The Math Behind Successful Relationships and Biblical Conflict Resolution

Join Reagan as he dives into Song of Solomon, chapter 8, to explore the timeless wisdom about love and relationships. He discusses the Shunammite woman's view on love and contrasts it with Solomon's approach. Reagan also examines intriguing insights from a Wall Street Journal article on how mathematical formulas can predict relationship success with 90% accuracy. Learn about the importance of addressing conflict before it turns into bitterness, impacts worship, or spreads to others, using biblical benchmarks for resolving conflicts. This enlightening lesson combines teachings from scripture with real-world studies to provide a holistic view of love and conflict resolution in relationships.

00:00 Introduction and Opening Prayer
00:36 The Value of True Love
03:13 Love and Mathematics
03:49 The Science Behind Successful Relationships
07:31 Biblical Wisdom on Conflict Resolution
13:41 Three Benchmarks for Dealing with Conflict
29:27 Conclusion and Call to Action

Transcript

Good evening, would you take out your Bible please and turn to Song of Solomon, chapter eight and verse six, song of Solomon, chapter eight and verse six. We'll read just a couple of verses here from the end of Song of Solomon as a jumping off point for our lesson this evening. So that's Song of Solomon, chapter eight beginning in verse six.

Thank you for the presence of all, especially those who may be visiting with us. We're so grateful that you're here. I hope that these things that we talk about tonight will be helpful to you and your relationship with God and your relationship with one another. If you're there in Song of Solomon, chapter eight, beginning in verse six, we see that the Shunammite woman makes clear that love cannot be bought.

Well, maybe some people's love can be bought, but her love. Cannot be bought. And if you try and buy somebody's love, well it's probably not gonna turn out well for you. She says there in chapter eight and verse six, set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm. For love is as strong as death.

Jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes or flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Verse seven, many waters cannot quench love. Neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised. And I believe that's exactly what Solomon was trying to do in this book.

He was trying to offer all of his wealth and power and influence and the pleasure and comfort that he could offer as a substitute for love. And she says, no, that's not what I'm looking for. You drop down to verse 10. Actually, let's drop down to verse 11 and 12. Verse 11 and 12 of Psal of Solomon.

Chapter eight. Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamman and he let out the vineyard to keepers. Each one was to bring for its fruit, a thousand pieces of silver. Now, maybe Solomon really did have a vineyard here, but this is representative of his love and she contrasts this idea of farming out his love. We might say with her love.

Verse 12, my vineyard. My very own is before me. You o Solomon may have the thousand and the keepers of the fruit of 200. You can, you can pay what you want for love. But my love cannot be bought. She says to Solomon, you can keep your money. My love is mine. And that's a girl who knew her true worth. And she sees clearly that love, true love, real love.

Biblical love does not have a price tag. And in that sense, love is not something that you can calculate. And I'm talking about the kind of romantic love that might be found in a marriage relationship. And until recently, I would've said, well, you can't break that count. Kind of love down into a formula either.

But maybe there are some things about love that can be calculated in terms of what keeps love going. Instead of allowing it to turn into bitterness. And so, our, our lesson tonight is love mass and timeless scripture. I'm always looking for good illustrations from all different, various aspects of life and interests of different people.

I'm combining two that just go so hand in hand, love and math. This evening and hopefully this will be helpful to you as we think about some things. This kind of, this lesson kind of blindsided me a little bit. I was I was perusing the internet looking at a, a number of different things and I ran across an article in the Wall Street Journal.

I ended up there from. X the artist formerly known as Twitter. And this is what that article was about, how math can predict a happy or unhappy marriage. I was a little dubious about that, but the, the headline says, the math Behind Successful Relationships. A psychologist and mathematician learned a teamed up to craft a tool that proved to be shockingly accurate at predicting which marriages would wind up in divorce.

How accurate are we talking about? Well, this particular formula, they were able to, with 90% accuracy over a period of 10 years, predict which couples would end up in divorce and which couples would not end up in divorce. I, I know you can't break love down into a formula, but for all my engineers and math heads out there, this is about as close as we're gonna get to that.

So it turns out that there have been a lot of mathematicians. Who have done work on why we love one another and how we stay in love. The online dating site. OK Cupid was actually started by a group of mathematicians some of whom were looking for love themselves. Psychologists, John Gottman observed hundreds of couples having a conversation and recording everything he could think of and then.

