Category Archives: Peacemakers

The Meaning of Our Choice

Peacemaking LogoIn these days, the ways that people living side by side make meaning can be vastly different.  We can find the facts we want (or, failing in that, simply create the facts that suit us) and construct the meaning or our choice.

Not all meaning is of equal value.  The best meaning is that which most closely approximates reality.  Ultimately we cannot know what is real.  We can only approach it.  It is an asymptote; a limit we can move towards but never fully grasp.

When the meaning we make, the cognitive maps we craft, are close renderings of reality, we can make choices which best construct what we need; that is, the conditions which keep us safe and allow us to be satisfied.

Choices which attempt to meet our needs but ignore the needs of others are based on faulty maps.  They don’t acknowledge the unity of all things.  They are a short-term fix that causes long-term problems.

As we approach the inevitable conflicts of life, especially those with whom we have the most intimacy, we benefit greatly by having a cognitive map that acknowledges the interconnectedness of all and thus supports our ability to create what we need such that others get what they need as well.

The Workshop on Interpersonal Nonviolence is an introduction to just such a map.

Because I Said So

[Cover story on the PD on Monday 5-2-2016 about the prosecution of “failure to comply”]

Most of us know that we can’t control other people’s choices. This knowledge doesn’t stop us from trying, of course, but we aren’t really surprised when we tell someone to do something and they don’t. Even when this someone is our child the fact that we have given a command doesn’t mean we will get compliance. As often as not, the order will be met with the query, “Why?”

In the larger social order we want there to be a force that will control errant behavior. We create a certain class of powers that are supported by law and appoint persons to have these police powers. We train them and we require them to take an oath to properly uphold the law. We feel safer because of the presence of those who are pledged to protect and to serve.

But from time to time someone with the badge may order us to behave in a particular way that doesn’t seem to be consistent with safety and public welfare. The command may not be within what we understand to be the law and may even be experienced as an abridgment of our rights. We resist.

While this resistance is understandable, it is also a response that weakens the authority of the law. It becomes an occasion for the decay of social order. It demands our attention. Is this an overreach on the part of the police or a rebellion on the part of the populace? We must be very clear about this. Both the police and the populace have rules they have to follow. And when the populace comes to believe that the police are not obeying the rules, rebellion is the result.

The populace is by nature unruly. The police are by design disciplined. It thus falls to the police to police its own. When we have cops who go beyond their appointed powers they undermine the authority of all police officers.

Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson
Monday, May 02, 2016

Freedom of Contempt

This week the House Emerging Issues Committee of the Missouri Legislature failed to pass on Senate Joint Resolution 39.  This bill would place on the ballot a constitutional amendment to shield clergy, churches, and certain other businesses from government penalties and legal liability if they decline to participate in a same-sex wedding ceremony.   The authors of this bill frame it as protecting religious freedom.  In fact, were it to become law, it would protect the right to openly express contempt for certain persons under the guise of being an expression of “sincere religious beliefs.”

I am myself a Minister of the Gospel and am empowered by the State to sanctify marriages by signing a marriage license.  I have had couples come to me seeking my services at their wedding and I have had conversations in which we ultimately agreed that I would not do the service. But this was not because of my feelings about their lifestyle.  Most commonly it was because they showed me a lack of maturity in their relationship and I was willing to point this out to them.   As a result, they either decided not to wed, or to find someone who was not so frank with them to do the service.  But it was never because of who they were as persons.

Were I a baker I can easily imagine having to tell a couple that I couldn’t do their cake because I wasn’t skilled at what they wanted or because I was already too busy that weekend.  But what this bill seeks to protect is the right of a service provider to say to a person, “I will not serve you because I find some aspect of your being to be so odious and contemptible that I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

While the bill itself doesn’t name any particular religion whose sincere beliefs would be preserved and protected, I do find a strong parallel in the Gospels to a sect called the Pharisees.  They were especially contemptuous of the behavior of one Jesus of Nazareth who had the troubling habit of partying with sinners and tax collectors.  While the contempt they showed for him is not something most people celebrate today, I can certainly see the importance of not discriminating against those who hold such views.  On the other hand, I don’t understand why it is necessary to protect those practices in the State Constitution.  It seems to me that we are better served by urging ourselves in the direction of greater maturity and health rather than protecting the rights of those who are less self-aware.

Many years ago I was in a meeting for my denomination, the United Church of Christ, as we were considering whether to ordain persons who were openly and actively gay.  Seated next to me was an anxious young man who spoke up against the resolution stating that, “We all have urges that we need to have help resisting.”  He believed he had to resist his own feelings of attraction to other men.  His fear of those feelings had led him to be contemptuous of himself and to ask the larger community to join him in that contempt.  How sad.

While I have compassion for the Pharisees, I don’t believe we are wise to enshrine such self-hatred into State law.

Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson

Thursday, April 28, 2016

MAD for the Middle East

One cannot help but be heartbroken by the news from the Middle East.  The violence seems so senseless from this distance.  And while I have been more exposed to the plight of the Palestinians, and have good friends in Israel who are actively seeking to change the hearts and minds of Israelis and with them the policies of the Israeli government, I have recently come across a couple of accounts of the perspective of Israeli Jews who speak eloquently about what it is like to live in such close proximity to those who are committed to your destruction.

