On Compromise

I was leading a teamwork training session the other day – sounds good that, doesn’t it, trust me it’s better.  Anyway, so I’m there leading it and we get to looking at what makes a good team member.  So I’m taking on board the qualities and traits and that kind of thing.  Among the answers given by the members of the group, one is ‘an ability to compromise’.  I press the person on what they mean by it and he goes on to describe the ability to have your own view and someone else’s which may differ and then between the two of you try to meet each other half way.

Now I don’t know if Oxford’s, Chamber’s or any other of the major dictionaries will have that necessarily, but it sounds like a decent effort at the layman’s definition of the word ‘compromise’.  It’s not always about half-way, but it is about leaving where you are to meet someone else from where they are coming from.

I have always had a problem with the concept of compromise.  There is something about it that undermines the concept of truth in the first place.  That’s what I think.  That’s how I make it in my blog, and hey, this is my blog.  I like the thought of having a view on something, but not holding onto it too tightly to ignore what others may have to say on that perspective.  So as your view is shared with others and they have their input then your own can be shaped into something coming closer to what is true.

That’s not compromise to me.  That’s journeying to truth.

Compromise smells more of holding something of great value and then being told to slowly give that up and let it change shape to something else that will not be as valuable for the sake of something that is not that valuable.  It’s one thing to humbly and vulnerably journey to truth.  It’s another thing to lose what is valuable in the vain hope of getting something else.

With the recent political landscape in the UK based on that principle, I reckon too many decisions made in life are because we don’t understand the value of what we have been given and so give it away far too cheaply in the hope of something that is not as valuable.  Likewise that which we hold onto dearly isn’t the truth and in not accepting the journeys to truth with the help of others we hold onto things that are of fading and even irrelevant value.  Of course the trick is to apply God’s wisdom to know the difference.

In either sense, though, the compromise business just doesn’t fit in my way of doing things.  I’m open to change on the issue, this is not an unchangeable truth that I’ll hold onto without valuing the input of others.  For the time being though, no compromise.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd