How to Handle Conflict as a Christian — De Sales on Peaceful Confrontation
⏱ 14 min read
The conversation has been waiting in the next room for weeks. The thing that needs to be said to the husband, or to the sister, or to the friend who hurt you, or to the child whose pattern has stopped being childish and started being a problem. You have rehearsed the sentences in the shower. You have written and re-written the text. You have decided, three times, to bring it up at dinner, and three times the dinner has gone past without your saying it, because the small braced thing in your chest could not, in the moment, produce the words you had rehearsed.
You are not weak for hesitating. The body knows what conflict has cost in the past — the slammed doors, the long cold weeks, the friendship that did not survive the last hard conversation — and it is, gently, trying to protect you. The slow Christian answer to how to handle conflict as a Christian is not to override the body’s hesitation by force. It is to learn the kind of inner quiet from which a hard truth can be said gently, in a voice that has been steadied long before the conversation begins. Francis de Sales, the seventeenth-century bishop of Geneva, who spent forty years pastoring believers across deeply contested theological lines without losing a single one of them to harshness, walked this ground in three passages worth a slow evening. The Everspring Couples Prayer Journal carries this kind of reading into a daily companion for the woman who is learning to say hard things in a soft voice. For now — read slowly. (If the conflict is bound up with a pattern of self-criticism that has been louder than the actual disagreement, the companion how the saints practiced humility — De Sales on the devout life walks the slow ground underneath. If the conflict has spiritual layers you can feel but cannot name, what is spiritual warfare — Bunyan on the Christian’s real fight names them. And if the journal page has been hard to face when the conversation is unresolved, what to write in a Christian journal when you feel blank holds fifty honest prompts for the empty-page days.)
De Sales was, by temperament, a gentle man — but his gentleness was not natural. He wrote, in his letters, of having been a fierce and easily-angered young man who had been slowly remade by daily small practices of inner quiet. His pastoral voice, by midlife, was famous for being able to confront without wounding, to disagree without breaking the relationship, and to hold firm to a hard truth in a tone so quiet it could be received. The slow reading below is about the inner work that made the gentle outer voice possible.
The first passage — vigorously resist the languor
De Sales, in Introduction to the Devout Life, wrote a sentence about what to do when a hard conversation has begun to feel impossible — when the small braced thing in the chest has begun to talk you out of saying the thing at all.
“But when you pray let your words and affections, whether interior or exterior, all tend to love and trust in God. ‘O God of Mercy, most Loving Lord, Sweet Saviour, Lord of my heart, my Joy, my Hope, my Beloved, my Bridegroom.’ Vigorously resist all tendencies to melancholy, and although all you do may seem to be done coldly, wearily and indifferently, do not give in. The Enemy strives to make us languid in doing good by depression, but when he sees that we do not cease our efforts to work, and that those efforts become all the more earnest by reason of their being made in resistance to him, he leaves off troubling us.”
— Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice the diagnosis. De Sales is not, in this sentence, talking about depression in the modern clinical sense. He is talking about the small languor that arrives when the soul is being asked to do a hard right thing — speak the truth, hold the firm boundary, end the unkindness — and the inner weather slowly turns grey, and the doing of the right thing begins to feel cold and weary and pointless, and the temptation arrives to give up the doing because the doing has stopped feeling spiritual.
This is the exact weather a hard conversation produces in a Christian woman who has been raised to be peaceable. The conversation needs to happen. The rehearsing has gone on for weeks. And the small inner languor — what is the point, it will not change anything, you are being too much, leave it alone, the silence is easier — has been quietly running the room. De Sales names it. The Enemy strives to make us languid in doing good by depression. The languor is not your true self. The languor is a small spiritual weather that has been settled on the room to keep the conversation from happening. The instruction is exact. Do not give in. Continue the slow work. Continue the prayer. Continue, gently, the preparation for the conversation. The efforts become all the more earnest by reason of their being made in resistance to him, and the languor, eventually, leaves off.
This is the first thing to say about how to handle conflict as a Christian. The hesitation is not your final word on the matter. The hesitation is a small weather to be resisted, not by force, but by the slow continuation of the prayer and the preparation and the careful drafting of what you will say. The Enemy, de Sales would say, would much rather have you say nothing for another six months. The continuing — gently, prayerfully, slowly — is the resistance. The conversation, when it comes, will arrive out of the inner quiet that the resistance has been producing. (The sibling article in this Father-Analysis cluster sits at how to build Christian friendship — Spurgeon on holy friendships; the two skills are one skill in different rooms.)