And then analyzed with a team of other researchers, the data that he collected, and he brought in a mathematician by the names of James Murray to go through all of that data and some simple truths were found among them. If we do something negative, our spouses more likely to respond negatively to us.

That's some of the hard hitting truths. That you came here tonight. If we do something negative, our spouse is more likely to respond negatively. That's earth shattering. Well, maybe there's some times in my marriage it seems as though that was earth shattering. Maybe I shouldn't be negative because that'll influence her to be negative.

But what's interesting is. The more negativity that happens, the worse that gets and, and oftentimes it kind of spirals out of control. So, this is a comparison between these, these two types of marriages. Maybe it's not shocking to, to say the bottom one ended in divorce and the top one is actually one.

My, my pointer doesn't work anymore. Well, you know the difference between top and bottom. I don't guess I have to pick right. The bottom one ended in divorce. The top one actually was a successful marriage. And, and over on the left hand side, that axis total score is negativity. The negativity is, that is expressed and negativity of interactions between the couples.

And so, you see a score of negative 60 down here. A positive score of 45. So that positive interactions to 45 negative interactions down to negative one 60 almost across the board. Sorry, husbands in this study, wives were almost universally more positive than their husbands and what they expressed.

And then also in in the interactions that they had. That's not always a hundred percent gonna be the case, but that is the case generally speaking. And it's interesting as we, we see this. Couple that is going down in this spiral of negativity with their interactions of one another, and then this one that is going up kind of, in a zigzag sort of pattern.

Here's the formula that they've used in order to track that data. Everything means something. It's pretty interesting, but there's also a lot of common common sense that's involved the most important of all of these factors, supposedly. Are you still with me? Have I lost you yet? This is fascinating to me.

I don't know why. This is super fascinating to me. I promise we're gonna get right back to the Bible. There is a point to all of this, just stay with me. The most interesting or the most impactful of all of these factors was wife's influence on the husband and husband's influence on the wife. This is a truth that, that we all know.

I can't control anything else except my response, right? And so the most powerful impact in which way the conversation and the relationship is gonna go is how I respond to my spouse. Do I respond positively or do I respond negatively to them? Something that I found very interesting is that they applied this same formula.

With almost the same sort of results in terms of how well it was able to predict the future. I'm not making this up between two countries in an arms race. And so if you've ever had an argument and it felt like World War iii, well that's basically the same formula that we're dealing with. And so it can predict between these two companies, these two countries, how are they gonna respond to one another between a husband and wife?

How are they going to respond to one another? Here's my question. Having all that background, there's the most, the most important feature in all of this was something that's called the negativity threshold, which pinpoints when one spouse becomes so frustrated with the other. That he or she responds because they're frustrated, they're annoyed.

Whatever the case, it, it stirs up a response in them to the other. It's called the negativity threshold. This is all I can take without responding back to the person. Often it's a very negative response. It doesn't have to be, but they respond in some way because of the negativity that they're receiving.

So I want you to answer this question. Would you imagine that the best relationships have a high negativity threshold? Meaning that they can take a lot of negativity before they act in response, and so these couples are focused on compromise. They're not gonna bring up anything until it's a really, really big deal.

So that's gonna be number one. That's a high negativity threshold. They take a lot before they respond or. Would you imagine that the best relationships have a low negativity threshold? We'll make that number two, where they really don't take very much without acting or responding in some way. They respond to even little things, and maybe they respond negatively, but they hash it out with one another.

So the best relationships, would you say they go a long time without responding, or number two. They have this kinda low negativity threshold and it's like, man, as soon as we have issues, we're gonna respond to it. One or two. I'm, I'm asking, so which do you think it is? One or two? That is not a choice that I gave you this.

No, it's two. It's two. That was somewhat surprising to me, and I think maybe because I, I'm conflating this idea of being long suffering with the idea of a high negativity threshold. It might surprise some of you. As it surprised me, a low negatively threshold leads to stronger, better marriages with less likelihood for divorce.

Go back to that first chart that I put up on the screen. Is there no negativity in that marriage on the top? It's interesting. Right off the bat they kind of, oh no clicker. Good grief. Okay. They kind of go up a little bit and then they come straight back down and then they go up again, and then they have a big dip and then they go up again, and then they have another dip and back up again and have another dip.

