Compromise

Compromise is generally regarded as a dirty word. It is something to avoid. To make a compromise, to be compromised, even to accept a compromise, is to settle for second best, at worst to be involved in a shady activity. Therefore ethically inclined, especially Christianly committed, people should steer away from compromise. The difficulty with this view is that there is scarcely any situation in life in which at some point compromise is not required. This is so when a group decision has to be made by a committee, for example, since it is rare for several people to reach complete agreement. Or this is so, as in the case of social services or welfare, when limited resources mean that some have to miss out or get less than others. Or this is so in schools when conflicting opinions between parents and teachers mean that no decision is going to completely satisfy everybody. Even on the home front, juggling the sometimes competing options and demands in two-career families requires compromise—for example, when the whole family must decide to move so that one of its members can take up a job offer or promotion elsewhere. Some Christians, especially those who are very idealistic, are troubled by having to abandon what they feel is God’s will for them or in general so that they can adjust to the positions or aspirations of others. Since they are concerned to do God’s will, anything less seems a departure from God’s ideal plan for them or wider purposes.

This issue becomes particularly acute in connection with our work. It is often thought to be especially connected to certain occupations. Politics, for example, with its adversarial dynamics, is as well “the art of compromise” (a definition Luther would have found quite acceptable). This is why many people regard politics with suspicion, but nothing would take place in politics, even developing and implementing the best policies, without it. And according to the New Testament, politics is a task in which even unbelievers, if doing right, can be servants of God (Romans 13:4). It is not essentially different in the world of commerce, especially in the making of business deals. This is also the case in various professions, especially in law. In a world that is more and more culturally diverse and pluralistic, a whole range of activities inside and outside the workplace require the various parties to make concessions to one another. But making compromises in any of these areas troubles many Christians, leading them to regard themselves as second-rate Christians or to develop a growing skepticism about the relevance of biblical ideals to everyday life.

Approaching the Issue of Compromise

What do we mean by the word compromise? Generally we use it in one of two ways. First, it is used for taking a middle way between two courses of action that may be based on different principles or on different possibilities derived from the same principle. Second, it is used for a decision or action that seems to involve a lowering of standards. I want to suggest that a situation such as the first usage has in mind certainly enables us to engage in a positive or legitimate compromise. Regarding the second usage, what sometimes appears to be a lowering of standards in making a decision may not necessarily involve that. But I also want to suggest that depending on the circumstances and the decision, the first situation can lead to a negative or illegitimate compromise as much as the second.

It is also helpful to distinguish compromise from two overlapping ways of operating: between compromising and strategizing and between compromising and negotiating. Strategizing involves working out a long-term, often complex, set of tactics for reaching a desired end. This may involve all kinds of moves and countermoves, unexpected demands and apparent concessions, which initially and for some time may obscure the goal of the exercise. Such strategies are means to an end, temporary positions that are part of the larger game being played. Strategizing is broader than compromising and may involve good or bad strategies as well as good or bad compromises. A subset of strategizing is negotiating. While there may be legitimate and illegitimate, or more and less legitimate, ways of conducting negotiations, compromise is not necessarily involved here, though sometimes it is. A negotiator may make many proposals and responses in coming to an agreement without at any point yielding something basic, only appearing to do so. In the case of both strategizing and negotiating, a person may take into account people’s sensitivities, particular circumstances or specific cultural contexts, without which a good agreement—or sometimes any agreement—cannot be reached. So, to the extent that compromising is sometimes confused with appropriate strategizing or negotiating, there need not necessarily be anything negative involved in it.

What then is compromise? Is it, as is commonly thought, betraying one’s basic convictions for the sake of expediency, because it is opportunistic to do so, to relieve the pressure one is under or simply as a consequence of moral weakness? Or is it possible to make good compromises that are not a betrayal of principles so much as an appropriate, perhaps under the circumstances the most appropriate, response to them? If this is the case, how can we tell the difference between these two, and what practical steps can people take to ensure that they do not break faith with their own strongest convictions and standards or those of the institution they represent?

