Quotes about Conflict

Perhaps the reason politics has proved such a snare for the church is that power rarely coexists with love. People in power draw up lists of friends and enemies, then reward their friends and punish their enemies. Christians are commanded to love even their enemies.

recall Gandhi's remark that if you take the principle "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" to its logical conclusion, eventually the whole world will go blind and toothless.

A cease-fire between human beings depends upon a cease-fire with God.

Ungrace causes cracks to fissure open between mother and daughter, father and son, brother and sister, between scientists, and prisoners, and tribes, and races. Left alone, cracks widen, and for the resulting chasms of ungrace there is only one remedy: the frail rope-bridge of forgiveness.

All through the Bible, especially in the Prophets, we see a conflict raging within God. On the one hand God passionately loved the people he had made; on the other hand, God had a terrible urge to destroy the evil that enslaved them. On the cross, God resolved that inner conflict, for there God's Son absorbed the destructive force and transformed it into love. Disappointment with God

Think of all the squabbles Adam and Eve must have had in the course of their nine hundred years," wrote Martin Luther. "Eve would say, 'You ate the apple,' and Adam would retort, 'You gave it to me.

He who cannot forgive another breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself. GEORGE HERBERT

Does the Christian emphasis on love, grace, and forgiveness have any relevance outside quarreling families or church encounter groups? In a world where force matters most, a lofty ideal like forgiveness may seem as insubstantial as vapor.

Caught up in righteous—and wholly appropriate—revulsion over Serbian atrocities, the world overlooks one fact: the Serbs are simply following the terrible logic of unforgiveness.

There is one major flaw in the law of revenge, however: it never settles the score.

it seems so unfair, to forgive injustice. I am caught between forgiveness and justice.

Forgiveness may be unfair—it is, by definition—but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution.