If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.—Matthew 18:15

It’s impossible to get through mature adult life without navigating personal oversights and offenses. No normal person enjoys conflict, and every normal person wishes they could avoid it. And many of us do our best to do so. But mature Christians in particular don’t have an option, biblically speaking, to live honestly and sincerely in the world.

Those of us who don’t enjoy conflict come up with a bevy of rationalizations to avoid the difficult conversation we know deep down we ought to have. Maybe we’ll make it worse. We might hurt someone’s feelings. It might “change the relationship,” so to speak. Or we just don’t want someone to get angry with us.

We think the problem might just “go away” on its own. And sometimes it might. We should always do our best to think charitably of our brothers and sisters, to overlook offenses, and to forgive in our hearts when someone has unintentionally wronged us or hurt our feelings. But if an offense isn’t a minor, if we have been actually wronged (or someone else has), or if the situation at hand is part of our larger pattern of behavior, we must take Christ’s command in Matthew 18 seriously. “He’s the one who wronged me — he should take the initiative” makes a kind of sense, and yet Christ puts the burden on the offended to take the matter personally and privately to the offender.

But if Jesus’ command doesn’t seem to apply to your situation, or you wonder about why he might position the reconciliation this way, here are some reasons you should consider having that difficult conversation you’re avoiding, despite all the ways it could go wrong:

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