting up the next Sunday. I've received a complaint that the sermon last week was too short. And I promise you that will never, ever happen again.
Kent: Yeah, because often, at least in my experience, people complain mostly about sermons going too long. Yeah, yeah. Too long. Yeah, absolutely. And often the cause of that is that preachers usually think they're a better communicator than they are.
Nathan: Stop making this personal.
Kent: Better to stop too soon than go too long is all I'm saying.
Vicki: It's better to stop too soon, yeah.
Nathan: My joke about that is, you know, Jesus was saying about prayer is that God will not hear you on account of his many words. I'll tell people I'm training and preaching, if God refuses to listen to you because you're long-winded, how much less so will humanity who is fallen and sinful?
Kent: Well, it's interesting on Jesus' sermons because, you know, the Sermon on the Mount, that's what we have in Matthew, is just a summary, right? It's not the full full text of what Jesus said. And that took a long time. It took a long time. And remember, the disciples thought that Jesus was taking so long preaching that they asked him to stop because the people were hungry and they needed dinner. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're a really good communicator, Jesus could pull it off, is all I'm saying. The rest of us, not so much.
Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. So also some other issues of conflict within churches. There's a lack of clarity and disagreement about who makes what decisions, right? Good fences make good neighbors, I tell you. You know, how much— how— what decisions can the pastor make? What decisions can the ministry leaders make? What has to be made by congregational vote? You know, what can elders or trustees or deacons do on their own without asking permission? And what can the committees and boards do, you know, without asking the pastor or the congregation? That can cause some serious conflict. I, I'll tell you, I was talking to a woman, uh, not part of my church, um, not too long ago, who essentially the church has become affiliated with another denomination than what they started with. And she was like, I never voted on that. You know, she'd been at this church for years and years, decades and decades, and she said, we never had a congregational vote. We, we We never voted on that. And all of a sudden, they're affiliated with this other denomination. Hmm. Who made that choice? Not the congregation. Yeah, that can cause some serious conflict, I would imagine.
Kent: So what are the consequences of church conflict? I mean, what happens when, like in the instance you just mentioned, someone makes a decision that changes the whole direction of the church without consultation? What is the result of that? Sometimes nothing.
Vicki: When somebody gets upset and it blows over. Other times the whole church can split.
Nathan: Right. Yeah. And I, you know, what I found is oftentimes it's not the conflict that's the problem, right? So, so you might disagree on the worship style or you might disagree with the direction that leadership took, or you might disagree with a missions approach or an outreach event. Those are conflicts. Those are conflicts of philosophy of ministry, and those happen. What the problem happens when we decide to return, like, respond to those conflicts with ungodliness, right? With anger, with accusations, with hate, with vitriol, right? That's causing dissensions, right? That's when it becomes a problem. It's not the, the conflict itself. It's how we respond to the conflict that usually ends us up in tyranny.
Kent: Yeah, well, Solomon points out that when there is serious conflict that results, its source comes from— what does it say in Proverbs 10 in the first part of 12a?
Vicki: It awakens conflict.
Kent: What does? Hatred. Hatred stirs up or awakens conflict. Right. Disagreement is one thing. But genuine conflict, not just disagreement, but conflict, that comes from hatred. And I was surprised to see the force of that word, the emotional force. In fact, it's the word hatred is used in 2 Samuel 13 in that awful passage about Amnon and Tamar.
Vicki: This is an interesting passage, and I'd like to get your take on it. It says that Amnon was in love with Absalom's sister Tamar. It says, "Amnon grabbed her and he said, 'Come to bed with me, my sister.' 'No,' she said to him, 'don't force me. Such a thing should not be done in Israel. Don't do this wicked thing.' But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her. And then Amnon hated her with intense hatred." Amon said to her, "Get up and get out." So, he goes from, it says, he loves her, he desires her greatly. And then after he rapes her, he hated her with intense hatred. And he casts her out. How does he go from great desire to hate? That's a man thing. Maybe not, maybe not. But she hated him all the way through.
Kent: Well, it certainly didn't start with love, right? It didn't start with real love.
Vicki: It started with selfishness.
