DEFEAT by Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931) is an astounding poem. It propounds a kind of Ecclesiastes-wisdom that defeat is more meaningful than victory—that defeat may truly be a supreme kind of victory.
Losing an argument, or losing in a conflict, would seem at times humiliating. These experiences are ubiquitous.
One of my key interests in mediating conflict is helping others see how they hurt others, seeing their own contribution, because that is not only where reconciliation’s at, it’s also the purest path to one’s own healing.
Here’s the paradox: camping in our own sense of rightness is a dungeon of our own creation. But leaving that camp to join with another’s understanding is both a venture in aligning with truth AND it’s a holiday from our insistence that our way is the only way forward.
Here’s the madness. Two people insisting upon their own rightness; an insistence that, for each, their way is the only way forward. It’s a madness, because there’s only truthfully a third way forward.
Here’s a series of thoughts for the would-be protagonist:
For those camped in their rightness, think about what I’ve said above. Could it be that there’s a spiritual opportunity of leaving your camp to survey theirs—their understanding, their perception, their hurt, their story? Could there be more to the story? Even your freedom?
Imagine facing God and all of life’s truths one day, all our dark and dirty secrets revealed by a righteous, holy God. For those who have no faith in God, is it worth the chance not planning for this kind of eventuality? For those with faith in God, knowing all will be revealed in God’s time, we would be wise to plan for such an inevitability.
If we insist upon not seeing truths of life in the here-and-now, are we prepared to face God in the perils of our revealed pride in eternity? Or reconcile it now? What risk are we placing against receiving our “well done, good and faithful servant” moment from the Lord when we stay in our rightness?
Far worse a reality than a regret in this temporal life is an eternal regret that we cannot change once life’s race is run. This is what ought to convict us before we stand in the presence of a Holy God.
Even if we’re right, aren’t we commanded to love our enemies and forgive as God forgave us? No amount of our own rightness justifies not loving our enemies and refusing to forgive.
If the Bible is important to you—and for many I understand, it isn’t—but if it is, and you wish to follow Jesus’ teaching, then forgiveness and loving our ‘enemies’ is a bone-jarring truth we must wrestle with.
Are there others close to you that you care about who are hurt because you refuse to reconcile? What about people who care about the person on the other side you’re in dispute with, and how they feel?
What if there is a life experience we’re all invited to experience but too few of us are willing to go there—to humiliation, to defeat, to a place we can only rise from?
“Did you love me enough to love my sheep; did you love me enough to love my lambs?” Jesus’ words.
If only we could hold some space in our hearts for the story of the other that we struggle to understand—to get alongside them as the Holy Spirit does and empathise with WHY they are who they are, and WHY they reason how they do, and from that WHY determine that they see as they do for logical reasons to them.
If we don’t make any effort to move toward the other person in humility, how can we expect them to move toward us?
The best test of our Christian faith is how amenable we are to the example and followship of Christ — how well do WE (not the other person we are tempted to point our finger toward) get the log out of our own eye.
The blessings of God
are quite directly connected
with humility in terms of
our relations with others.
