Winning the Unwinnable Conflict, for Peace

One thing conflict taught me,

No matter my situational lack:

It’s hard to fight with someone

Who refuses to fight back.

Conflict that reaches loggerheads was always destined to be transcended. Within interpersonal conflict, wisdom has a better idea. That is, conflict between two people may be stayed when the conflict has reached an important precipice – when one refuses to fight anymore, but continues to engage communicatively.

What this person reaches when they refuse to fight one more iota of a scrap further is a sense for heavenly love, transcending the issue, the hurt, the lack of forgiveness and sensibility. Suddenly what is seen is a way through that is both complex in its simplicity and strangely encouraging for all.

So many times I have refused to fight back I have seen the Lord work.

It’s like the thing least expected occurs, and it is a shock. The person we’re battling with can never quite understand why we have stopped fighting, and why we may even take their side, not so much on the issue, but just to be on their side – to understand. This is such a loving response it comes as pathetic to the world. The world cannot reconcile it. Even our fellow Christians will wonder what is going through our minds. But we can know that God is with us as we refuse to fight. We are leaping over the impasse.

Instead of fighting we align to the issues of truth that everyone can see.

We lose our partiality. We retain our God-informed rationality and we trust it.

We are no longer on our side, but now we are on the side of God. We see, no matter how much we deny it, our side of the conflict is not perfectly abounding in truth. It is flawed as their side of the conflict is, also.

When logic and reasonability finally re-enter the crucible of conflict there is the scaling back of aggression, and calmer minds come to be better connected with their true hearts because the emotions have cooled.

It only takes one to begin the process, and a calmer approach by one, whilst it isn’t guaranteed to work, certainly will quell the flaming intensity of the forest fire in full blaze. By refusing to fight back we pour a blanket over the fire and smother it from receiving its inferno-fuelling oxygen.

***

One thing conflict taught me,

No matter my situational lack:

It’s hard to fight with someone

Who refuses to fight back.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.