OVERLOOKING OFFENCES

A man’s wisdom gives him patience;

It is to his glory to overlook an offense.   Proverbs 19:11

When someone has offended you, a wonderful question to ask is, “Can I overlook this?”  Many conflicts can be quickly resolved if we are willing to overlook.  It is an act of love to extinguish a fire before it ever starts.

Put your conflict in context.  Is it a big deal in the bigger context of your life?  Will it matter five years, two months, one week from now?  “We take offense so easily over things that won’t matter in the morning.” –Tim Pollard

We are “thin-skinned” with how others treat us (i.e., we take offense easily while we are “thick-skinned” in how we treat them (i.e., we want them to “toughen up”). A sign of maturity is to flip that around.

Caution: Be careful to not mistake an escape from or unhealthy avoidance of conflict for overlooking a fault.  How do we know whether we are in an unhealthy escape mode or genuinely overlooking a fault?

Overlooking offenses is appropriate under three conditions.

1.    The offense should not have created a wall between you and the other person or cause you to feel differently toward him or her for more than a short period of time.

2.    The offense should not be causing serious harm (to God’s reputation, to others, or to the offender)

3.     The offense is not a part of a destructive pattern.

There is a bit from the little book Abraham Lincoln: Wisdom and Wit that fits well here.  “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog?  Five?  No; calling a tail a leg don’t make it a leg.”

Our capacity to overlook things grows and varies over a lifetime.  Ideally, as we gain experience and wisdom, develop more relational and emotional maturity, and internalize the Gospel, we will have a greater capacity to overlook the faults and offenses of others.  However, we need to be honest with ourselves about where we are currently in our relationships and ability to overlook offenses.

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Adapted from Session Two of the excellent and highly recommended DVD series Resolving Everyday Conflict by Tim Pollard

Go further with The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict by Ken Sande