Kent: It started with lust. Lust. Lust. It started with, "I want what I want." Right. And that kind of— that's evil in itself. But at the end, when obviously—
Vicki: well, I don't know if I can say that. He was done with her.
Kent: Yeah. And in the end, when he was finished, that hatred began to show. And that hatred led to his downfall, didn't it?
Nathan: Yeah, it ultimately resulted in civil war, but his brother Absalom didn't like what happened. David didn't do anything about it. And so Absalom waited for 3 years, and when the time was right, he had Amnon killed, murdered. And that sparked the civil war.
Kent: Yeah. So hatred led to hatred. And it led from hurt after hurt. The fact is, hurt makes us want to hurt our enemies, to punish them. Well, in contrast, the word that is used here as love cherishes the wrongdoer as a friend to be won, not an enemy to be avenged. Well, that sounds simple, doesn't it? All we have to do is switch from anger to love. Nathan, how does that work? Knowing that love is the antidote to the hatred that stirs up conflict, how should we respond to conflict? How can we love unlovable people?
Nathan: Well, truthfully, in my experience, the first thing I've got to do is I've got to step back from the situation and ask God for the strength to do that. I have to rely on the resources of the Holy Spirit because I don't have that within me. I mean, within me, and Vicki, this might be a guy thing, But, you know, if I stumble over something, I get hurt, like, I don't know, on a door jamb, my first instinct is to punch the door jamb, which is going to hurt me even more, right? But yeah, that's my instinct. I want to hurt people that have hurt me the most. So I need to step back and I need to ask God. To give me the power to love the unlovable, to respond to hatred with a desire for that person's good.
Kent: I find it interesting Jesus piggybacks, if you will, on what you've just said and suggests an alternative.
Nathan: Or maybe I stole from him, one of the two.
Kent: In Matthew 18, starting in verse 15, He suggests a different approach, doesn't he?
Nathan: Jesus talks about trying to resolve the issue person to person. Reach out, try to understand them, help them understand you, right? If you're having this interpersonal issue.
Kent: So if somebody wounds us, Jesus is saying go to them one-on-one, right? See if you can resolve it. That would be the best of all scenarios, right?
Vicki: Right. He says to do that with a believer. It's probably a wise thing to do that with an unbeliever, but with a believer, I can say, "Nathan, I've been wounded. God says for me to come to you. Could I have a chat with you?" And I think he'd be more open than if I go to a non-believer who couldn't care less what God says. What do you think about that?
Kent: Yeah, I think obviously it's better to go one-on-one because what's the alternative, even in a secular setting?
Nathan: Yeah, if I can work out something with somebody regardless of their beliefs, I'm going to try and do that, but they might respond to it, they might not.
Kent: And the alternative, of course, is to internalize it and just get more and more angry and upset, and it'll pop out in other ways. Because for a Christian, yeah, go directly. If you won't do that, take some witnesses that go along, right? Right. And if that doesn't work, take the elders along, the leadership of the church.
Nathan: And if that doesn't work, then as Jesus said, to treat them as unbelievers. Believer, right? So, so you're treating them as if they need to be re-evangelized. Forgiveness is hard.
Kent: It is really difficult. What makes it so difficult?
Nathan: I'm giving up my rights.
Kent: Mm-hmm.
Vicki: Well, you are giving up your rights, but also who that person is may not be who that person really is. If a person betrays you, you think, oh, this is a loyal person who loves me. And you realize, oh, that person doesn't love me.
Kent: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's hard. It's hard. It is difficult. But for us as Christians, it's necessary. I'm reminded in Matthew 18 as well that Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to 7 times. Vicky, as your dad pointed out, that's pretty good. 7 times forgiveness. If somebody slashes your tire once and you're supposed to forgive them, but if they do it every day for a week, are you likely to continue to forgive? No.
Vicki: And if they say, "I'm sorry," and they do it again Tuesday, "I'm sorry," do Wednesday, they're not sorry.
Kent: Yeah. But Jesus says at the end of the parable of the unmerciful servant, he says, "This is how my heavenly Father will treat you unless you forgive your brother from your heart." Hmm. The forgiveness we are to show is to be eternal, to be never-ending. What if it doesn't? What if we choose to harbor that and to nurse it? What are the consequences, not just for others, but for ourselves?