You know what that's representative of, that's representative of that couple hashing things out. That they're bringing it to the surface and saying, this is an issue. We need to deal with this issue, and then we can move forward in a positive way. The couple on the bottom, they're just in a spiral of negativity.

Maybe it's the drip, drip, drip of a contentious woman. Maybe it's just a little bit at a time, a little bit of negativity here and there, but it, what it leads to is more and more and more negativity without an opportunity to really recover. I watched a TED talk about all of this and there are a couple of interesting quotes about this.

The most successful relationships are ones with a really low negativity threshold, and those relationships couple allow each other to complain, to work together, to constantly repair the tiny issues between them in such a case. Couples don't bottle up their feelings and little things don't end up being blown completely out of proportion.

In other words, they deal with their problems, deal with conflict. Instead of ignoring it, they deal with the problem so that they're able to move on. Happy. Couples then tend to be more positive in terms of their interactions, then negative and thus they're likely to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

But when there is an issue. They're more likely to bring it up quickly, fix it, and move on. I watched this Ted talk by a mathematic mathematician named Hannah Fry. She summarized the sayings, the the findings by saying Mathematicians, leave us with a positive message for our relationships, reinforcing the age old wisdom that you really shouldn't let the sun go down on your anger.

Huh? Where did that age old wisdom come from? The Bible? And secondly, are there some benchmarks for how long we can let things go without dealing with them? I, I think the Bible gives us a guide on how to deal with these sorts of things, and, and we don't have time this evening to deal with all sorts of different conflicts and how we deal with all different conflicts.

Instead, what I'd like to do this evening. Is make application from this secular study to say the Bible taught us this all along. And I want to emphasize three benchmarks for dealing with marriage conflict. And if we can have these benchmarks in our mind, and this applies to other relationships besides marriage as well, but I wanna make specific application to marriage.

If we can have these benchmarks in mind, well what that will allow us to do is. M to deal with conflict when ar it arises and be able to move on in a positive way. So open up your Bible now to Ephesians chapter four, if you would. There's where that age old wisdom came from. Originally it came from the book of Proverbs, but it's quoted by the Apostle Paul

in Ephesians chapter four

verses 26. 27. Here's our first, first benchmark, and we're gonna express them in the same way. Deal with conflict before it turns into bitterness. We need to deal with conflict soon, before it has the opportunity to, to harden and take root into bitterness. Look there in Ephesians chapter four in verse 26.

This is describing the person who's a Christian and is living a different life. Be angry. Do not sin. So anger is not the sin here, but anger can give opportunity to sin. As he says, do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Maybe your translation says, give the devil an opportunity, and that's what anger when it is unresolved.

That's what it does. It gives an opportunity for the devil to temp us. It gives the devil the opportunity to drive us apart. It's math. Well, it's, it's really scripture and sometimes we express that in a number of different ways that maybe are not entirely biblical. Does, does Paul and the Holy Spirit, do they mean this?

Literally do not let the sun go down on your anger. Now, before you answer that, let me ask it this way. Does that mean that you can be angry longer in the summer than you can in the winter? Because you know the sun doesn't go down nearly as early in the summer as it does in the winter? No, this is an expression that gives us a benchmark to say, okay, when the day comes to an end, it's not, oh, how much time do I have?

Reagan needs to hurry up 'cause the sun's gonna go down. We got some stuff we gotta deal with. Instead, what he's saying is, you can't allow this anger to. To fester. You can't allow it to linger. You need to deal with it when it arises. And, and the the phrase that I've heard a lot through my life, and, and again, it's another good way of thinking about it.

Don't ever go to bed angry. Well, sometimes you're not totally in control of exactly how you feel in those moments. And so sometimes. If you live by that and you live by that too, literally, what might happen is we're both tired, we're both upset, we're both mad, and what we really need is to go to bed and sleep it off and talk about it the next day.

But we can't go to bed angry, so we're just gonna stay up and yell at one another for a couple of hours that that's not necessarily healthy. But what it does tell us as those who believe the Bible and are trying to live out the truth that are contained in scripture is. You cannot allow conflict to continue unaddressed.

And whether it's one sunset or three, you cannot let it go very long without dealing with it, because if you do, it's going to progress into something else. Anger, when unaddressed in a godly way leads to an outburst of wrath, an outburst of wrath. Outbursts of wrath if unchecked develop into bitterness and bitterness only leads to deeper rooted conflict.

