Happy are the Peacemakers

Irreconcilable differences.

Those are some of the most devastating words anyone could ever hear. Those words are filled with so many questions and emotions. It’s disorienting, really! The dissolution of a relationship has the potential to hoist an immeasurable weight on the future that makes finding a way forward extremely difficult.

What happens in relationships when there are unmet needs and expectations is it reaches a breaking point; a place where there seems to be no hope for change. No chance for things to be as they were once imagined. No way to get back to when life seemed to be right in everyone’s eyes.

Can you imagine the first relationship ever established on earth between God and Adam? In the Garden of Eden; a place of shalom. Literally, no sin. No wrong. No mess-ups. It was paradise. God had formed and established order for the cosmos.

Adam and Eve ruled over the earth with a God-given authority and expressed a mutual respect for one another as they worked and watched over the land God had given them. God also established rules and boundaries for them to maintain a healthy submission to the Creator’s design.

Then one day…

Adam and Eve committed an offense against God. They disobeyed His command as subjects under His authority. The fellowship and oneness that they once shared with God had been blemished. They were now at odds with their Creator. Had this become an irreconcilable difference? A holy and righteous God now observing unholy behavior unfit for the place of Eden.

In their grief and shame, they hid. The infraction of their sin led to a belief that they had dismantled their relationship with their Creator. It was broken. They had been separated. That which was once pure had become stained by a moment of carelessness. And rightfully so. What we have come to understand about sin is that it has consequences.

But what’s fascinating is that God did not consider their sin and rebellion to be an irreconcilable offense. He did not write off all possibility for welcoming these rebel children back into His presence. There was work to be done to restore the relationship to a better place. But it was not out of reach. So while not all hope had been lost, there was a price to be paid.

God, in His righteousness, was willing to make peace. At tremendous cost to Himself, no doubt. It begins in the Garden with providing a covering of animal skin for Adam and Eve. It cost Him one of the animals that He created for Adam and Eve to be clothed. The clothing isn’t what cleansed them. It was merely a symbol of the sacrifice made, forgiveness offered, purity regained, relationship restored.

Though God expressed a moment of vulnerability in welcoming back the couple following a preposterous act of selfishness and pride, He knew boundaries must be established for their relationship moving forward. God removed them from the garden, informed them of the toil they would endure with working the ground, labor pains the woman would experience in giving birth, and the struggle with ruling and serving. But, indirectly, He gave them a promise; the woman’s offspring would crush the head of the enemy responsible for inciting this revolt against God.

From generation to generation, He continued to provide the formula for making peace with a stubborn and rebellious people. And every attempt to see the fractured relationship between sinful people and a holy God required a sacrifice; a price to be paid for the penalty of wrongdoing.

It has always been God who has initiated the process of restoration; at great cost to Himself. The payment for sin eventually culminated with the sacrifice of Jesus; the once for all payment for sin. It no longer required the temple, the priests, the altar, the animals. Now, anyone, anywhere, any time can receive the benefit of being made right before God and experience the restoration of the fractured relationship caused by our rebellion through the sacrifice of God’s son.

In light of what God has been willing to do to make peace and reconcile His relationships, how do we respond in our attempts to reconcile our relationships with one another?

First of all, we are humans. We are not perfect. And we do not see life through the same lens that God sees us. So it stands to reason that this caveat must be made. Not every relationship will be reconciled. And I’m not so naive to believe that it should or that it will.

Jesus said, “happy are those who strive for peace – they shall be called the sons of God.”

We live in a world broken and marred by sin. People hurt people. Physically. Emotionally. Sometimes accidentally and other times on purpose. And it severs relationships. Making this truth claim in no way is meant to endorse or excuse awful and evil behavior.

We are not in the position of God, meaning, we cannot always make things right. There are offenses that produce irreconcilable differences. There are words and deeds that can put relationships in positions in which they will never be the same again. It simply will not be reconciled.

