The Hindrances to Reconciliation
If reconciliation is such a good thing, why is it so rare?
Almost half of all conflicts within countries restart in less than ten years after a ceasefire. Families seem to struggle with conflict from one generation to another. Neighbours find it easier to live miserably rather than make peace. When we get beyond the national to the global the old saying by Samuel Johnson that ‘Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’ is proved wrong. For example, climate change is itself a form of conflict between human beings and the planet, one which humanity is bound to lose. In addition, it is a significant driver of human conflict. It is clear beyond any doubt that climate change poses a high probability of catastrophic global impacts in every area of life. Yet far from concentrating the minds of the world, the changes that need to be made are ignored or hidden by unrealistic techno-optimism. That is not a concentrated mind; it is castles in the air.
What makes people act against their own happiness, their own hopes, their own interests so that rather than choose to search for ways to live in harmony, at least in some kind of working relationship across difference, they engage in mutual destruction?
In many parts of the world where resources are adequate or peace has been long established, this will seem to be pessimistic. Yet in other places physical war is the norm, and even in the most prosperous countries culture wars, cyber wars and campaigns of disruption proliferate without attempts at settlement.
In this chapter I want to suggest four areas that delay or destroy hopes of reconciliation. First, as we have seen, reconciliation always involves sacrifice and thus requires a willingness to give something up. Second, reconciliation challenges our explicit or implicit sense of honour and shame. Third, in reconciliation we often forget the impact of long-term trauma and conflict on the whole human being through changes in the neurochemistry, with impacts that are even transgenerational. Fourth, reconciliation is a long-term process and it is natural to look for short-term fixes to problems that will take years or even generations to resolve.
Sacrifice
In Christian understanding the greatest reconciliation is God’s action through Jesus to reconcile human beings and all creation to God. The Bible begins with the breaking of the relationship between the creator and the creation through the disobedience of the supreme point of creation, human beings. That disobedience is attributed to many things, but at their heart is the issue of pride. Human beings, in the story Adam and Eve, wanted the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, they wanted to decide for themselves and to disobey God in order to have more power.
It is a familiar story. One of the most destructive events that can happen in a marriage or equivalent relationship is unfaithfulness, cheating on your partner. Most people know that. Yet even in apparently happy marriages someone will sometimes stray, ‘play away from home’ as the euphemism goes. It is one of the few nuclear buttons and yet those in marriages press it. As a priest one hears often, ‘I don’t know why I did it.’ Part of the temptation may just be that it is forbidden. Freedom of choice is deeply tempting, even when the freedom will have self-destroying results. Not to exercise the freedom of choice requires sacrifice.
Reconciliation is always costly. It can only begin by one side seeking to break the log-jam that is destructive conflict. Almost invariably that will need to be the stronger party. Morally, it should be in most circumstances one can imagine. The need for mercy and for a willingness to give something up in order to be reconciled is spoken of by Jesus in a parable in the Gospel of Matthew (18.23-35). Jesus is telling about the just rule of God, what he calls the kingdom of Heaven, and describing what it is to experience such rule. He tells of two servants. The first owes their mutual master a vast sum of money, more than he could ever repay. The master is sorting out his finances, sends for the slave and tells him that if he does not repay his debt he will be put in prison with his family. The slave begs for mercy and the master relieves him of the debt. The second slave owes the first a pitiful sum. But, after having been forgiven the huge debt by the master, the first slave proves to be merciless and has the second slave imprisoned. The master hears of it, and reverses the mercy shown to the first for failing to follow his example.
There are many ways of looking at this story and many meanings to it. Within it there is a pattern of reconciliation. Debt is a burden, for many an intolerable one. It is another way of translating the word used for trespasses in the Lord’s Prayer, so that it would be perfectly valid to pray, instead of ‘trespasses’, ‘Forgive us our debts, in the same way as we forgive those indebted to us.’ The paying off of debts to someone is one way of making a relationship more even. Right through the Old Testament, debt is seen as a loss of liberty, and the creditor who is ruthless in demanding repayment or foreclosing on security taken from the poor is seen as deeply wicked. Those to whom I owe a debt have power over me. Being a creditor is powerful, being a debtor involves taking on weakness and worry.