Vicki: It's a terrible thing. It's a terrible thing because then we're soured on somebody else, but we're soured inside. It changes us.
Nathan: Yeah, what ha— it, it ends up causing divisions. You grow in bitterness. I mean, they talk about this in marriage, like one of the, the major markers of an unhealthy marriage is when conflict is increasingly internalized. And so bitterness grows and grows and grows and grows until the marriage fails because the bitterness has grown up too much and it explodes in, in weird, unhealthy ways. You know, a good example is the other morning I kind of snapped at one of my kids as I'm getting— this is like Monday morning. I'm getting all the kids out ready to school. I've got 3 of them. Everyone's going a different direction. I'm making lunches, I'm making breakfast, I'm trying to get the teenager up and over and over, like everything, everything. And then we've got people coming over right after they're all gone, so I'm trying to make sure the house is ready. So over, over, over, just go, go, go, go. My daughter, she spills the milk and does a really poor job of cleaning it up. And it's like, "Okay, I'm done." Just wipe the paper towel across it once. And I was like, "Just move. Get out of the way. You're in my way. I don't have time for you to stand in the way and to mess around with this." "Why are you yelling at me?" Right? Well, because, and truthfully, I responded a little too strongly on that one, but it had built up, right? I had to tell one kid 37 times, that's not an exaggeration, to get out of bed. I was feeling stressed about the breakfast. I was feeling stressed about the— get into the bus on time. I was feeling stress about getting everyone's lunch together, right? And stress about this meeting I was about to have, right? All that built up and I didn't have any outlet for it, right? I'm just internalizing it, trying to get through. And then, when something happens that was fairly minute, I blew up. Why? Yeah. Because I was carrying on too much. And that's what happens when we don't resolve our conflicts is our anger, our hatreds, they blow up into conflicts. I did apologize, by the way.
Kent: We live in a fallen world, and it's populated by broken people. So conflict is an inevitable reality. But relationships can be restored. Because love is to hate what water is to fire. Love extinguishes conflict. Yeah. And when you choose to love your neighbor as yourself, hate disappears and conflict flees with it. We can forgive. We must forgive. As Jesus says, as he ends the Lord's Prayer, he says, "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins," your Father will not forgive your sins. Let's let Peter have the final words when he says, "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." The next time someone hurts or angers you, or maybe you feel that way now, You can end that conflict.
Kristin: Probably you're tempted to prolong it by being angry or bitter. After all, the other person was wrong. But the Bible tells us there's another, better way for us to respond. When we feel hurt, we can end a conflict by choosing love, not hate. Choosing love may be difficult, but it's wise. I trust that today's discussion of God's Word has been helpful and served as an encouragement to not just be hearers of the Word, but doers. Together, let's bring God's Word to life, to all our lives this week. The Crosstalk Podcast is a production of Crosstalk Global, equipping biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more about this educational nonprofit organization, please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org. Crosstalk is training leaders in Bucharest, Moldova, Southern California, Kenya, and Kansas this season. Help us train the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also support this show by rating it on whatever platform you're listening to us. Be sure to listen next Friday as we continue to learn from God's word in the book of Proverbs. You won't wanna miss it.
Nathan: A good body shop can straighten a bent frame, locate new body panels, install a new engine, and give it a paint job that makes it look—
Vicki: Can I stop you? We're recording this. Oh no, this is the introduction. I'm sorry. I was going to say your reading is stupid. It's not like you. Okay, keep going. Keep going.
Kent: The intro reading is always stupid.
Vicki: Okay, but it's not like you. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm not following. Go, go, go.
Kent: If you're— No insult, Nathan, just saying.
Vicki: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kent: We're both on your side. It's just an idiot. Well, you know, we've been silent for years.
Nathan: If your house burns down, a contractor can build you a new and improved version in just a few months.
Kent: Let's let Peter have the final words. When he says, "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." As Vicki's wind chime goes off at the perfect time.
Nathan: Love covers over a multitude of sins. Dooloolooloo.