Reconciliation is a work of courage, not so much from the peacebuilder but supremely for those caught in conflict. The image of the Stalingrad Madonna is an image of the courage of God. God has chosen to be entrusted to a woman who is poor, helpless and in a country full of conflict. The living God is the lamb of the poem, fragile, vulnerable, dependent on someone who herself cannot keep them in safety. The setting of the Madonna is in the frozen terror of Stalingrad, the place of the consequence of the evils of power seeking and war. That is the most appropriate setting for the Lamb of God, who is the source of hope, life, liberty and light.
This is our true image of who God is. This is the reality that revolutionized us and the whole of creation. Our response to this ‘light of the world’ decides on what we are; in our response we judge ourselves, make our plea before God, and with our plea show by our choice of attitude to this fragility the evidence that our plea is true. The judgement of God is the perfect justice of giving us what we have chosen. To choose this helpless figure cradled in the arms of the helpless mother is to choose courage, the courage to receive love, hope, life: it is the courage to choose reconciliation with God and the journey of reconciliation with the world.
It does not matter whether it is the unknown sorrows of a life caught in a noxious relationship, or of workplaces surrounded by contempt and bullying, or the great decisions of life and death in global struggles. The will to peace is the will of courage, for it begins with seeing the humanity of the ones who hate us and whom we hate. Reconciliation offers the gift of overcoming ourselves, to listening attentively to others, seeking a reimagined humanity. Reconciliation develops our moral imagination in order to find other ways to disagree, ways of disagreeing well.
Reconciliation as the Source of Hope
Imagine for a moment a world where the processes of politics were full of alternatives that included peacebuilding with our enemies. This is not a world where evil is easily overcome. Reconciliation requires the will to be exercised. The desire for power is so great in individuals and in nations that it will be taken by some at all costs.
The first point of conclusion is thus the least hopeful. There are some situations where reconciliation is not possible. Either one person involved is too proud, or too evil, or both. When we encounter genocide, the perpetrators must be stopped by any means necessary. We do not sit down to talk first, we seek a cessation of the carrying out of the evil. If it does not stop then action must be taken at once. The Rwandan Genocide could have been stopped very quickly. Even the Second World War could have been stopped by determined action in the mid-1930s. It is easy to judge in retrospect and hard to see clearly at the time. The moment a war starts, even in a righteous cause, all control of the future is lost. Yet sometimes it must happen.
The same is true at the most intimate level. Removing a parent where there is good reason to believe abuse is occurring in the home is drastic, irreversible and with a terrible long-term impact. Yet sometimes it must happen.
However, in most circumstances reconciliation is possible. This is where hope begins, provided we know what we are talking about.
First, a reminder of the definition: reconciliation is the transformation of destructive conflict into disagreeing well. The impact of disagreeing well may continue to be disagreement. It may be a state of well-contained hostility. It may mean the end of a marriage. But it will always open new possibilities of mitigating the harm, at the least, and of bringing genuine healing, at most.
Second, there is hope because reconciliation, over a lengthy period, offers the possibility of forgiveness, of the victim being liberated from the perpetrator’s control, whether that is exercised through power or through the lingering hatred of the perpetrator. Either way, they remain a presence. Forgiveness is the most final form of revenge. It is often desperately hard. It cannot be used against a victim to blackmail them into waiving the right to justice. It is something else apart from justice, it is the chance of freedom and a future. In Christian understanding, in some extraordinary mystery of beauty and love, God on the cross brought together justice and mercy, opening not only the gift of forgiveness to all who accept it but their own forgiving of themselves, and even others.
Third, reconciliation is a way of hope because it requires the stronger party to make the sacrifice of choosing to live with the weaker and not to control, dominate and rule them. It is a sacrifice made by God out of the purest of love, love so pure that it sent a beam of light through the whole of creation: the light of Christ. It is also a sacrifice called for if the strong recognize their own need of reconciliation. Whether it is with the creation, with ethnic minorities, with those who are different, with the fragile and weak in a community, the sacrifice opens the way to build beautiful places in which to live. It is the way, at its best, to destroy enemies by making them friends, and at the worst to remove fear and anxiety from the places we live and the relationships we have.