Many of us have experienced these pressures in our own lives. The day a home mortgage or loan is paid off is a day of liberation. One of the greatest burdens in many societies is debt slavery. In the UK it can come from losing a job and racking up debts to a high-interest lender or on credit cards. In many countries subsistence farmers borrow money to pay for seed and repay it from the proceeds of harvest, at high rates of interest. Natural disaster or family illness preventing work leaves them literally enslaved, unable to make any decisions for themselves. In its turn that leads to the breakdown of community relationships with lenders, often themselves farmers with more land or capital.
Who can start the process of forgiveness that leads to reconciliation? It must be the more powerful person being willing to make a sacrifice. In Jesus’ story it starts with the master, who sets a pattern of reconciliation through debt forgiveness. The first slave cannot be reconciled to the master by his own efforts because he has no equivalent resource. The first slave commits the sin of not himself sacrificing his power and exercising the same justice so as to be reconciled to the second.
Both the master and the first slave need to make a sacrifice. Until they have decided to do that, the situation is only resolvable by destructive conflict in which the weaker party must lose, and all future relationship is impossible. Of course, the sacrifice by itself is not the end. It starts a process. Self-sacrifice without genuine and equal relationships leads to another form of debt: a sense of resentment at being helped.
This parable opens the way to thinking about two aspects of reconciliation. First, it is liberation for all involved. Liberation may not change the fundamental situation, but it transforms the potential. In the parable the slaves remain enslaved, the reality for about one-third of the population of the time. The parable is not about the evils of slavery. Yet their enslavement will be changed over time by the fact that they should have had an opportunity not to be debtors.
A modern historical parallel is in the outcomes of the peace process in Europe in 1919 at the Treaty of Versailles and in 1945 after the unconditional surrender of Germany. Both were complicated and the second was not completed until the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990, which effectively ended the first Cold War. The largest question in 1919 and 1945 was what to do with the defeated Germany, by far the weakest power.
In 1919 the decision was to impose severe demands for reparations and to take many other steps to ensure that Germany remained weak. After four years of world war the desire for revenge was understandable but its impact was disastrous. The German economy of the Weimar Republic remained hobbled by debt in a way that damaged its society. John Maynard Keynes began his celebrated career by resigning from the UK Treasury staff working on the treaty and writing The Economic Consequences of the Peace, in which he forecast disaster as a result of the economic and social impact of reparations.
By contrast in 1946, led by the Americans, there was a clear intention on the part of the western allies to enable Germany to remain united and to minimize or avoid reparations. The Soviet Union took a different view. However, after much struggle the decision of the western powers at least was to readmit Germany (or West Germany, at least) to the family of nations. The debts of the Third Reich were written off. Reparations were relatively slight. There was no revenge taken except in judicial terms for war crimes. The result, when combined with the establishment of an iron and steel pact and then the Common Market, has led to the longest sustained period of peace in western Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire.
That does not mean competition has ended or that friction has stopped. It did not mean that hatred evaporated overnight. It did not provide cover for the atrocities committed by Germany in the Second World War. In brief, it did not make everything ‘all right’ as though conflict can be reconciled as easily as a child can be stopped crying by being picked up and cuddled.
The process of reconciliation, which is almost eternal and needs constant renewal, required vast sacrifice by the victors in the war. They had to surrender the desire for revenge. They had to resist the urge to break up and deindustrialize a nation that, in the case of France, had been their opponent in three appalling wars within seventy-five years, in each of which France had suffered terribly. In the case of the USA the sacrifice involved the Marshall Plan to prevent the final collapse of the German and western European economies. The UK needed to find the means to forgive and to aid its former enemy.
Reconciliation is costly economically but also psychologically and, again, it is almost always the more powerful party that must sacrifice the most psychologically, above all their sense of domination. Christian understanding is that the source of reconciliation, the spring from which it flows into all the world, is the boundless and generous mercy of God revealed through the birth, life, suffering, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. The key point is that almost every understanding of divine reconciliation involves the notion of some idea of sacrifice.1
In other words, for God to be reconciled with human beings, God needed to initiate reconciliation and to demonstrate that God is serious about it. The ‘seriousness’ of God’s sacrifice reveals at the same time the abundant love and determination of God and the abundant peril of living without reconciliation. In John’s Gospel 3.16 either John or Jesus says: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that anyone who believed in him should not perish but have eternal life.’ It is because reconciliation matters so much that it requires sacrifice, a principle in both divine and human practice at all levels.
