Last night I had the pleasure of being taught about Conflict from a Christian perspective from my friend Laura Gilchrist. Click play below to listen to the talk yourself – I highly recommend you do, it was very insightful.

[audio:http://www.christianstruggle.com/podcast/LauraGilchrist_Conflict.mp3%5D

I recently saw a fight in London which I just watched. I didn’t go and try to stop it like other people did, I just stood there hoping that they would stop because people were looking.

After it finished I felt terrible and ashamed for not having done more to be a Peacemaker in that situation. I started thinking about my fear and cowardice in that and other situations.

It was refreshing to realise, during Laura’s session, that conflict mostly presents all sorts of positive opportunites. Opportunities for change, empathy, healing, intimacy, 3rd way thingking and more! I now feel much more hopeful about conflicts I may enter in the future and less fearful about engaging with it.

Towards the end of the session, as you will here in the MP3 above,Laura suggested 3 ways forward for us. We can get training on dealing with conflict, we can use or be facilitators or mediators, and we should oppose the myth of Redemptive Violence with stories of Redemptive Peace – an idea I think is really exciting.

We also talked about Non-Violent Direct Action, something I have been thinking about and subscribing to more and more, but that’s for a whole other post!