409. Military Diplomacy, Pt. 27 ( Rogers, pt. 1; Tupy, Jr., pt. 1))

I just have one small piece of text to comment on in the first text.


Rogers, Melvin L. (1980, Summers). Stress: friend or foe? Military Chaplains' Review, 73-81.

"What should be remembered here is that what makes us happy, feel calm, relaxed, and at ease is likely to reverse the affects of stress." (p. 80; citing Herbert Benson, The Relaxation Response (New York: The Hearst Corp., 1975), p. 134)

This probably true, and I would like to have had thorough training in this kind of thing before I went to Vienna.  Maybe instead of offering to take software classes (if they would have told me which software to study) I should have taken classes in relaxation and coping with stress.  As my dad used to say, however, "If wishes were fishes, we'd all be swimming in the sea."

I had no idea the Vienna mission was a total institution (à la military or some such other institution) or had such an apparent interest in my dad or such unethical and unchristian socialization methods, or other such surprising and unexpected qualities of the mission.  I had no idea I was going to be given such "special" treatment.  However, I also didn't cooperate with them very well and didn't particularly want to either.  Concentrated stress training before going to join the mission would have been very helpful.

***

The second article is:

Tupy, Jr., Richard R. (1981, Fall). Peacemaking. Military Chaplains' Review, 23-30.

***

"Jesus apparently operated on the assumption that love and conflict are not opposites.  During much of His ministry, he surfaces and used conflict between himself and others.  Many comments to pharasees were downright offensive.  "You hypocrites!" "You whitewashed tombstones!" were not designed to keep peace at any price." (p. 25)

My blog, in case you haven't noticed, isn't meant to keep the peace at any price.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm in the same league with Jesus or anything, but it was the religious leaders of His day that Jesus reserved the most caustic remarks for and James 3:1 states that those in leadership will receive a stronger judgement:

James 3:1 (New King James Version (NKJV)

3 My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.

Jesus' actions while on earth were a kind prescience of this very thing that will happen in the judgment.  This is just a warning to think twice about becoming a leader and to make sure that you really are ready for the responsibility.

In Jesus' day they had the Old Testament, but they were left on their own, without the benefit of the Holy Spirit (unless you happened to be a prophet), and they didn't do so well.  Even with the Holy Spirit and the "New Nature" (along side the still existing "Old Nature") Christians still don't do so well, however.  We have to wait until we have a new body and the old nature is once and forever done away with before we can finally live like we should.  So we're not the testimony to the world we should be, we don't treat each other as we should (the Vienna mission vs. me is a very good example of that), and we don't relate to God as we should nor to His creation.  Basically, we're failures all around. 

But while I"m on this subject I'll continue in it a bit.  In Romans 7 the Apostle Paul describes the believers struggle with the two natures in him and the strubble between his/her temptation with sin versus the desire to please God; here are a few versus from that passage:

¹⁸ For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
¹⁹ For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
²⁰ Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
²¹ I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.

(I should note that I think most commentators see this chapter as the believer's struggle, but not all do.)   The thing is that the things I've been describing about the Vienna mission never appeared to me as being an issue of conscience struggle as described here.  So that means that... 

1. They apparently felt very comfortable with all the things I've described regarding, for example, how they treated me, and didn't see any conflict between the old nature and the new as described here in Romans 7.
2. If any of the leadership did feel any conflict at any point in how they treated me they masked it well from my notice.
3. If any of the leadership did feel any conflict at any point regarding their general modus operandi and values and norm system I never witnessed it

 Thus, I am going on the assumption that none of them had any qualms about any of the things I've discussed in this blog.

***

This next major section is titled "Traditional Ways of Peacemaking."

"There are three traditional ways by which we attempt to heed the injunction to "turn from evil and do good ... seek peace and pursue it." (I Peter 3:11, NIV) We lord it, leave it, or lose it.

Lording It -- The Power Play.

If there is a theme that runs through my experience of leadership in the Chaplaincy over the past 24 years, it's the general attempt to use power to make peace and remove conflict.  Time after time I've seen the rewards and punishers -- the use of evaluation report writing power, the use of assignment changing power, the use of strings on the money power, the use of "I'll get you some day, some way" power - to keep peace in the religious family.  At some times it's been almost as though subordinates are children who need to be sent to their individual rooms so that peace will reign.  In this win-lose approach to peacemaking, peace comes from winning at the expense of someone else's losing.  In the end we reap what we sow, hostility and resentment.