Sacrifice is a problem first, because most people are often in favour of the nobility of other people’s sacrifice but not their own. That is especially true when the impact of sacrifice is very rarely effective unless it is by the stronger person or group. Take, at one extreme, the issue of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. If the UK or France forewent owning them, or even committed to a no-first-use or sole-purpose condition on their use, the international impact is unlikely to be more than marginal. If China, Russia or the USA did the same then there would be a very high chance of a breakthrough in new treaties.
In litigation between unequal parties, for example a shop that uses a name, and has used it for a long time, which is being sued for trademark infringement by a major international company that has a similar brand, the generosity of the latter will bring reconciliation, whereas concession by the former will simply be seen as bowing to the inevitable.
The difficulty is that the powerful have become so by avoiding concessions when they are in a position of advantage. Sacrifice demands that they take a different attitude, even acquire a new heart towards the weak.
Sacrifice is a problem, second, because of timing differentials: the fruits of reconciliation take time, the costs of sacrifice are immediate. Jesus had to die before he could be raised. The early apostles were martyred generations before the Church became a force to be reckoned with. Sacrifice takes risk and requires faith. In a bitterly fought divorce, the husband might be advised that, as he is wealthy and his wife not and as he has a strong legal position for reasons to do with the case, he should make it clear that he will fight every inch of the way in the courts. Yet, if he wants reconciliation, which may not involve the continuation of the marriage but may possibly leave the relationships able to be healed and the children less traumatized, he might decide to offer to submit to mediation. The risk is immediate, the probability is that he will do less well in the short term, but in the long term it may be that the children, even his wife, will feel a deep sense of gratitude for the sacrifice. It is a hard choice.
Honour and Shame
We don’t talk much about honour in the Global North nowadays, although shame is still a word much in use. However, honour and shame remain influential in the way we relate to others individually and collectively.
Football is a classic example, much studied by sociologists. In cities like Liverpool, which has two historic and stand-out teams, the mood of the whole city is lifted or lowered by the results of the teams. Some signs are sinister, domestic violence rises sharply after a defeat. The same happens nationally when a country’s team is defeated. Others are inspiring, the whole community becomes a better place when one team is doing well, and when that’s true of both there is magic in the air. It may be that the word respect is substituted for honour, but the impact is the same. Collectively there is a sense of honour. When the team loses there is a sense of shame.
Shame brings anger, a turning inwards and a blame culture. ‘Shame is the experience of one’s felt sense of self-disintegration in relation to a dysregulating other.’2 In Lucie Lunn’s and other papers it is argued that, first, all human beings are somewhere on a spectrum of shame and that there is not an opposite, although dignity is what might be described as an antidote. Second, she sees shame as intrinsically linked to language. Third, that the experience of corporate shame is linked to individual experience and that empathy from a member of a group that has had shame projected onto it through the use of language may result in anger at perceived injustice even if perpetrated by a person’s own group, rather than joining in corporate shame.
The first view is very much that of many psychologists. Shame is not guilt. Guilt in Christian thinking opens the way to repentance and forgiveness and thus to reconciliation with God. It implies responsibility, accountability or even personal action or omission. Guilt and shame are often blurred, but the latter tends to be destructive, alienating us from others and leading to lies, not reconciliation. The former turns us outwards to see the victim or object of our wrongdoing and to desire reconciliation and reparation for the harm done. It is summed up perfectly and economically in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer confession:
Almighty and most merciful Father, We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done, And there is no health in us: But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders; Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults, Restore thou them that are penitent, According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord: And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.
In the Communion service according to the Book of Common Prayer the congregation acknowledge their sins and say, ‘the burden of them is intolerable’. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress pictures guilt as a great backpack of enormous weight that hinders all that we do. In his book, the Pilgrim takes the burden up a steep hill topped with three crosses, and at the foot of the central cross, when he kneels, it falls off his back and rolls down the hill.
Shame is different. It comes upon us unawares, externally or internally. It is more like a hidden cancer that weakens us, hindering like guilt, but without the same objective and healthy incentive to seek forgiveness.
Shame is a weapon used very often by the strong against the weak. Whether it is through being gaslighted,3 through harassment and bullying, through sexual or other forms of abuse, or through collective social action in dysfunctional organizations and societies, shame may be imposed. Victims may know that they are not to blame yet feel shame.
In this view shame is always destructive and negative as well as being mainly individual. In most levels of reconciliation one of the hardest barriers to break down is the individual against the collective.