Fourth, reconciliation opens the way to justice and truth. When sacrifice is made, then truth can be told. When truth is told, justice and mercy can meet and can be seen to be real. Justice before there is the beginning of reconciliation is almost always suspect, either because it is justice imposed by the strong or because the truth is not clear.
Pre-emptive Reconciliation a Necessity for All Our Futures
A world of power seeking and dominance by the strong depends for its future on the flimsiest of foundations. It depends on the consistent benevolence of the strong, caring for the weak. That only has to be said to be unbelievable.
At present there are approximately fifty significant conflicts in the world. At the same time, in many areas the circumstances of economics and challenges to historic sources of power are leading to talk of a second cold war. Some see the activities of cyber conflict as already a form of that war heating up. Nuclear proliferation remains a serious threat and the impetus towards disarmament has been lost. Climate change will accentuate the threats and dangers of the next fifty years.
It is easily forgotten that the world now possesses the capacity to kill every living thing, including every person. The nuclear strategies have no after-plan, for what happens once the buttons are pressed? The obvious answer is: ‘Then we are all dead.’ The idea that such an approach can be called a strategic move would be called insane if put forward by an individual, but is taken for granted when advanced by a government.
National and civil conflicts are taking place in the context of a world with an unprecedented capacity for destruction through nuclear, chemical, biological and cyber weapons and with an unprecedented threat caused by its normal economic activities and their impact on the creation. Conflict is always profoundly dangerous and usually deeply wrong. For it to happen amid such other dangers is beyond any degree of foolishness. Reconciliation is an essential.
In the face of all these threats, very often reconciliation will be impossible. So it is essential that there is pre-emptive reconciliation. Every nation should see reconciliation as a routine part of diplomacy, not a fire hose to put out an existing inferno. Pre-emptive reconciliation acts in a way that most will not notice. I remember a primary-school joke I heard as a child. A person stands by their gate. A neighbour asks, ‘Why have you painted your gate pink?’ ‘It keeps the elephants away.’ ‘But there are no elephants round here!’ ‘You see, it works.’
Even if we are willing to spend scores of billions of dollars on armed forces, which we do, then some precautions make sense to reduce the extreme cost of their use. If we are willing to risk the future of the planet with nuclear arsenals, then working out how not to use them is obvious. Nations, communities, churches should all invest in developing pre-emptive reconciliation. It saves pain, time, money and, in the end, it saves life. The use at national level of mediation and peacebuilding units within every diplomatic service should be as routine as having a police force, or a health check-up.
Even in what we all hope is the more likely scenario – that the nations of the world learn to mitigate and contain conflict, that no nuclear outbreak happens, and that climate change is faced and dealt with – reconciliation is indispensable.
The capacity of human beings to disagree well has never been good, but the damage done by our failure to do so is vastly amplified by modern communications. On the day I write this, in mid-2021, there are reports of midwives having their lives threatened because they advocate vaccinations against COVID-19. The disagreement is tolerable, its form is evil.
In some places there are suggestions of near censorship to control forms of communication about the vaccines and the COVID-19 virus. A correction will always lead to censoring truth as well as lies.
Reconciliation offers the hope of vigorous and free differences of opinion without fear, of truth challenging lies without lies retaliating violently. It is the example of God. Even for the atheist it is the call of wisdom.
In this book the training suggested, the pattern set out and the needs described are a beginning. The Difference Course has many alternatives, and it is my hope that further and more advanced training will follow quickly.
This book has tried to look at the reasons for reconciliation, to describe one – among many – patterns for it to happen, and to encourage the habits that make it possible. My prayer is that many will seek their own route to share in reconciliation, to start groups that will advocate and train others, and that will seek to make disagreeing well part of how we live at every level from household to global.