Leaving It -- Permissive Leadership.

Another common peacemaking style that I've seen is the denial of personal power and the seeking after peace through cheek-turning.  In this attempt at peacemaking, I deny my own needs in order to allow others to do their thing.  I pursue peace, not by recognizing my own needs and my right to hold them, but by self-denial that builds resentment against the person who has, unwittingly, achieved peace at my expense.  So I reap what I sow from my cheek-turning, an unrecognized resentment which lays buried in my psyche until the opportunity to get even arises.

Losing It -- The Compromises.

I can remember dating a girl who never liked what I had planned for the evening.  She offered an immediate counter-proposal to every suggestion, usually one I disliked as heartily as she disliked mine.  So we compromised, and did something in which neither one of us were particularly interested.  That's the result of most compromises, both sides lose, sowing the seeds of resentment and failing to reap true peace." (p. 26)

The author obviously knows something about peacemaking.  The only thing is that he offers two options of "Traditional ways of Peacemaking" and "Biblical Principles of Peacemaking" so we'll see how these stand up.

Before we move on to "Biblical Principles of Peacemaking," however, I would like to say that there are also other well developed forms of peacemaking, that come from the traditions of people and groups like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Quakers, etc.  These folk go for a win-win solution.  

[I have to make a brief interruption here because I've spent a good part of the day looking for some resources and it seems that my Russian Bibles were together with some of my "curriculum vita" documents that showed professional development certification from extra coursework and also a bunch of my peace books.  So they must have been all in one box that the shippers never delivered to my new apartment.  I wanted especially the Alternatives to Violence Project books - I took two of the courses.  And I'm having a tough time finding anything that satisfactorily fillst the gap left from those booklets.]

Because of this, I'm going to go more on memory.  To go more with a win-win approach takes a lot of creativity and effort because you end out having to often really think outside of the box, think of something perhaps never really done before, at least not in your family, organizaton, neighborhood, etc.  

It also takes a lot of willingness to listen, really listen to each other.  Everyone will tell you that communication is crucial.  You have to ask each other questions and try to understand how the other feels and what the other really wants, even maybe reading between the lines some.  You have to show the other person that you are listening to what they say.  Nod your head as appropriate, repeat back what they say, ask if you aren't sure you understand.  And ask the other person to do the same with you.  Show that you are committed to working with the other person to really trying to find a solution that will be fair and just to both of you, not just yourself.  

The thing is too that the other person might not trust you because there could be things leading up to this that s/he might not trust you based on those things.  So you have to respect that too and understand that those things might have to be dealt with and you can't just go into this thing expecting the other person to just zap! start trusting you and you're going to hit the road running with this process when that trust issue is in the way, because chances are you won't start that way.

Now I'm a fine one to be talking this way, because you know how many people and organizations I should be negotiating with?  And you know how many people / organizations either I don't trust or they don't trust me or we neither of us don't trust each other?  Hah!  If you've been reading this blog for more than 5 or so posts you know that there are a few people and organizations that I have issues with or the other way around.  

I'm telling you an alternate traditional way to peacemaking, though, from what the author says.  It's actually the preferable way, I think, as far as healthy and lasting results are concerned, but may be the most difficult and require the longest time.

***

The next section, predictably, is: "Biblical Principles for Peacemaking."

"Peacemaking is a Covenanting Process

In the Old Testament, the normal and appropriate relationship of persons with one another mirrors the relationship with men which Yahweh established in his covenant... It is this seeking of shalom through a covenant process that covers all the relationships of daily life... Abraham and Lot, Jonathan and David, established covenants of peace...

The Goal of Peacemaking is Reconciliation.

God always seeks wholeness for his people.  To remove his peace would destroy the covenant so dearly established... The Christian model for this reconciliation is Jesus in whom Paul says, God was pleased to 'reconciled to himself all things." (Corinthians 1:20 [sic]).

Peacemaking is the Responsibility of Both the Offender and the Offended.

