The Peacemaker

Over the last month or so, I've been reading a book called The Peacemaker by Ken Sande. It was recommended to me two years ago and at the start of the year, I finally got around to buying it. It has taken me a while to read because of the subject matter and I found myself having to have breaks from it because it made me emotional and delicate. If you have any doubt about what the book is about, it comes with the tagline......A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict.

This year, I decided I was going to read some books with 'difficult' subject matter that I had been wrestling with for some time. The first was Respectable Sins and now it has been The Peacemaker. You might be thinking I'm some kind of masochist for wanting to put myself through such personal turmoil and discomfort but I've come to the conviction that it's easy to read books that say what we want them to say and that make us feel good. God desires us not to stagnate but to grow in our faith and love of him and sometimes this process, like a refiner's fire, is painful but the results are well worth it. Despite my nerves before opening up to the first page, I knew the message of The Peacemaker was a message God wanted me to hear.

As some of you will know, I have spent the better part of over two and a half years struggling with unforgiveness, bitterness and anger at Christians who I felt have hurt me deeply and some have never apologised for it. I wrote about what was probably the most major incident here but there have been others. After living a relatively conflict-free existence with other believers during the first five years of my Christian walk, it has been a tough challenge to say the least. In December 2007, I did a five-post series on Forgiveness and after I wrote that, I thought I had turned the corner. I was sadly mistaken. Last year, I increasingly found myself dwelling on past instances and I could feel the bitterness festering in my soul.

The thing that attracted me to The Peacemaker was that is was promising to look at what the Bible has to say about forgiveness and reconciliation. I was getting sick of hearing pop psychology, even from well-meaning Christians, and I just wanted to hear from God's Word. It is a book I would recommend for any church leader who no doubt has to deal with conflict regularly. Ken Sande goes into what it means to be a peacemaker, that all Christians have the responsibility to be peacemakers in their churches and not delegate this responsibility to the 'gifted ones'. The book largely deals with conflict between believers although it does mention peacemaking strategies if a believer is at conflict with a non-believer. Some of the topics Sande deals with are property disputes (which I didn't feel were relevant to myself at this point in time), steps to resolving conflict (either as the perpetrator or the victim), when to rebuke and when to overlook, idolatry as the seed of conflict, taking the command to resolve things within the church seriously and not take each other to court, and the importance of seeing the command to forgive in the light of the enormity of God's forgiveness through the cross.

One of the strengths of the book is that it made me see that despite others' offenses against me, in the light of my sin against God, it is nothing. The book convicted me of my tendency to take God's forgiveness for granted yet refuse to forgive others and that this is a great offense to God's holiness.

There was one thing that stood out at me. On page 217, Sande writes in regards to our withholding forgiveness, Until we repent of this sinful attitude, we will suffer unpleasant consequences. To begin with, we will feel separated from God and other Christians. We may also experience unusual hardships and lose blessings that would otherwise be ours. Then he refers to Psalm 32:1-5 where David experiences the anguish of unconfessed sin. To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this but I am starting to wonder whether my unforgiveness towards others is responsible for my panic attacks. Praise be to God, I have not had one since early May and I am wondering if by withholding forgiveness, I am 'poisoning' myself with bitterness (like the quote I posted yesterday)? I want to tread carefully here because I'm aware that there are many who claim that the sick are suffering with ailments because of unconfessed sin which is not only often untrue but insensitive and hurtful. I'm just beginning to feel in my circumstances that God has been convicting me of having a bitter, unforgiving spirit which is hampering my spiritual (and also physical) health. I'm interested to know what others think about that quote from the book.

The book tends to deal with minor disputes and therefore I think it falls down slightly when it comes to dealing with major incidents. For example, he mentions quite a number of times that we are not only to forgive but to pursue reconciliation. I was wondering how that is meant to work is serious cases where to try and repair the relationship to the level it was before is near impossible. On page 219, Sande says, Being reconciled does not mean that the person who has offended you must become your closest friend. What it means is that your relationship will be at least as good as it was before the offense occurred. He uses the example of a husband whose wife has committed adultery. Now she has realised the error of her ways and has begged him for forgiveness. The husband confides in his counsellor, "I forgive her, but I just can't be close to her again." Sande responds to this common dilemma by asking how we would feel if God said the same thing to us and asks if we would feel we were truly forgiven? I thank God that he wants not only to forgive us but to reconcile us to himself but does that mean a woman whose husband had cheated on her with her best friend would need not only to forgive her friend but try to get the friendship back to how it was? In minor cases this may be easily achieved but I don't know if it's always that clear cut. Sande insists we must give a repentant person the opportunity to regain our trust but I'm wondering if there's a place for boundaries in order to protect yourself from further hurt?

Another part of the book that irritated me somewhat was his insistence that during conflict, both parties should confess their contribution to the problem. To me this sounds quite offensive when one party is clearly in the wrong. Of course we're all sinful but I don't think we need to take blame in situations that we didn't cause. He suggests that if we confess our role in the conflict then it might encourage the other party to do the same. In cases where there has simply been a misunderstanding, yes that is sound advice but if one party has initiated the conflict then it sounds insensitive to suggest the 'victim' confess to something merely to squeeze an apology out of the perpetrator. I know we have our blind spots but there are some cases where one party is clearly the one at fault.

There is a chapter devoted to the Matthew 18 process of confession, forgiveness and restoration and I was pleased to see that he encourages those in churches who would be considered mature to take the role of peacemaking seriously. Too often, leaders stick their heads in the sand and tell people to resolve their conflict themselves but there are cases where one party is unrepentant and hostile and therefore external help is needed.

My favourite bit of the book is where Sande encourages those struggling with unforgiveness to confess their sin to God, knowing that he is faithful and forgives our sins as he promises. He talks about his own struggle with unforgiveness and offers hope to those, like me, in the form of a prayer. He encourages us to pray honestly to God about our struggles and said that at times this is his honest prayer (page 205)
God I cannot forgive him in my own strength. In fact, I do not want to forgive him, at least until he has suffered for what he did to me. He does not deserve to get off easy. Everything in me wants to hold it against him and keep a high wall between us so he can never hurt me again. But your Word warns me that unforgiveness will eat away at my soul and build a wall between you and me. More importantly, you have shown me that you made the supreme sacrifice, giving up your own Son, in order to forgive me. Lord, please help me to want to forgive. Please change my heart and soften it so that I no longer want to hold this against him. Change me so that I can forgive and love him the way you have forgiven and loved me.

Since reading that, I've been praying that prayer over and over. Not because I think it's some magic formula but because his words are my words. He puts into words so perfectly what I'm feeling and need to confess to God. I know the forgiveness road is a long and bumpy one and not one that I'll ever properly master in this lifetime but God equips us to be able to forgive and be peacemakers in his strength.

Overall, it is a book I would recommend to anyone who is in the middle of conflict or been scarred by it. In fact, I would really love someone else to read it and let me know what they think so I would know whether my objections to the book are real or whether they aren't true and come from a stubborn, hard heart.

If you'd like to borrow it, let me know. If you've already read it, please leave a comment with your thoughts.