The somatic — for the body that has been bracing
Pause here. The body has been bracing for this conversation for weeks. The jaw has been set. The shoulders have been up. The lower belly has been quietly clenched, in the way bodies are quietly clenched when they are preparing for an impact that has not yet come.
Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet flat on the floor. Place one hand, lightly, on the lower belly — just below the navel. The belly there has been small and tight for some weeks. The breath has been working high in the chest, leaving the lower belly held.
Take one slow inhale. Not deep — slow. Let the breath travel low, all the way into the belly under the hand, until the belly receives a small portion of air that the upper chest has been hoarding. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, slower than the inhale. Let the jaw soften. Let the small held place in the lower back release by a quarter of an inch.
One more slow inhale. One more longer exhale. Then take the hand away.
The body did not need to do anything. It needed the acknowledgement that it has been carrying the conversation in its small braced places for weeks — and that the carrying is allowed to lower, for two breaths, in your chair. De Sales would not have separated the slow exhale from the doctrine. The body softening is the first piece of how to handle conflict as a Christian. The voice that comes out of a softened body is a different voice from the voice that comes out of a braced one. The conversation, when it happens, will be carried by the voice. The voice is, slowly, being prepared right now.
The second passage — the loving countenance
De Sales, in Introduction to the Devout Life, gave a small picture of what the Christian face is meant to look like when it is in the company of the Lord — and the same face, almost without his saying it, is the face the hard conversation needs.
“Look around — one and all you will see them with loving, holy, gentle countenances listening to the Voice of their Lord, all seeking to enthrone Him more and more within their hearts.”
— Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life
Read it twice. Slowly.
The picture is of the company of believers across the centuries — the saints, the slow contemplatives, the quiet women in the back of the chapel. Their faces are loving, holy, gentle. They are listening to the Voice of their Lord. They are seeking to enthrone Him more and more within their hearts. There is no agitation in the picture. There is no rehearsed speech. There is only the small attentive listening, with the face composed in love, and the heart slowly opening to be more thoroughly His.
The line worth keeping near the page is loving, holy, gentle countenances listening. The Christian woman who is preparing for a hard conversation has been, for weeks, the opposite of this. Her face, when she rehearses the conversation in the mirror, has been hard. Her mind has been formulating sentences. Her interior posture has been speaking rather than listening. De Sales is gently re-orienting her. Before the conversation can be peaceful, the face has to become loving. Before the face can become loving, the heart has to be listening to the Voice of the Lord, and not to the rehearsed grievance.
This is the second thing to say about how to handle conflict as a Christian. The hard truth has to be said — but it has to be said from a face that has been composed in love, and the composing of the face is the slow work that happens before the conversation. You cannot manufacture a loving countenance in the moment of impact. The face will be what the face has been practising. If the face, in the past three weeks, has been practising the rehearsed grievance, the face will show up to the conversation already braced. If the face, in the past three weeks, has been practising listening to the Voice of the Lord — sitting in the chair, reading the slow verse, letting the breath have its longer exhale — the face will show up to the conversation already gentled. The conversation will be carried by the gentling.
De Sales does not say the hard thing should not be said. The hard thing should be said. He is asking you to attend, first, to the face. Loving, holy, gentle, listening. The truth, said from that face, lands differently. The same words, said from a hardened face, wound. The same words, said from a gentled face, can be received — even by a difficult listener, even across a long-stuck pattern, even in the conversation that has been waiting in the next room for weeks.
The Everspring Couples Prayer Journal was built around exactly this slow daily practice — one short passage each evening, a verse held next to the day, room for the honest sentence about the small relational weather. The journal will not, by itself, give you the conversation. It will give you the daily small practice that, slowly, makes the loving, holy, gentle countenance the face you walk into the conversation wearing. The conversation is not the work. The face is the work. The conversation borrows the face.
The third passage — the cross saluted, the heart opened
De Sales, in his Treatise on the Love of God, recorded the inner prayer of a Christian who has been given a hard thing to carry — a confrontation, a sacrifice, a costly act of charity — and who, instead of bracing against it, slowly bends down and salutes it.