Matthew reports two sayings of Jesus which highlight the key words in this  principle: offender and offended.  In Matthew's 5th and 18th chapters he gives two words of advice for resolving disputes within the church. In the first, he suggests that, if I am aware that my brother is offended by something that I have done, it is my responsibility to go to him and be reconciled.  In the second he suggests that, if I am offended by something that my brother has done, it is again my responsibility to go to him and be reconciled... They both own the problem.  They both own responsibility to make peace.

Peacemaking Requires Direct Personal Action

These same two statements of Jesus make it clear that the stakeholders in any conflict must meet face to face. The process is one of direct personal action in which the parties resolve their conflict while avoiding situations such as that of the Corinthian Christians who began matching offense with offense and lawsuit with lawsuit. People are easily tempted to voice their antagonism in personal attacks.  Keep the focus on needs, problems, issues and on the communications of feelings and ideas to each other." (p. 27-28; the biblical citation should be to Colossians 1:20; also if you want to look up where the Corinthian lawsuit fiasco was it's in I Corinthians 6:1-8)

 I'm not particularly crazy about the author's hermeneutics, but it's mainly how he presents it, jumping from covenant in the Old Testament then to reconciliation in the New Testament which is a tenuous connection, if you ask me.  You can make a case for it, but I don't think it's wise to assume the connection without the explanation.  One thing that might help to explain this, though, is that the author is Lutheran, so he is coming from a Covenant theology background, and I'm a dispensationalist.  So for him the link could be assumed and might not need much explanation.

Even so, I'd like to explain my exception to this part of the text.  The thing with covenents are that they can be broken, whereas reconciliation with Christ cannot.  First of all I'll deal with the eternal security (that is that reconciliation with Christ can't be broken).  Here are some Bible passages that show this:

Romans 8:35-39

King James Version (KJV)

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
³⁶ As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
³⁷ Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
³⁸ For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
³⁹ Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That covers about everything that might break our reconciliation, but here's another:

John 6:39

King James Version (KJV)

³⁹ And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

This is Jesus talking here to crowds by the Sea of Galilee. He speaks here of the hope of resurrection, that once you are truly His you will definitely be with Him in heaven.

And one last one:

2 Corinthians 1:21-22

New International Version (NIV)

²¹ Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, ²² set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. 

This teaches us that the Holy Spirit which the believer receives (and who can help the Christian live the Christin life but whom the believer can also grieve) as soon as s/he becomes a Christian is a kind of assurance of things to come.  Elsewhere we are called joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17), so the Spirit could be considered an early deposit on that heirship, which is mainly spiritual, rather than carnal, as in some religions. 

So anyway, let's get back to the covenant issue.  God had a covenant with Israel.  Well, He had a covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15, 17), and with Moses (Ex: 34:27-28 for 10 commandments otherwise Ex. & Dt.) and with David (Ps. 89), those were the biggies.  But they generally had conditions with them, like don't worship other idols, and if they did they lost the blessings and they were out of covenent.  Well, Romans 9-11 say that we're in a period like that now, although people of Hebrew heritage, just like anyone else can decide to receive blessing by becoming Christian as that's what has supplanted the Jewish covenants (as far as being active is concerned) right now.  However, there will become a day when they will once again be active, and Romans 11, in particular, makes this clear, and there are passages in Revelations that also support this concept.  

So what I'm trying to say here is that Tupy may not have chosen the best theological way to start out a Biblical Principles for Peacemaking.  Covenant, of course, is much used on the international scene, as countries and groups sign various agreements to promise to do  or not do such and such, maybe a sort of detente or the like.  Generally strict covenant theologians believe that the church took over from Israel, so we're the new covenant in a way, so to him that might have been logical.  It blew it for me though. 

But let's take his approach at face value, biblical or not and see how it might work.  I'm assuming he's thinking about the chaplain's work, so interpersonal conflict resolution or perhaps some intergroup conflict resolution, but on a local level.

So he expects two individuals or groups to covenant to do what?  To seek shalom?  To divide up into ranks for effective problem solving?  To seek God's will in the process? But what is the covenant then?  Is it just to bring God into the process?  I'm not quite sure. 

