God has restored our relationship with him through Christ, and has given us this ministry of restoring relationships. 2 Corinthians 5:18 (God’s Word Translation)
Once again Rick Warren brings our attention to a basic challenge of Christian community: reconciling.
I like Rick’s reality takes on Jesus’ beatitude, in Day 20, The Purpose Driven Life:
“Jesus didn’t say “Blessed are the peace lovers” because everyone loves peace. Neither did he say, “Blessed are the peacable” who are never disturbed by anything. Jesus did say “Blessed are those who work for peace”. Peacemaking, Warren reminds us, is neither avoiding conflict nor appeasement.”
Reading this through reminds me of people with whom I don’t see eye to eye, and probably never will. What’s important to me is the capacity to recognise the other person as a person who is valued and valuable. But I don’t believe I am required to be on good terms with everyone. I am not commanded by God to be the friend of all people. It’s just not possible. But I sense a call to keep the air clear – making sure that my attitudes are clean of resentment. And of course there will be times when I need to collaborate with others who are different to me – and that will require me to work at being a reconciler.
And also, there’s the challenge of living out God’s vision of a unified humanity – based not on uniformity, but on reconciled diversity. A couple of weeks ago I was at a conference in Adelaide where 400 of the 1500 delegates were Aboriginal people. One of the speakers challenged us to treat one another as partners in the emerging future rather than as objects. In this case, it’s not a matter of trying to restore relationships that were going well before. Here it might mean overcoming societal blocks to forming friendships in the first place.
Having said that, I come back to Rick Warren’s seven challenging steps towards restoring relationships.
1. Talk to God before talking to the person.
2. Always take the initiative.
3. Sympathise with their feelings.
4. Confess your part of the conflict.
5. Attack the problem, not the person.
6. Cooperate as much as possible.
7. Emphasise reconciliation, not resolution.