The question is, does shame have a role in triggering reconciliation? There is an argument that it creates space by enabling a group to identify itself more clearly and to respond to the identification by collectively seeking reconciliation to mitigate the shame. In this view, collective shame is more like guilt and exists as a trigger to do the right thing.
Here the psychology and sociology differ. The former tends to look individually and the latter collectively. I will come back to the issue in reconciliation after looking at honour.
Honour historically and in the Bible enhanced risk taking, gave courage and hope, led to flights of imagination and joyful generosity. Honour was something perceived externally, applying mainly to men and received by the individual: ‘they shall learn I am just the man they take me for’4 was a characteristic ambition. The weight of preserving honour for women was very heavy. In patriarchal societies they were expected to demonstrate virtue, and even when they were victims of sexual violence they were perceived as shamed. That legacy continues indirectly today even in countries like the UK but very much so elsewhere.
What makes us respected? For many it is honour. What enables our names to live on beyond our bodies? Again, honour. For thousands of years that has been one of the priorities in human existence, especially among men in positions of power. There are more than two hundred mentions of honour in the Bible. In the Psalms, kings pray for honour from God, they honour God with worship, they trust that God will honour them.
One book, that of Esther, is in part a description of competition for honour. The king in Babylon divorces his queen for failing to show him honour. After a search by courtiers, he finds a new queen – a Jewish woman called Esther, of great beauty – who becomes his wife. One of the king’s advisers, Haman, plots to have the Jews massacred across the Empire. Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, persuades her to intercede with the king, a risky undertaking, as to approach the king without invitation was to risk the sentence of death. However, after some hesitation she acts and invites him to two banquets, using food and beauty (it is a story of great humour, almost slapstick, and political intrigue). The tables are turned. The wicked Haman is shamed, Mordecai is honoured, and the Jews are saved. The events are still celebrated at the feast of Purim in the Jewish calendar.
The theme of honour is particularly relevant to the men. The king has honour because he is king, although the story shows him to be a bit slow of thought and open to manipulation. Haman seeks honour by serving the king. He aims to shame the Jews and gain honour for himself. Mordecai is humble, sitting at the gate, but a decisive leader with a clear sense of the providence of God. He is faithful in protecting the king and seeks protection for the Jews through the protection of God indicated by the high favour in which Esther is held.
Honour is not the same as pride, nor shame as humility. Haman is proud but without honour from the king and ultimately is executed. Mordecai is humble but receives honour when his service is recognized by the king.
This sort of bestowed honour/shame culture has been predominant in most societies in most periods. Even in the UK to this day, the awards given to distinguished people are called ‘honours’ and at the award ceremony the monarch ‘honours’ the recipient.
In past times, until certainly the early period of the twentieth century, honour was a legitimate reason for pride. An ancient name, a long-standing title, great wealth inherited, gave honour ‘with no damned nonsense about merit’ as the British prime minister Lord Melbourne remarked about being made a Knight of the Garter.
Honour is indeed often unlinked to merit. In many societies important people have honour that they cannot lose unless they are caught out in ill-doing in a way that is shameful. Bribery and corruption may be prevalent, but if they are linked to historic and cultural approaches to honour, such as support of dependants, clan or tribe, the support given enhances honour. Abuse of wealth for purely personal gain rather than as a sign of collective honour for those associated with the leader may bring shame and anger, but if it demonstrates importance and wealth it is a matter of praise.
In Homer’s Iliad the origin of the Trojan War is the slight to the honour of King Agamemnon when the Trojan prince, Paris, steals his beautiful wife, Helen. War was considered by the ancient Greeks as a way of gaining honour, and perceived cowardice in war brought shame on the person, on their family and on their army if they were a leader.
The issues of honour and shame are still with us, although often in countries like the UK they are implicit. To some extent they are being revived through social media. Shaming is easy through anonymous posts. The power of the written word can circle the globe faster than Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.5 Honour still carries a leader far even when unmerited; shame can topple a saint and not be revealed to be false for years. Shame can cripple the will and turn the mind inwards. It can divide a group that is able to do good and remove the courage to act at all. One of the great dangers to free speech and honest expression of views is the fear of being attacked and shamed with accusations impossible to disprove.
Courage and honour are linked. Shame has the psychological effect of triggering depression and undermining courage. To say or do anything becomes impossible. Being honoured restores courage and courage leads to acting honourably.