Toward a Positive View of Compromise

It is possible to compromise in ways that are positive and defensible from a Christian point of view. As always, the Bible provides a good place to start. There are many biblical stories in which people made decisions that seem to be acceptable to God or to even further God’s will even though these did not express all of their basic beliefs or hopes. A clear example is the meeting in Jerusalem between Paul and Barnabas, on the one hand, and the apostles and elders, on the other, to discuss the validity of the Gentile mission. There was considerable debate, and the upshot was an agreement in which the Jewish Christians endorsed Paul’s initiative in taking the gospel to the Gentiles and Paul’s missionary team accepted the condition that they communicate certain restrictions on the behavior of Gentile Christians that could be interpreted as supportive of idolatry and promiscuity (Acts 15:23-29). Another example in Acts is Paul’s apparently contradictory practice of, in one place, circumcising one of his coworkers and, in another place, refusing to do so. The first concerned Timothy, who was half-Jewish; Paul felt there was some ground for placating the scruples some Jewish Christians had about him. The second concerned Titus, a Gentile, whose circumcision, no matter how strongly certain Jewish Christians may have desired it, would have betrayed Paul’s basic convictions about Gentile Christians’ freedom from keeping Jewish observances.

But elsewhere Paul is quite outspoken about his missionary practice of becoming “all things to all people” (1 Cor. 9:22). When he preaches the gospel, he takes serious account of the religious and cultural convictions of his hearers. If they are Jews or observe the law, he accommodates them and speaks as one who respects the Jewish heritage and law himself. If they are “strong” and do not observe particular holy days or follow regulations concerning food and drink, he begins with the freedom in Christ he experiences in such areas despite being a Jew. On the other hand, if they take the opposite point of view, since he too sometimes feels “weak,” he is willing to begin from that and proceed from there. This way of operating is not restricted to Paul’s missionary endeavors; it is also his regular pastoral practice. When confronted by viewpoints at some distance from his own, unless they are being advocated in a proud, hardened or manipulative way, as much as possible he seeks some common ground and then articulates his own position and tries to draw people toward it (as with discussions on ascetic sexual and overly charismatic practices in 1 Cor. 7 and 1 Cor. 12-14). Though Paul has often been accused of compromise in the negative sense because he acted in all these ways, it is not difficult to defend him against this charge in the name of a higher consistency.

The Negative Side of Compromise

We also find in the Bible examples of poor or negative compromises that are condemned. In Paul’s letters we find the classic case of the behavior of Peter in the controversy between Jewish and Gentile Christians at Antioch. Though Peter has his own strong convictions on what is required of each group, convictions that are virtually identical with Paul’s, he bends under pressure from certain people who have come down from Jerusalem and who were probably misinterpreting the position of his fellow apostle James. Peter urges the withdrawal of the Jewish Christians from the Lord’s table because of the Gentile Christians’ different eating habits (Galatians 2:11-14). At principle here from Paul’s point of view was the gospel’s full acceptance of the Gentiles even though they did not observe all the regulations of the law of Moses. Though it was not his intention, Peter’s position was a compromising one in a seriously negative sense. This is why Paul would not yield so much as an inch.

The story of Peter’s rebuke indicates, as we know, that compromise can have serious negative effects. This is so, first and foremost, for the person who makes it. Acting in this way weakens a person’s capacity to made good compromises or other good decisions in the future. It is also unfortunate for those affected by the compromise, all of whom, not only the ones allegedly being protected, will suffer from the result. The key then is how to know the difference between good and bad, or better and worse, compromises. At this point our moral terminology can often get in the way. So long as we think only in terms of black and white, only in terms of good and bad, we are limited in our capacity to deal with such situations as discerning when good compromises can be made, what they are, when we are in danger of making a bad compromise or when no compromise should be made at all.

