How Can I Share Conflicts with My Spouse Without Gossiping?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:04.000 | Happy Friday and welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:00:08.000 | Listener Rachel in Cameroon writes in to ask, "Pastor John,

00:00:12.000 | we all have difficult experiences in life with respect to

00:00:16.000 | interpersonal communication and conflict, both with fellow Christians and

00:00:20.000 | non-Christians. Processing this with other people can lead to

00:00:24.000 | gossip or slander, of course. Is there benefit to processing

00:00:28.000 | these conflicts with our spouse or is this gossip and slander?

00:00:32.000 | For example, Pastor John, if you had a difficult interpersonal interaction

00:00:36.000 | or relationship with an elder in your church, is it okay to process through that at

00:00:40.000 | home in confidence with Noel? Is such a practice

00:00:44.000 | helpful?" Well, it certainly can be helpful and it's

00:00:48.000 | fraught with dangers as well. And maybe the

00:00:52.000 | first thing I should address is just the issue of

00:00:56.000 | permission. It is possible to

00:01:00.000 | simply ask the person that you are

00:01:04.000 | having difficulty with or in conflict with, permission,

00:01:08.000 | may I share this issue

00:01:12.000 | with my spouse? Now that may seem awkward since

00:01:16.000 | the whole issue is conflict and difficulty, and yet

00:01:20.000 | you may be surprised because they might

00:01:24.000 | feel respected because of the request instead of

00:01:28.000 | you're just assuming that you're going to go talk about it with anybody you please. So

00:01:32.000 | it might go a long way towards

00:01:36.000 | some healing. And if you have permission, then

00:01:40.000 | I think you're free at least to consider the possibility

00:01:44.000 | of speaking with your spouse about the situation. But

00:01:48.000 | even then, it's not automatic, I don't think, whether

00:01:52.000 | you should or not. There are other factors. And

00:01:56.000 | the next thing I think of is there are two people that you need

00:02:00.000 | to know really well in this process, and that is yourself

00:02:04.000 | and your spouse, if you're going to discern what would be helpful

00:02:08.000 | to talk about, what would be appropriate. And the reason I say

00:02:12.000 | that you need to know yourself really well is

00:02:16.000 | because even if you have a green light in every other regard

00:02:20.000 | to share something with your spouse, your attitude

00:02:24.000 | in doing so could be sinful.

00:02:28.000 | This is why it seems to me there are so many warnings

00:02:32.000 | in the Bible about how we speak of other people,

00:02:36.000 | especially other Christians. Like James 4.11, "Do not

00:02:40.000 | speak evil against one another." And 2 Corinthians

00:02:44.000 | 12.20, Paul is afraid that he'll find slander

00:02:48.000 | and gossip and conceit and disorder in the

00:02:52.000 | church. And I think part of the reason these texts are

00:02:56.000 | in the Bible is to warn us that we are so

00:03:00.000 | prone to speak about others

00:03:04.000 | when our own attitude is the real problem.

00:03:08.000 | And so we need to know ourselves really well

00:03:12.000 | so that we don't even share the things we have permission to share

00:03:16.000 | if our motives are impure or if we feel

00:03:20.000 | jealousy or undue anger or sinful

00:03:24.000 | fear and anxiety or revenge or just

00:03:28.000 | the subtle pleasure—we all know this—the subtle pleasure

00:03:32.000 | of sharing news, especially bad

00:03:36.000 | news or questionable news that nobody else knows about

00:03:40.000 | but us, and we get to be the first one to talk about it. There's something

00:03:44.000 | not good about that desire that is in

00:03:48.000 | us. So the watchword here is test yourself, know yourself,

00:03:52.000 | put to death any selfish motives in your

00:03:56.000 | self before you talk about it with your spouse. And the

00:04:00.000 | other person you need to know really well to make right decisions about when to

00:04:04.000 | share or when to debrief is your spouse.

00:04:08.000 | Will we be tempting him or her—I'll just say

00:04:12.000 | this person, I'm talking about Noelle here—will I be tempting her

00:04:16.000 | toward anger or resentment or fear?

00:04:20.000 | What's the emotional makeup of our spouse? Do we know

00:04:24.000 | her? Is our spouse vulnerable to certain kinds of

00:04:28.000 | sin which she might

00:04:32.000 | get sucked into in the relational conflict? Or is

00:04:36.000 | our spouse strong enough and able to

00:04:40.000 | give us good counsel without becoming embroiled in

00:04:44.000 | the situation to her own detriment? So

00:04:48.000 | knowing our spouses will have a significant effect

00:04:52.000 | on whether we share and what we share and how we

00:04:56.000 | share the difficult situations that we're walking

00:05:00.000 | through. Here's another biblical guideline to think about, and I—when I

00:05:04.000 | was thinking about this, I think I got the most helpful maxim

00:05:08.000 | that might guide us. So I'm thinking about Matthew 18 here, where it says, "If your

00:05:12.000 | brother sins against you, go privately to see if you can get it

00:05:16.000 | worked out, and then if that doesn't work out, take two or three, and if that

00:05:20.000 | doesn't work, go to the church." Now what's the overall drift? That's what I ask.