Neurochemistry and Remembering the Body
The third hindrance is what happens other than in the thinking process. We are not minds alone, but bodies, and even our minds are driven to some degree by chemistry and hormonal reactions with the release of chemicals in response to stimuli. The sight of a threat or the sense that one is about to emerge stimulates the fight-or-flight response. Had you been a hunter-gatherer thousands of years ago that might have been useful, but if you are sitting in a meeting seeking to negotiate a way forward it is likely to provoke unhelpful responses.
Yet we forget this so easily. I am aware that the surroundings in which a mediation is held will have a material impact on the outcome. A windowless room with poor air conditioning will lead to arguments and obstinacy. A good view, adequate refreshments and breaks to get energy back opens minds to new possibilities. The reading list at the end of this book explores the neurochemistry more adequately than I am able to do. It is clear that prolonged exposure to conflict, especially to violence that can be perceived as risking life, alters the entire way in which the mind and body work. Illness is more frequent. Rationality diminishes. Impulsive behaviour becomes more likely. At some point even the DNA is changed.
Worse still is when the experience of fear-filled lives passes from one generation to another. This may be the experience of those in countries like the South Sudan where no generation has lived in peace since the 1950s or even before. Or it may be in a family or a community where habitual dysfunctionality becomes part of the way things are done and the experience of new generations is long-term impacts on mental health for physiological as much as emotional reasons.
The pattern of the ministry of Jesus is of body, mind and soul. When he raises to life the dead daughter of a synagogue leader in Mark 5, he ensures her privacy, treats her gently, and ensures that she is given something to eat.
In a meeting in June 2021, one of the presenters started memorably with the phrase, ‘remember the body’. Reconciliation is deeply hindered when we forget that we are bodies and minds, wills and reactions. This section is short, because I am not sufficiently scientifically qualified to write adequately on the subject. However, it is indispensable to consider the psychology, the neurochemistry and the bodily aspects of reconciliation. As will be seen in the next part of the book, handling the issues raised by the body is part of the reconciling process. It is another area that demands partnerships to work on reconciliation, as discussed in Part II.
Always Complete the Course
Most people who have regular access to antibiotics are aware of the instructions on the label, ‘always complete the course’. Normally, with most routine infections, after a couple of days one feels much better. The temptation is to stop taking the tablets. But the result of doing so before the course is complete is that the infection is likely to return in much greater strength.
Reconciliation takes a very long time and to some extent is treatment for the chronic diseases of power seeking, of relationship breakdown and of the desire to dominate that so easily becomes part of the human condition.
Reconciliation is a combination of treatments. Mediation may enable a ceasefire or calm a community quarrel enough for longer-term work on meeting, rebuilding relationships and further mediation focused on the underlying issues.
The greatest danger is to think something is complete and to cease to pay attention to the issues that make differences so hard to handle. The Difference Course, described and discussed in Part III, is focused on habits, not meetings. It is through cultivating the characteristics of being a reconciled reconciler that long-term means of facing disagreement well can be built.
Summary
• Reconciliation is hard because of the hardness of the human heart and the immediacy of the challenges it offers as against the delayed but far greater rewards it brings.
• It requires sacrifice by those who have an advantage and can thus see the hope of victory as more attractive than the hard work of reconciling relationships.
• It is generally hindered by feelings of shame, but helped by a transparent recognition of guilt. Honour and shame are often unhelpful in that they are not always built on virtue and vice but frequently on perception.
• Remember the body.
• Take time, complete the course.
Points to Ponder
• Think of a conflict you know, anything from family to climate change. Who is the stronger party? What sacrifice would move things forward a little? What can you do to help?
• Is honour/shame an issue in your life or those around you? What does it look like in your own culture or society?
• What physical conditions makes you prone to destructive quarrels? What are the ways in a community or parish of remembering the body?
• Think of an example of reconciliation. Is it ever finished? If so, what would finished look like and how could you tell?
Biblical Reflection
1 Corinthians 1.10-18 and 2 Corinthians 5.17-21. Two letters to the same church, a church that gave Paul much heartache.
• From 1 Corinthians 1, what do you imagine the life of the Corinthian church was like? Is it the sort of church you would have been pleased to go to? What was going wrong? What was Paul’s first response?
• From 2 Corinthians, what is the call of God to Christians? What does an ambassador do? What does it tell us about God and ourselves that such a muddled church can still hope to be ambassadors?