We can be helped here by the language of the Old Testament Wisdom literature, which expands its moral vocabulary to judge actions according to whether they are wise or unwise, fitting or unfitting, appropriate or inappropriate. There are times when it is better not to press for something that is good simply because it would not be wise to do so and we would jeopardize any possibility of its happening later. Or sometimes it may be wise to engage in an action even if it is not what we would most prefer since it is the best that is likely to come out of the situation and is far better than other choices that could be made. Other words than compromise could be used in such cases. Depending on the nature of the decision and the surrounding circumstances, terms like adjustment, accommodation, concession or conciliation could apply, again demonstrating that compromise in the pejorative sense is not necessarily in view.

In such cases the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr tended to talk in terms of our having an attitude of “delayed repentance.” That is, we make the best decision we can under the circumstances, which is often the “lesser of two evils,” then later ask God to forgive us. But if such a decision is the best compromise we can make in that situation, while we may regret that it could not be otherwise, repentance does not seem called for. Does this not mean that it is the will of God for us in that circumstance? Given the circumstances, what more could be called for? For example, when Jesus is unable to heal in a certain place because people’s faith was lacking, was it a compromise on his part? Helpful here is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s distinction between ultimate and penultimate realities, the latter constrained by events, situations and people in this world. Sometimes the latter, to use his words, require us to “sacrifice a fruitless principle to a fruitful compromise” (pp. 79-101). The latter, though not the ultimate, is still derived from it and points toward it.

Learning How to Make Good Compromises

A legitimate or, to use Bonhoeffer’s words, fruitful compromise, then, will seek to preserve our basic faith convictions, safeguard loving relationships and retain vision for the future. If it does, this will be an expression of the will of God in its particular time, place and set of circumstances. More specific criteria include the following: Does it generate good or bad effects? Is it likely to lessen evil and wrong? Does it extend justice, particularly to those who require it most? Will it exhibit a proper regard for all persons with a stake in it? Have those involved shown throughout a genuine concern for truth in what is under discussion? Is there a recognition of the choice involved and an avoidance of talk about “having to do it”? Do both the process and the decision display the virtue of patience? Can the decision be altered if circumstances change and another decision becomes possible? Though these criteria are still very general, at least they provide a framework within which a proper decision can be reached and the appropriate compromises, if necessary, made.

What can we do to ensure as far as possible that we are in the best position to judge an issue by these criteria and work toward the best possible compromise? The following considerations are relevant whether we are dealing with issues between husband and spouse or parents and children in the family, with issues arising between friends or neighbors, with issues that we encounter in the workplace or in voluntary associations, with issues that come before us in the church or church-related ministry, or with issues of a social or political kind on which we have to cast a vote. In all these situations we should (1) continue to give first priority to maturing in our relationship with God and others, for good compromises are more likely to proceed from people who are attempting with God’s help to become increasingly good. (2) Keep the big picture in mind, never letting go of our ultimate aims and purposes, so that we can preserve a proper perspective on the issues at hand. (3) Consult closely as much as possible with other people so that we have as much wisdom as possible in making decisions involving compromise. (4) Be prepared to give way on minor issues where a major issue is at stake; otherwise, we will tend to confuse the forest for the trees and win or lose small victories at the expense of big ones. (5) Aim at a win-win rather than a win-lose, or lose-win, situation, for which lateral thinking or seeing new possibilities is really required.

If we keep these factors in mind, are serious about bringing such matters to God in prayer and meditation, and have resort to a group of supportive people with whom we can sometimes talk over these issues, we can have every confidence that God will go with us into our decisions and help us discern how best to respond.

» See also: Business Ethics

» See also: Conflict Resolution

» See also: Integrity

» See also: Negotiating

» See also: Values

References and Resources

D. Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1955); J. Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960); W. J. Diehl, The Monday Connection (New York: Harper Collins, 1991); K. E. Kirk, Conscience and Its Problems (London: Longman, 1933); H. R. Niebuhr, The Responsible Self (New York: Harper & Row, 1979); W. Temple, Christian Faith and the Common Life (London: Allen & Unwin, 1938); H. Thielicke, Politics, vol. 2 of Theological Ethics (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969); W. Ury, Getting to Yes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981); H. F. Woodhouse, “Can Compromise Be the Will of God?” Crucible, January-March 1982, 22-30.

—Robert Banks