00:05:24.000 | What's the overall thrust of that approach? And it

00:05:28.000 | seems to me that the overall thrust of Matthew 18

00:05:32.000 | is to keep relational sins

00:05:36.000 | or breakdowns as private as would be

00:05:40.000 | helpful for maximum healing to all concerned.

00:05:44.000 | That's my maxim. So the application would be,

00:05:48.000 | will a discussion with my spouse really

00:05:52.000 | serve to lead toward maximum

00:05:56.000 | healing, not only for the immediate conflict, but for any

00:06:00.000 | others who might be drawn in? You don't want to multiply

00:06:04.000 | the pain or the conflict by having it be known

00:06:08.000 | by people that it's unnecessary to be known by if healing

00:06:12.000 | can be achieved another way. So it seems to me that

00:06:16.000 | that's one of the most significant principles we could express.

00:06:20.000 | If there's a green light for sharing a concern in every other respect,

00:06:24.000 | then the question is, am I truly motivated by

00:06:28.000 | a desire for wisdom that leads to healing, or

00:06:32.000 | am I merely caressing an injury? Am I picking at a

00:06:36.000 | scab? Am I licking my own wound

00:06:40.000 | and looking for some kind of gratification and thus putting

00:06:44.000 | my spouse at risk of joining with me in that

00:06:48.000 | sin? And there are, just recently in my life,

00:06:52.000 | there are two scriptures that have been standing out,

00:06:56.000 | functioning as a kind of Piper sieve for

00:07:00.000 | motives and possible actions through.

00:07:04.000 | Let me just mention them because they've been so powerful for me. One is 1 Peter

00:07:08.000 | 3.8, "Finally, all of you have," and listen to these words,

00:07:12.000 | "unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love,

00:07:16.000 | a tender heart, a humble mind."

00:07:20.000 | Those are amazing words. Unity,

00:07:24.000 | sympathy, love, tenderheartedness, humility.

00:07:28.000 | So in weighing what to talk about another

00:07:32.000 | person, put it through this sieve, pass it through this

00:07:36.000 | test. Do those words mark what you're about to do?

00:07:40.000 | And the other one is James 3.17, "The wisdom from above is

00:07:44.000 | first," and here they come again, "pure, then peaceable,

00:07:48.000 | gentle, open to reason, full of

00:07:52.000 | mercy and good fruits, impartial, sincere."

00:07:56.000 | Another amazing collection of words that function as

00:08:00.000 | amazing tests of whether what I'm about to say is

00:08:04.000 | pure. Is it peaceable? Is it gentle? Is it open

00:08:08.000 | to reason? Is it merciful? Is it impartial? This is simply

00:08:12.000 | astonishing, and so I need

00:08:16.000 | to check myself, and those are two verses that have functioned

00:08:20.000 | as sieves for me in dealing with people recently that have been

00:08:24.000 | so convicting and so helpful. So my answer

00:08:28.000 | to the question about Noel and me—I think part of the question was, "What did we do?"—

00:08:32.000 | is that there were many situations in my

00:08:36.000 | 33-year pastoral ministry where I talked to Noel about

00:08:40.000 | a church issue or about a personal issue, and

00:08:44.000 | there were many when I didn't. And I tried

00:08:48.000 | to use these criteria. Will I put her soul at risk?

00:08:52.000 | Will I burden her in a way that simply would not

00:08:56.000 | help her and probably wouldn't help me sufficiently to put her at risk?

00:09:00.000 | And have I filtered my motives

00:09:04.000 | so that I'm not acting in a way

00:09:08.000 | that is contrary to 1 Peter 3:8 or contrary to James 3:17?

00:09:12.000 | And from this perspective, Tony, I would just

00:09:16.000 | say, "Lord, you know how many times I either succeeded or

00:09:20.000 | failed at those criteria."

00:09:24.000 | Yes, great potential and great dangers here indeed. Thank you, Pastor John.

00:09:28.000 | And we're not done talking about you and Noel just yet, Pastor John, because we have a listener

00:09:32.000 | who wants you to describe what you think a simple and expensive wedding would look like.

00:09:36.000 | And I know that you don't only advocate for such a thing, but you actually

00:09:40.000 | pulled it off. That's next week, I think on Tuesday. But coming up on

00:09:44.000 | Monday, a follow-up question to your article on cremation. Now

00:09:48.000 | the question is, "Okay, so no to cremation, but can I gift my body

00:09:52.000 | to science?" That's a really good question. That's on the table on Monday.

00:09:56.000 | But we're going to break for the weekend now. Feel free to look back on the episodes from the week. Search our

00:10:00.000 | archive of hundreds of episodes, download the podcast app, or subscribe to the podcast

00:10:04.000 | or even send us a question of your own. Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:10:10.000 | I'm your host, Tony Granke, and we will see you on Monday.

00:10:14.000 | [end]

00:10:16.000 | [music]

00:10:18.000 | [end]

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How Can I Share Conflicts with My Spouse Without Gossiping?

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