(There are instances where it simply is not safe or wise for an individual to risk putting themselves or others under their care back into a volatile situation. However, this may be more of an exception rather than the rule for situations of relational conflict, differences, and disagreements. If you or someone you know is in a relationship or situation of potential harm please seek professional assistance).

But how do we view those situations where reconciliation or restoration of relationships is possible?

Relationships can be difficult. Hard. Messy. People have different personalities, preferences, needs, wants, opinions. And it can be quite challenging to try to blend the environmental and experiential makeup of two individuals into a cohesive unit vying for the same inherent good of the relationship. I’ve quoted one of John Ortberg’s book titles before, “I’d Like You More if You Were More Like Me,” and while there may be some truth or debate to the title, the reality is we’ve all been formed as uniquely different individuals.

When relationships become fractured, for whatever reason, peace has been lost. What causes a loss of peace? Chaos, confusion, betrayal, deceit, destructive patterns of behavior. Many of these scenarios can contribute to a wartime mentality that is absent of peace.

What causes us to avoid the path toward becoming a peacemaker? The road toward peacemaking is rocky and filled with hurtful attitudes and actions and words that must be forgiven. This path is oftentimes a painful reminder of what’s been said or done.

And while it is sometimes easier to write off the one who offends or disrupts the relationship, it can oftentimes be more rewarding to work toward restoring the peace of the relationship rather than cutting losses and moving on to another potential fallout. Making peace is moving toward the chaos, not running from it. Working through conflict in an effort to experience peace is a strategy that strengthens and nurtures relationships in a way that running from the conflict never will.

The path of making peace requires us to move off the path of self-preservation. When we become self-preserving we rob the situation of being made right. The opposite of self-preserving is self-denying. When relationships are damaged, the feelings and emotions are real. And self-preservation becomes a survival instinct that often empties itself of any real capacity for relational survival.

The path to making peace often requires traveling the road of self-denial. Notice, it’s not self-forgetfulness. An individual should not lose their sense of self and allow the personality and power of the other to become the enforcer of an estranged relationship. But reconciling the relationship back into a place of peace often requires denying one’s own rights and wants for the sake of seeing the situation move in a direction toward compromise for the good of the relationship.

The path of making peace is not always the path of least resistance. It’s often actually met with quite a bit of resistance. Harbored feelings, others’ opinions, current and future vulnerabilities. In a world where we want to be comfortable, snuggled up next to easy circumstances emptied of hard truths or fateful dread, we want the blanket of peace without having been exposed to the elements of bedlam.

The path to peace always includes a turn down the road of forgiveness. “But you don’t know what they’ve done!” And you may be right. But Jesus didn’t make a suggestion for us to forgive. In fact, while on the bloody cross, he cried, “Father, forgive them.” The hardest path I’ve ever walked has been the daily grind of choosing to forgive when I didn’t feel I deserved to be done wrong. But in those moments when I find forgiveness to be difficult I remember that I am not without fault. Forgiveness is a choice, necessitated by Jesus’s willingness to forgive me, that frees me to keep walking the path of peace.

When we come to know Christ, he gives us the gift and fruit of peace. It resides within us. Then, he calls us to manifest this peace in our relationships with others. It isn’t always easy because humans do human things that disrupt peace. But when we live from an outpouring of forgiveness and peace that we’ve experienced in a reconciled relationship with God then we are better positioned to experience its benefits in our relationships with others.

In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul addressed the broken and separated relationship the people of God had experienced because their sin. But God….He was willing to forgive, restore, reconcile, and make beneficiaries of His incredible riches. Rather than experience the just wrath deserving for all who had gone astray. Then, he addressed the need for human relationships to be forged together by this same pursuit of peace (see Ephesians 2).

Happy are those who make peace. Not just keep the peace or avoid the conflict altogether. But those who pursue shalom; the place God designed for His people to inhabit from the beginning. It’s not always easy, but it’s worth the fight to experience the peace that comes from living in the presence of God.