Turn to Hebrews chapter 12. I think we see this progression pretty clearly in Hebrews chapter 12.

Hebrews chapter 12, beginning in verse 14. Hebrews chapter 12, beginning in verse 14. Pursue peace with all people. Now, who's included in all people here is this. Christians, is this all people, Christians and non-Christians? I, I think it would be all people. What I know with certainty is that includes your husband.

That includes your wife. Pursue peace with your spouse, right? And holiness without which no one will see the Lord. We have to have peace and holiness and pursue those things if we're gonna see the Lord and be right with him in the judgment day. Verse 15, looking carefully. Lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any listen root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.

So bitterness springs up as a result of unresolved conflict when there is a lack of peace. Bitterness can be the result. When we have been wronged or we think we have been wronged or we have wronged someone else, bitterness can come along and it can be a consuming poison. I love the image of a root of bitterness.

Raise your hand if you've ever let your flower beds get out of control. Every anybody. Yeah. And so you don't weed 'em, you don't weed 'em. And then finally, you decide to go out there and weed your flowerbed. And most of the flowers are overgrown with weeds. How difficult is it to get all of those weeds out when they have taken root?

And even if you do get 'em out. There's gonna be a lot of destruction with all of the other plants that are included in that flowerbed. It's, it's the same thing in regard to bitterness. We need to pluck out bitterness before it has the opportunity to take root. Because later on there are means and paths to deal with that bitterness, but it is gonna be much more destructive the longer we allow it to fester.

And so deal with conflict. Deal with that anger before it has the opportunity to turn into bitterness before it has the opportunity to take root. That's the first benchmark for dealing with marriage conflict or any conflict in relationships. Number two, deal with conflict before it impacts your worship, before it impacts your service to God.

That's the second benchmark to say, okay, how quickly do I need to deal with this? Before it impacts your worship and your service to God. Turn to Matthew chapter five, if you would. Matthew chapter five. Matthew chapter five, beginning in verse 21. Matthew chapter five, beginning in verse 21. Let's read what Jesus has to say together.

You have heard that it was said to those of old you shall not murder. And whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. Well, is that still true today? Absolutely it is. But there's more to it than just refraining from killing someone else. But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.

And whoever says to his brother, Raha empty head, shall be in danger of the council. And whoever says, you fool shall be in danger of hell. Fire. Therefore verse 23, if you're in this kind of conflict with a brother, where you're, you're name calling and you've got these things going on, therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, you as an individual, you bring your gift to the altar and there, remember that your brother has something against you.

Leave your gift there before the altar and go your way first. Be reconciled to your brother. Then come and offer your gift again, perhaps we could interpret this too literally and say, well, I'm having conflict with a brother or sister, or maybe even with my spouse, so I guess I'm not coming to church today.

No, church is the place you need to be, right? Coming to worship is where you need to be, but if you realize that the conflict that you're having with your spouse is impacting the way you're worshiping God. If you realize that the conflict you're having with your spouse is impacting the service, you're offer offering in the kingdom, then it has gone on too long and it needs to be dealt with.

Have you ever had conflict with someone, maybe with a spouse, maybe with someone else, that you were able to set aside for the common good? You know, you're able to set it aside because there's something that needs to be accomplished because there's more important things. I, I think back to my, my high school basketball team.

You know, I've gotta balance out the math example just a little bit tonight. There was a guy on that basketball team when I was a senior that I had a lot of conflict with. We had a lot of conflict. At school, we had a lot of conflict outside of school. We both had strong personalities. We had a very different way of looking at the world.

He was, he was living an extremely worldly life and I was trying to live like a Christian. And we just, we had lots and lots of conflict. We had, we had had conflict growing up through the years. Only got worse. But we both loved to win. And so when we stepped. When we stepped off that bench in between those lines, it was like we were brothers for life.

And so we could set aside the conflict that we were having for the greater good. And the beginning of our senior year was incredible, the success that we had, the tournaments that we won against a lot bigger schools. But what was interesting is we, we never really dealt with this conflict that was getting worse and worse.

By the end of the year, it had seeped into this thing that we did have in common, this thing that we were coming together in order to try and accomplish together, and all of a sudden, our conflict on the court started mirroring our conflict off the court. Now, I know that that is nothing in comparison to things of a spiritual nature, but.

Have you ever had that experience in regard to worship? Maybe we're, you know, having some conflict. Maybe there's some things where we're not on the same page, but when we come together to worship, we can set those things aside and focus on our God and be here together focused on what's really important.