“Whereupon, representing to himself the greatness of the pains, toils and hazards which it would be incumbent on him to undergo in that behalf, he immolated himself in spirit to God’s good-pleasure, and tenderly kissing this his cross, he cried from the bottom of his heart, in imitation of S. Andrew: ‘I salute thee, O precious cross, I salute thee, O blessed tribulation. O holy affliction, how delightful thou art, since thou didst issue from the loving breast of this Father of eternal mercy, who willed thee from all eternity, and ordained thee for my dear people and me.’”
— Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly.
The picture is of a Christian who is about to undergo the pains, toils and hazards of a hard right thing — and who, before he begins, kisses the small cross that the hard thing is. The kissing is not masochism. The kissing is the small inner act of receiving the hard thing as something the Father has ordained — not as an unwanted accident, but as a small particular gift the day is offering, in which the love of God can be practised. How delightful thou art, since thou didst issue from the loving breast of this Father of eternal mercy. The hard conversation, in de Sales’ framing, is a small cross — and the small cross has been given by the Father, and the Father is loving, and therefore the cross, before it is even taken up, is delightful because of where it came from.
This is the third thing to say about how to handle conflict as a Christian. The hard conversation has been given to you. It has not been given to torment you. It has been given as the small instrument by which the love between you and the other person — or the truth that has been waiting to be said, or the boundary that has been waiting to be set — can finally have room to come into the daylight. The conversation is not the enemy. The conversation is the slow gift. The Father, who ordained it, loves both you and the person you are about to speak with. He has not given you a conversation that He has not also given grace for.
The interior practice de Sales is naming is small and exact. Before the conversation, you salute it. Not with words spoken out loud. With a small inner bow. I salute thee, hard conversation that has been waiting in the next room. The Father of eternal mercy has ordained thee. Thou art his small instrument for the love between us. I will not brace against thee. I will receive thee as I have received the small good things of the morning. The salute is the slow inner reframing. The reframing changes the chemistry of the chest. The chest that has saluted the conversation walks into the room differently from the chest that has braced against it.
For the woman who has been bracing for a hard conversation for months — de Sales is gentle here. The bracing has been costing you more than the conversation will. The salute is the alternative. I salute thee, O precious cross. You may not feel it. You may have to practise the small inner bow, sitting in the chair, for three evenings in a row before it stops feeling theatrical. The practice is the practice. The conversation, when it comes, will be carried by what you have been practising.
What the slow reading will do over a year
If you sit with de Sales’ three passages — one a month for three months — and then the long question how to handle conflict as a Christian as your slow companion for the rest of the year, what happens is not dramatic. The hard conversations do not become easy. They become possible — and the possibility, in your fortieth year of being a Christian, is the gift the year is offering.
The languor that has been talking you out of the conversation will, slowly, be resisted — and resisting it will become its own small spiritual practice, no longer alarming when it arrives. The face that walks into the conversation will, slowly, become loving, holy, gentle — and the words that come out of the gentled face will land in the other person’s chest in a way the same words could not, when the face was hardened. The conversation itself will be saluted before it begins — and the bracing in the body will, slowly, give way to the small inner bow that says, this hard thing is also from the Father, and the Father is loving.
By the end of a year, you will have had three or four of the hard conversations you have been delaying — and you will not recognise the woman who delayed them. She was earlier in the road. She had not yet learned the slow inner work that makes the gentle outer voice possible. The conversations she walked into would have wounded, because her face was not yet ready. The conversations the new woman walks into can be received, because the woman has been quietly composed by daily small practices that no one watched her do.
The slow reading does not erase the difficulty of conflict. Conflict is its own small cross. The slow reading does what de Sales’ whole life did — it gentles the one walking into the conflict, so that the truth can be said, and the relationship can hold, and the love of God can be the medium in which the hard thing is finally spoken aloud.
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A daily home for the slow gentling
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Couples Prayer Journal. Each evening, one short passage and a verse, with room for the honest sentence — a small daily place to let the face become loving while the hard conversation is still in the next room.
The Everspring Couples Prayer Journal carries de Sales’ slow vocabulary — the languor resisted, the loving countenance listening, the small cross saluted before it is taken up — into a daily companion for the woman who is learning to say hard things in a soft voice, without rushing and without pretending the conversation will not be costly.