So I wrote a couple of short paragraphs on my Facebook wall about something the devout Muslims in the Arab states short surrounding Israel could do that would be a non-violent response to the conflict.  They could assure their Jewish brothers and sisters that, in keeping with the teachings of the Koran and the spirit of the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, that they support the right of Israel to exist and for its citizens of whatever faith to live in peace.  Indeed there are a great many Muslims who hold to just such a position.

It was not my intention to choose sides.  I was just pointing out that the otherwise non-violent tactics of public demonstrations and calls for divestiture against Israeli action against Palestine don’t acknowledge what Muslim Arabs all around the state of Israel are doing that create the tension.   There are some fundamental problems here that can be easily seen if not easily addressed.

From the perspective of Just Conflict, the first best thing we can do to address persistent conflict in significant relationships is to stop doing what creates the problem.  There are a good many things we routinely do that move us away from what we need.  Most of them are things we do because in some way our society has taught us that this is what one should do.  First among them is that we are told by sports, politics, and what passes for our justice system that we can create what we need by making others lose.

Of course this never works and we know it.  If I have a conflict with you and I do something to address it which makes you fear that I am trying to make you lose, you will respond by trying to make me lose.  So I will try to make you lose.  And so we both lose.  But no one gets what they need, with the possible exception of the team owners, the party leaders, and the lawyers.

What the Muslim Arabs that surround Israel are doing that constructs the tension is that they hold as their fundamental political goal the eradication of the State of Israel.  However understandable this may be in the light of the oppression they have experienced, it is the central thing that Israelis point to as the justification, no, the necessity of their violence.

We know that we cannot make others change…we cannot cause them to choose what we want them to choose.  Nevertheless, this knowledge does not stop us from trying to change them.  And for our efforts we get feelings of frustration.  We become helpless and hopeless.

If instead we ask if there is anything about the current situation that is so troubling to us that we are willing to change ourselves, then we begin to discover a new way of being that allows for genuine transformation.

This is not just something the Palestinians can do.  The Israelis can see that their insistence that they have a right to build settlements on disputed land is tantamount to saying that Palestine doesn’t have a right to exist as a sovereign state.  They are taking what they see as Arab bad behavior and using it to give them the right to behave badly.  Each makes choices to cause the other to lose.

I am not denying anyone’s right to defend themselves. I am saying that doing what causes the other to lose, or even to fear losing, makes us lose.

When instead we act in our own interests to create what we genuinely need, we will necessarily also be acting in ways that create what the other needs.  But when we are so hurt and scared and angry that we can only focus on the destruction of the other, then everyone loses.

Peacemaking Logo

Creating Resolution

Sometimes we find ourselves in conflicts with others and we just give up. We think, “This is too hard, the other won’t change, I can’t fix this.”

But other times we decide that the relationship and the issues are just too important to give up on. We decide to engage the other, the one with whom we find ourselves in conflict, in a conversation.

When the other cares about us as well, is aware of the problem and interested in repairing it, and engages in the conversation we find that we can actually hear the other’s point of view. We don’t agree. We each have our own perspective. But we come to understand how the other came to see things the way they do and we are able to state our opinion such that they get us as well.

Out of this we find there are certain things we both need. We don’t have to see things in the same way to work together to create what we both need. We have an agreement. We each make commitments to create the common good.

And when we do this, we discover that the relationship is even stronger than it was before we became aware of the conflict.

The crux of the matter, the cross, is whether we decide to not give up but to address the issue. This rests on our confidence in our competence when it comes to the resolution of conflict. If you want to build your confidence, join us in the Peacemaker Fellowship.

Creating Justice

Not everyone wants to see conflict resolved. As someone who works in the field of conflict resolution I tend to think of the best outcome as one in which everyone gets what they need…at least as much as possible. But from time to time (and this afternoon was one of those times) I find myself talking to someone who is asking “What should I do?” but what they are looking for is, “How can I make the other lose as much as possible without getting myself into trouble?”

Certainly there are a good many people who think of justice as a quality that arises when bad people get hurt for hurting good people (i.e. people like us). This is the “logic” behind much of what passes for a criminal justice system. To be clear, I support the presence of a system that determines when people have violated rules for public safety and gives them certain negative consequences as a way of getting their attention and inviting them to change their behavior. In the absence of such a system people tend to behave badly.

But there is a higher form of justice that is about being sure that everyone gets their needs met as much as possible. While we are not making rapid progress in establishing this as the standard across society broadly (though proponents of restorative justice are doing powerfully creative work) we can certainly make this the standard in our own lives. Indeed, in the absence of working to be sure that others get what they need; we will not be able to create what we need.

When we attend to what we need, discern the qualities that are missing for us, act in ways that create these qualities while letting go of the impulse to change others, we succeed in creating what we need and in the process, create what others need as well. But when we are dedicated to ensuring that the other doesn’t get what she or he needs we are constrained to act in ways that fail to meet our own needs. We cannot create justice for ourselves by denying it to others.