And a lot of times that will help to resolve some of the conflict. We see what's really important, but when we come to services and we're distracted. It starts seeping into the way we're trying to worship God. That's a benchmark. We need to resolve this because our worship to God is too important to allow this conflict to be an issue.

In that regard, if one or both of you, or having trouble worshiping things have gone on too long and that conflict needs to be dealt with and dealt with soon. And then finally, number three. I, I struggled with exactly how to put this one, but here's the way I'm gonna put it. We need to deal with conflict before it spreads to others.

Go to Matthew chapter 18. Now, why I, I struggled with how to put that is sometimes conflict has to spread to others if it's going to be dealt with, but ideally what we want to do is resolve conflict. When it is just between me and my spouse, or me and my brother, or me and my sister in the Lord before it goes to other people, that's the ideal result, right?

So here in Matthew chapter 18, beginning in verse 15, there are steps that should be taken when dealing with sin that is taken place between a brother or sister in Christ. There's sin between you and you gotta deal with that sin. Here are the steps that need to be taken, but notice the first step.

Matthew chapter 18 in verse 15. Moreover, if your brother sins against you, kind of the opposite of what we read in Matthew chapter five. You remember, your brother has something against you. You are the one who's at least in their mind, in the wrong here. They have sinned against you. What do you do? Go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he hears you, you have gained your brother. Now you're good Bible students, you know, verses 16 through 20. Give the rest of the steps. I want to intentionally not read those steps tonight.

Instead, what I would like to do is read verse 15 again. Moreover, if your brother ends against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. There is no need for verses 16 through 20. If we resolve, we're gonna deal with conflict before it spreads to others that God's way works.

And if we need to make something right, we need to do it and we need to make it right so that we might move on in faith together. And that applies certainly to our marriage relationships. 99% of conflict. That's not an official number, but that's in my mind and heart. 99% of conflict should not get past.

Verse 15. The vast majority of the conflict that we have in our marriages among our brothers and sisters in Christ, and, and, and certainly as we think about the conflict that we have with others, most of that conflict should not get beyond me and him or me and her. No one else. Not our kids. They shouldn't be impacted by it, not our, not our friends, not our family, not our brethren, not the elders, and certainly not the church because we resolve that we're gonna deal with it with one another because that's what Christians do.

And certainly that's what two Christians who are married to one another do. That's not to say that we shouldn't go to others in times of need. Please don't misunderstand me, but start, start in these times of conflict with addressing it quickly and addressing it with one another directly. I don't love the idea of a, a negativity threshold.

That sounds so well negative, doesn't it? But what about for us as the children of God? Shouldn't there be like a disunity threshold? Shouldn't there be a conflict threshold where we say, you know what, I'm not gonna allow this to go on. And when we look at these benchmarks in our life, I'm gonna deal with it before it turns into bitterness.

We're gonna deal with it before it impacts our worship and service. Now we're gonna deal with conflict before it spreads to anyone else beyond the two of us. If every single one of us and every single one of our marriages resolve to do this well, they wouldn't have to do studies about the kind of mass that leads to divorce.

Instead, we would all be serving one another as we should, as Christians should, as married, Christians should, and resolving conflict when it inevitably comes. God is a God of peace and he desires peace for us in our homes, in the church, in our communities, even in the world. And there will all be, always be those who, who don't love peace, who don't pursue the things that make for peace.

But as it pertains to me and as it pertains to you, may we do what we can to resolve these conflicts when they come. So that they don't grow into something bigger and worse that might impact the Lord his kingdom or our eternal salvation. If you're here this evening and you're not yet a Christian, well, becoming a Christian is wonderful in so many ways, but one of those ways is we're all committed to peace.

We're committed to the love that we should have for one another. We're committed to the truth that leads us down the path to peace. And we're committed to be who it is God has called us to be. We are not a, a perfect people who never have conflict by any means, but we strive to resolve that conflict in godly ways and for many for many who have lived in this world any amount of time.

Maybe that's unusual to you. I tell you that that kind of peace is only found in Jesus, and he is calling you to come and be a part of the family. That is committed to striving to have that kind of peace and resolve conflict. And if we can help you to become part of the family of God tonight, or if you know that there's something you need to do to pursue peace and we can help you with that.

Come now what? Together we stand and while we sit.