Storytelling breaks conflict

So how does one break down barriers and build bridges in conflicts...? Through storytelling. A mediator needs to facilitate relationship building by letting people tell their stories. This builds empathy for the other and helps one begin to see things from the other's perspective. According to Douglas E. Noll, storytelling increases empathy for the other and deescalates emotions. He writes, "Empirical evidence and deep experience suggest that storytelling is the only way through the conflict maze."

Rick Love

Peace Catalysts

Turning the other cheek

There are three ways of taking the command to turn the other cheek. One is the Pacifist interpretation; it means what it says and imposes a duty of nonresistance on all men in all circumstances. Another is the minimising interpretation; it does not mean what it says but is merely an orientally hyperbolical way of saying that you should put up with a lot and be placable. Both you and I agree in rejecting this view. The conflict is therefore between the Pacifist interpretation and a third one which I am now going to propound. I think the text means exactly what it says, but with an understood reservation in favour of those obviously exceptional cases which every hearer would naturally assume to be exceptions without being told. . . . . That is, insofar as the only relevant factors in the case are an injury to me by my neighbour and a desire on my part to retaliate, then I hold that Christianity commands the absolute mortification of that desire. No quarter whatever is given to the voice within us which says, “He’s done it to me, so I’ll do the same to him.”

From The Weight of Glory by C S Lewis

Taking sides

Not only will Christians thus take sides as they concern themselves with the miseries of contemporary mankind, but this taking sides will be a priority for them.... This taking of sides will of course produce conflict (of which there was much already).  The powerful will try to hang on to their positions.  One will not be able to avoid reflecting seriously on the place of violence in that conflict. Sad to say, it is not a conflict in which the church is to be found exclusively on the side of the exploited.  Christ was there, and is there, but his "body," the church, is not -- not all of it in any case.  So in taking the side of the exploited, Christians will find themselves in opposition to some of those who confess the same Lord.  That, for them, is yet another of the great sorrows of our world.  

Nicholas Wolterstorff
Until Justice and Peace Embrace