Happiness: SELF focused vs. God focused - Part 4

This is a continuation of a post I started 4 days ago. The other day Lucy Danziger published an article called, "4 Simple Secrets to Feeling Happier Every Day." Lucy is the Editor-in-Chief of SELF magazine. This is the final point she made about happiness from a secular perspective. It is titled, "Conflict can be OK!" WOW! She deals with conflict management in a very simplistic manner in 3 very short paragraphs. There are many passages in the Bible that treat this subject in detail. A brief list would include Matthew 18:15-17, Luke 17:3-4, 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, 1 Corinthians 9:19-21. These passages cover a variety of different situations. They deal with everything from confronting a brother to forgiveness and not being able to forgive and seeking to identify with others. The scriptural perspective on conflict and managing it is dramatically different from Lucy's point of view. Lucy's conclusion is that, "Connecting, especially with friends is important to your happiness." The Holy Spirit declares to us through the word that conflict management is not about us but is for the glory of the kingdom of God. 
Let's take for example a brother or sister in our fellowship who is in sin. If we ignore the sin or gloss over it in order to be reconciled we are embracing a worldly answer. Do we condemn them? Not readily and not immediately. Our goal is their reconciliation to God. First we go to them privately and express concern as a fellow believer. We need to make sure they understand that we are coming because we too are sinners and have experienced things that separate us from God (Matthew 7:3-5). It should be our earnest desire to help them understand that what they are doing is building a wall of sin between us that we cannot overlook because we care about their relationship with God. Matthew 18 above gives additional steps to follow but the point is that conflict resolution is focused on bringing them back into fellowship and relationship with God. In the Christians case this will not always be comfortable. Sometimes we will have to forgive people that we do not feel like forgiving. We may have to separate from someone that we really like for the sake of helping them to understand the seriousness of sin. We have to remember that it is vital to stay open to embracing them and bringing them back into fellowship should they desire that. But at the end of the day the most important thing for anyone is that there is nothing standing between them and God. Remember if someone hangs onto a sin when confronted then that sin is potentially a god to them. If it is something they are holding onto and yet claiming to be a Christian then we must for their sake show them that sin separates. That is the point of separating from an unrepentant brother or sister. We are pointing out to them that if they persist in this that they may indeed be separating themselves from God. Some would say that this is judgmentalism. Unfortunately people who say this fail to understand that if this is done correctly and in love that we may truly be winning someone to true repentance. If we succeed in bringing them back into fellowship we would have literally saved them from hell with the working of the Holy Spirit bringing them to repentance. What do I want to do? Shall I accept someone, have personal peace now and watch them slip into a Christless eternity? Certainly not! We must risk all for surpassing greatness of knowing and having others know Jesus Christ our Lord.