How to Start a Riot: The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution
Sometimes it can help to learn from the wrong way to do it first.
Reality television thrives on one thing and one thing alone. Sure, there might be a dimple-chinned host. Certainly they’ll have an obligatory TV confessional booth. Participants may be put in a funny fish-out-of-water situations. They could be subjected to humiliating youth-camp style competitions. Other times beautiful people choose who they want to hook up with, and then corresponding love triangles emerge. Participants might have to vote others off the show, or judges might be tasked with the duty. There could be countdowns and blaring alarms. They’ll have introductory biographical sketches of those involved, and later they will cut into the show with black-and-white security camera style flashbacks from previous episodes. Any of these elements may be present, but all reality television prioritize one thing above all of them:
Conflict.
The common denominator of these lowest common denominator shows is conflict itself. A show doesn’t pass muster as reality television until there is some significant conflict. Reality must include conflict conversations, it seems—even the off-camera over-produced, deceptively edited, and pre-determined kind of conflict.
No reality TV show could survive without a late game betrayal of a long-held convenient alliance. The old man must be offended by the young one. The combative middle-aged divorced couple are not going to make the best of their newly forged team (surprise-surprise). The spoiled young diva must at some point blow up at someone and storm out, with a series of bleeped out yelling on the way.
I hate to break it to you, but at some point the white supremacist guy from Georgia and the African American from Chicago are going to have a knock-down drag out fight. Oh, and 15 cameras are going to catch the action.
Tourist Trap Drama
The conflict of reality TV might seem a long way away from the world of the early church in Acts, nearly 2,000 years ago. But if you make that presumption you don’t know much about the Greek columned Mediterranean tourist trap of Ephesus!
Perhaps the most intense moment of conflict in all of the Bible happens in this town in Acts 19. I’m not a reality TV fan (at all) but I’m going to do my best to give you a reality TV view of this scene, so let’s drop right into the middle of of it:
You’re in a vast Roman amphitheater. It’s massive: 25,000 people could be seated here and right now it’s filled nearly to capacity. Just for comparison, only four NBA arenas seat more than 20,000 people, and none are as large as this one in ancient Ephesus. Our largest NBA arena is the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls, which seats a sub-Ephesian 21,000 souls.
You might picture the ancient Ephesians leisurely listening to a philosopher’s lecture or watching a tragic hero act out their lines in an esoteric play. Not this crowd—they are more animated than most any sports arena of today. They are mostly standing, some shaking their fists, many yelling out this cry and that. The crowd is acting like one might if a referee in a Super Bowl unjustly threw a flag that ensures the team in red and yellow will win yet another ring. Yes—it’s quite like that.
Of course, in this contest there is no referee, but there are opponents. Down in the middle of the half-circle theatre facing the sea of humanity is a man named Demetrius. He’s yelling out to the crowd. They hear that there’s a man named Paul who has been doing just awful things.
It’s important to note here that their entire town has been built on the tourist income that is provided by housing one of the seven man-made wonders of the world nearby: the Temple of Artemis.
Artemis of the Ephesians
We should stop for a reality TV flashback about Artemis for a minute. If you were a tradesman in Ephesus the worship of Artemis drastically affected your way of life and income, either directly or indirectly. Here is a picture of me in the tourist trap of Ephesus:
I’m standing, with my brother, next to just one of the pillars of this temple to Artemis. You would have approached this temple in the countryside, coming from Ephesus, and at some point you’d begin to catch the massive statue of Artemis: stone eyes peering at you from between these enormous columns. At some point you, as a tiny tradesman in Ephesus, would glimpse the entire statue. There’s a model in one of the museums that shows what that might have felt like. Here it is:
This might be an opportune moment to note that I’ve been able to count about 14 reasons for believing that the original Artemis statue was created by a man with some serious psychological problems including an oral fixation.
MEANWHILE, much like that miniature model, the silversmiths and ivory workers and other sellers of tourist-trap trinkets would set up booths in the streets of Ephesus and sell little Artemis idols for tourists to take back home and set up shrines to their goddess. These weren’t mere plastic knick knacks or toys. People would take them to a home shrine and pray to them, so they were highly treasured as a signifier that they had been to the Temple of Artemis and worshipped her. So the tradespeople could mark these idols up incredibly and make a tidy profit. It was a great way to make a living: camp out near one of the wonders of the world and make a killing on sucker tourists willing to over-spend on anything carved into the goddess.
Enter: Paul
Paul’s teaching was mucking up this entire process. For two years he had been teaching in a public lecture hall, and all kinds of life-change had been happening. Most importantly to you, the tourist-trap trinket salesman of Ephesus, is that his followers were no longer buying Artemis idols. Paul had been teaching that a man-made idol is no god at all. What’s more this message has been spreading throughout the region so that even those traveling to the town weren’t buying the idols. Yikes!
The crowd already knows all this and would have grabbed Paul and done immediate harm to him, but not finding him they found the next best thing: two of his associates (Gaius & Aristarchus.) The thousands of enraged Ephesians are yelling: one group one thing and another something else. Some of the crowd might not even know why they are there, they just got caught up in the exciting conflict and didn’t want to miss out. (They didn’t have reality TV to watch so they came to the amphitheater).
