If you want peace experience conflict: A Lenten food for thought

By Fr. Dr. James Ngahy* M. Afr.

The expression of Pope Paul VI that, “If you want Peace, work for Justice” has become or rather has been the motto for a number of Christian Peace and Justice Organisations or Commissions globally even beyond the Church circle. The expression that, “If you want Peace, experience Conflict”, is not out of place, but rather a reality which we encounter daily. Conflict is part and parcel of the incompatibility of interests, of which could be personal, racial, caste, class, political, intellectual, cultural, status, religious or beliefs. Jesus himself faced this reality of conflict to the core!

It is a fact that human beings at a generalised viewpoint, very often fear conflict. This does not disregard the fact that there are some people who simply ‘enjoy or cause conflict’ in their lives – let it be in their families or society. Of course, conflict can have a positive value in so far as it is regulated or positively managed. One of the basic principles for democracy to function is, “In democracy we disagree about everything except the way we resolve our disagreements.” Therefore, the art of living together is not the art of avoiding conflicts but rather the art of providing ourselves with means or ways of conflict’s positive management or expressions especially during this period of Lent.

In other words, Lenten Season requires us, to learn on how to harness and strengthen our power to live in the ways most deeply empowering and satisfying such conflict management as it remains ramifying and always unfinished project. It remains to be a process. Indeed, this project is a collective one, in the sense that it is a learning process to ‘learning to live together.’

A time for forgiveness and to pray for each other (Photo Credit: Internet)

Obviously, the negative effects of conflict are such as destructive violence, hatred, resentment, anxiety, insomnia, depression and revenge. Conflict can mobilise us and make us lose a lot of energy. It can make us ill. Indeed, conflict creates fear. We prefer to avoid it whenever possible. It is even spurned for the sake of Christian ‘charity’! Quite spontaneously in our minds harmony is synonymous with the absence of conflict.

Unfortunately for this classic but short-lived approach to peace, it is very difficult to avoid conflict in our normal or private relations between couples, in the family, in community or among groups living in a bounded territory such as organisations or companies. ‘A leopard cannot change its spots.’ Even Jesus himself was a cause of ‘hundred of conflicts’ leading to misunderstanding even among his own people (cf. Mk. 3:20-21).

According to the basic rule known as the ‘3 Ns’, conflict is Natural, Normal and Neutral. It is Natural simply because God created us equal but different; our differences depict themselves in sex, age, characters, tastes, choices, values, personalities and backgrounds. The convergence of these differences is not naturally harmonious. Difference means divergence long before it becomes, possibly, complementarity.

Conflict is Normal simply because it forms part of social life and is not an evil to avoid at all costs. It is a component of our social interaction, one of our means of expression in the same way as collusion or complicity, seduction, avoidance, separation and escape. Under the effect of heat, atoms composing an organism become active; the more they are in movement the more they risk colliding. It is normal. It is even a sign of life! In the same way in the social context, confrontation is normal. It is the inability to manage it that makes the organism malfunction. This time of Lent is a time for us to look at how we manage conflict as a normal aspect of our life if taken in its positivity.

Conflict in itself is neither good nor bad. It is Neutral. It is the way we speak about it, manage it and deal with it. Everything depends on what we make of it. In its initial stage, conflict is a wake-up call, a symptom of divergence. In some cases, it is good to put aside certain divergences to avoid conflict when it is a matter of detail or when I sense that the conflict would generate more damage than good, or when I say to myself that time will take care of it. On the one hand, a couple, community or a group continually in conflict ends up never healing its wounds.

This is negative carry on of Lenten Season – not acceptable. While on the other hand, by escaping conflict we may block the process of confronting our differences; hence, hinder the passing from divergence to recognition of the other, and so block a genuine encounter. Distressed by the death-dealing conflict we miss the life-giving conflict: the challenge to the relationship, the call to adapt oneself, the pathway to potentially greater life, the narrow door leading to greater truth and love; the love that emanates from the Merciful God!

While they are unresolved, small conflicts on a daily basis poison our existence and often lead to separation and divorce or community hardness. However, if well managed, conflict produces exactly the opposite effect: it strengthens communion and communities. In fact, the more conflicts are gone through and resolved together, between couples or in a family or community, the more stable these couples, families and communities become. Conversely, the less we resolve conflicts together the weaker the relationship. Couples who never argue are often put at risk for lack of something to say.

The popular saying affirms this, “A couple without problems is a problem.” The absence of weeds does not necessarily mean the presence of upright wheat, the ear loaded with grain. Diamond cannot be perfected without friction! Unable to manage conflict, we manoeuvre round one another like fish in an aquarium. They never collide because just at the point of contact, they give a flick of the tail, swerving to avoid one another. A religious community in crisis can withdraw into a community-aquarium.

There are even neighbourhood-aquaria! We live together, but in fact we are side by side, without genuine communion among us. A Rwandan proverb expresses this non-encounter: ‘Your enemy hides from you that he hates you and you hide from him that you know it!’ The railway of social interaction has several tracks, but everyone moves along on parallel lines, each one on his or her own set of rails.

Conflict has to be managed; and conflict management is learned as a language is learned. Conflict is truly a foreign language that we need to learn. There are mechanisms that trap us due to lack of knowledge or skill. It has its grammar and rules. For any group or community, from a couple to a nation, it is essential to work at these together, to explain them and use them as a culture of joint communication. Avoiding conflict is very often an easy solution in the short term. Staring our divergences in the face and seeking to shoulder them together and help them to evolve is much more demanding.

Moreover, it is also much more rewarding and less risky than the policy of the ostrich. Popular wisdom says, ‘The riverbanks are a blessing to the river. Without them, it would be a swamp!’ A Senegalese proverb adds, ‘It is not about two people who are not in agreement. It is simply two people who have not yet talked together.’ Lenten period gives us an opportune moment to talk together and resolve our conflicts in order to live our Christian life to its brim and in its positivity and not in its superficiality!

*Fr Dr Ngahy is director at the Centre for Social Concern in Lilongwe.