Let's move on.  Okay, so the goal is wholeness, but I still am not sure what the covenant is.  I think he needed help in explaining the covenant.  Is it just a community?  Does he want there to be a solid community to start with?  That people covenant to live in community together and with God?  Well, the thing is that, okay, so then if that's what he's saying, then you have to start from a healthy place, a healthy relationship in the first place.  But what if you don't?  What if you never had that covenant, if I think I'm finally understanding what he means now by covenant?

In that case you're starting from scratch and there's nothing to reconcile, because - if you look carefully you'l notice this - reconcile begins with two pesky letters "re" which are the prefix meaning "again" but you can't concile again what never ever was there to begin with, can you?  

So this process only works if you have a situation where there is a "covenent" in place (meaning, I think, that a group get a long and have a nice mutual relationship). So we understand the caveat of this theory.

It's very nice to say to be reconciled, but how do you do it?  There is no help here at all in that regard, so we're left to our own devices there.

Okay, moving on to responsibility.  This is very good, I think and quite insightful as to how tupy brought together the two passages in Matthew.  I like it, I must say.  But it doesn't matter, because nobody that has hurt me is ever going to be willing to come on equal terms to discuss things.  And knoing my luck, they'd come when my migraine was bad I'd sound like a raving idiot.

As to the direct personal action, I think that this is generally true.  Sometimes if it's a very simple thing maybe it could be done via phone or something but generally it should be done in person. 

Returning to my earlier comment about how this process would only work if a covenant pre-existed the conflict... based on this I don't think Tupy's "Biblical Principles for Peacemaking" as presented would have worked between me and the mission because we really only had a covenant on paper and we never had a chance to develop a living covenant because the troubles started as soon as I arrived in Vienna, although they probably pre-dated my arrival, I just didn't read the signs.  His whole theory is based on their being a covenant and I don't think we had one, at least on my side I never got a chance to develop an emotional covenant or bond with them.

***

"The Church and Its Leadership Serves the Process

The leadership of the church is concerned that neither side becomes the doormat of the other or gives up its point of view.  It should be concerned that the differences of opinion be surfaced and worked through, that the relationships between conflict and creativity not be lost." (p. 28)

When I returned home from Vienna I wanted the mission committee of my home church to back me, but all they did was sort of express some compassion or empathy,  but no outrage at the possibility of foul play or anything.  So then after that I felt little need for allegiance to that church, dispite the fact that they had been a major supporter.  I was very hurt by that.  I lost a lot of faith in the church altogether from what happened in Vienna and that didn't help at all.

***

"What Happens When Peacemaking Fails?

That's the hard question!  Suppose you'd tried peacemaking and nothing worked.  What then? In Matthew 18, Jesus suggests that you enlist the help of the community and, if that fails, separate yourself from the offender.  Paul, in II Thessalonians 3 adds that we should take note, warn him like a brother and if that fails, "have nothing to do with him."" (p. 29-30)

These passages deal with sin, and there are other things that can cause problems.  Well, actually, probably not many.  It's not like you're likely to fight much over chocolate vs. vanilla ice cream, for example.  I really think I was terribly wronged in the Vienna mission and the way the Vienna mission acted when I knew it was unbiblical and they should be taken to task for it, and not just for my sake, but no one is going to do it.   But, ironically, because they were the ones with power I was the one that was separated - well and I couldn't take any more of it if I tried anyway.  But the thing is that it was so opposite of this passage.  If these Matthew and II Thessalonians passages were followed I should have been the one staying and the leadership sent packing their bags.  Now that would have been a switch. 

***

So I just want to say in closing - and this has taken all day to write - that these conflice resolution processes, they're out there, they could be used, maybe it's a long shot, and there's so much in my life.  But for what it's worth, they are there.  I'm familiar with them, I even had some training, and also in facilitation.  If anyone I've had conflict with is game I'm willing to give it a shot, but it has to be above board.  I hope you see from what I've written here that I'm not very naive.  I'm not well, so that also would have to be taken into account.  

I suppose it would be to much to assume that the military chaplains/H.R. staff at the Vienna mission when I was there knew anything about this kind of thing when I was there.  But using it with me would have been the farthest thing on their mind I'm sure.