Read this in an email yesterday:
Absence of conflict is not evidence of love.
Wow! Is that ever true. But a perpetuation of conflict without the opportunity to humbly discuss, reconsider, and reconcile would be, I think!
4 thoughts on “Absence of Conflict”
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Wayne, this has been at the heart of the changes I made in how I live with the ladies in this house. I’m no longer interested in some form of forced conformity to some ideal that would eliminate conflict. Only love learned to be lived in in an environment of freedom can produce harmony and harmony doesn’t necessarily mean an absence of conflict. It just means the presence of genuine love and care for everyone envolved and that just has a way of changing the nature of everything…in a redemptive way…even those moments we find ourselves in conflict with others.
Wayne, this has been at the heart of the changes I made in how I live with the ladies in this house. I’m no longer interested in some form of forced conformity to some ideal that would eliminate conflict. Only love learned to be lived in in an environment of freedom can produce harmony and harmony doesn’t necessarily mean an absence of conflict. It just means the presence of genuine love and care for everyone envolved and that just has a way of changing the nature of everything…in a redemptive way…even those moments we find ourselves in conflict with others.
If anything, Jesus’ words to us to “love your enemies” and “bless those who persecute you” assumes that there is conflict! Yet the encouragement to respond in love is there, regardless! Love is active, by its very nature, and must flow into any vacuum left by an absence of conflict, if it is first being received by either party from the Father, i.e. if either party in the “absence of conflict” is living loved by Father, then they will in turn love another. A mere absence of conflict could be two or more persons who are living unloved, and in total apathy toward one another! Where is the love in that?
If anything, Jesus’ words to us to “love your enemies” and “bless those who persecute you” assumes that there is conflict! Yet the encouragement to respond in love is there, regardless! Love is active, by its very nature, and must flow into any vacuum left by an absence of conflict, if it is first being received by either party from the Father, i.e. if either party in the “absence of conflict” is living loved by Father, then they will in turn love another. A mere absence of conflict could be two or more persons who are living unloved, and in total apathy toward one another! Where is the love in that?