Ephesian Idol: Hosted by Demetrius
Demetrius is at the center of all this. He’s like the biblical version of Jerry Springer—whipping the crowd into a reality TV like frenzy. He not only tells them their livelihoods is at stake, but also the reputation of their city. And to top it off he suggests that Artemis herself will be robbed of her divine majesty.
This is just too much for the crowd, they begin to chant, like it’s 3rd and goal in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!—Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
If Paul steps into this theatre with thousands of enraged Ephesians in it calling for his head, there is little doubt as to his fate. Several officials send word to Paul to tell him not to go there when word travels about the riot. And the disciples have to restrain him to ensure he doesn’t go. All the while Demetrius, the conflict cheerleader, shouts his invectives and makes the scene more and more intense. The conflict is at a boiling over point.
Demetrius, the 1st century Jerry Springer, has been very, very effective in his approach. I wonder if we can build a list to train ourselves in The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution.
The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution:*
First, get hurt. When something bad happens you’ve got to feel very hurt and blame someone for it. Common examples are when your income decreases, your computer crashes, or someone else gets promoted. But really about anything qualifies. It may be something quite serious, like losing your job—but trivial matters are just as likely, such as someone taking your parking spot or cutting you in the check out line. If you use The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution, the intensity of the offense does not in any way have to match the gravity of your pain.
Next, get mad. You can’t do The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution by calmly working a process. It’s essential that you get royally ticked off. Don’t talk to anyone about it for a while, certainly don’t talk to a wise and well-reasoned friend. Start by stewing on it. Squint your eyes and pucker your lips when you think of the person. It also helps to let out a guttural grunt of exasperation and roll your eyes when thinking about how they hurt you.
But your work has barely begun. Now you must get others mad. If you are the only one mad at this person then The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution won’t work at all. You need to enlist a broad base of support. Don’t tell anything to the person you are ticked at yet, they may begin to help you see their side if you speak to them first. Be sure to call your sister and spout off to her for a while, but only if she’s a true friend and will get just as angry as you, maybe even more. Only talk to people who will say things like: girlfriend, if I was you I would walk right over to her house and show her what’s what. That’s the perfect person to call.
Get passive-aggressive first. If you have a social media account, write a passive aggressive post about the person. If you don’t have a social media app, it’s time to start: download one. Start it with “Some people…” or “My reaction when someone…” Don’t use a name. One must appear to take the high road, after all. But then later on when people ask you about the situation let the name slip. Then be sure to stoke their own problems with that person too. Say things like “Man, alive, we’ve got to do something about him at some point. It’s just a shame.” If you’re a churchy person you might need to add things like, “Boy, if I wasn’t one to do my good Christian duty I would have to give that guy a real piece of my mind.” You might even request other pray for him or her. This will earn you the respect of others while also instigating them to a more fervent opposition, both of which are your aims.
Then you must blow it way out of proportion. The reason you are hurt is too small, no matter what happened. You must find the bigger insidious problem behind the perpetrators actions. Like Demetrius, you can point out the wider socio-political motivations for your hurt. You can infer the economic penalties of letting the person continue to get away with this. One of the fool-proof geniuses of The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution is that you emphasize not only the political and economic impact of the problem, but also make it religious thing. Once you get people’s dander up about preaching or theology or worship or how much wasteful money the trustees are planning to spend on carpet the youth group is just going to trample anyway, well then my, my, you now have quite a conflict arsenal on your side.
Work to get confusion on your side. You’ll notice that the Demetrian riot in the Theatre was full of a bunch of people that didn’t even know why they were there. In other less effective approaches everyone knows why they are a part of the conversation, in fact only those who are directly affected are in the loop. But The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution stresses the importance for you to get sheer numbers on your side, especially among the ignorant who can’t quite articulate why they support your side but have a gut instinct that things are bad and we need to blame someone. All the way back 2,000 years ago The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution already knew that silly Americans will pretty much get into the back of any line that’s forming even if they don’t know what the line is for. If there’s a line then it must be for something good. So this will be even easier in America than in Ephesus, you can be sure of that.
Finally, you get even now. At some point there is an opportunity to get even now. If, like Demetrius, the person you are venting about is not available at the key moment, don’t fret. At this point the grievance is no longer even really about that person. Grab the closest person connected to the other one and make them pay. The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution makes sure to unleash the horde before it’s too late and their inherent confusion dissipates their power.
Of course, you can always get even later. People will remember all your comments. Even if something happens like it did for Demetrius, and Paul gets away and leaves town, everyone will remember that slimy rat and he won’t get the privileged place he once did, and he will think twice before coming back!
I think it’s quite obvious that The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution is the most effective way to turn conflict to your side and get revenge, either now, or later.
*For those who don’t think The Demetrian Method of Conflict Resolution is the right way to go about things, I’d suggest you read Matthew 18:15-20 for an alternative approach taken by Jesus of Nazareth. It is quite different than this Demetrian approved method.
Dave, Have archeologist been able to determine the date of this conflict. Maybe around 56 A.D. ? Perhaps January 6? Oops, couldn't resist.
Great take on the back story of Acts 19!