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Peace Begins at Home
This paper was presented at the Security, Terrorism, and Peacemakers Conference held in London, Ontario on January 4, 2003. From personal experience and international evidence, John de Vries makes a case for restorative justice.
“People become precocious giants in their preparations for war and they become dwarfed pygmies when it comes to making for peace”. These words of Lester B Pearson, former Canadian Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner. still ring true today.
As nations are preparing for war Christians cannot be silent. But what will we say? We know the Christian way is the new way - the way of peace, but we need to be convinced the way of peace can work - locally and globally - in our home communities and among the nations.
Recently, I was involved in an incident that illustrated to me that it takes a total change of attitude to move from a justice that is focussed primarily on retribution, blame and punishment to a justice that seeks primarily to heal, to reconcile and to make things right. Only with such a conversion in our justice thinking will we be able to heed the advice of John Quincy Adam’s, “not to go for monsters to destroy”.
Here is what happened. After parking my car on the shopping mall , I walked to the Subway restaurant. Before I realized it, a fast moving SUV was coming at me. “Does anyone make it through this?” was the question that flashed across my mind. The next thing I remember I was lying sprawled on the pavement and a man’s voice was saying, ‘Don’t move, we’re calling 911’.
I was not aware of the pool of blood on the pavement. After the ambulance ride to the hospital emergency room I was told that the ten staples would help the head wound to heal soon, but the effects of the whiplash could linger some months.
The police said it was possible to lay charges against the 18 yr old driver of the SUV. During the week of recovery friends and family members asked me when I was going to sue this ‘reckless’ driver. To charge the driver and take him to court would make us enemies in an adversarial court battle. To charge the driver, unknown to me, just did not add up. Instead, two weeks after the accident, I called the offending driver to schedule a meeting. Who was this person anyway? a reckless youth, a monster?
He and his father agreed to meet. In the conference I expressed my anger. I lamented my loses - costs for the ambulance, medication, physiotherapy and days off work. Furthermore, there was the physical pain and the potential cancellation of planned events. The driver explained what happened, shared his sorrow and offered his apologies. I began to see him not as a reckless, evil monster but as a person like myself.
I had consulted a lawyer, insurance broker and police earlier. To lay charges would have initiated an adversarial process - it would have made him an enemy. This process would take months. It could destroy his plans for med school, and would not assure healing, forgiveness or reconciliation. It would leave bad memories for both of us. Bad memories always remain unless there is forgiveness.
At our conference the driver agreed to reimburse the costs. Together we arrived at a settlement mutually satisfactory to him as the offender and to me as the victim. It led to a win-win situation. The driver was not dehumanized, demonized or destroyed in the process. I was glad to be able to shake hands and see him off to medical school. Upon later reflection I realized I had been converted to restorative justice - not the easiest way, but a better way ‘to make things right’.
The young man had been reckless but he was not a monster - he was a human being, an image bearer of God. I might never have realized this had I not sat down to talk with him.. It would have been easy to lash out, establish my rights and sue this 18yr old driver. However, both of us would have been the losers.
Restorative Justice is a tough spiritual and human process. It requires us to come to grips with who we are, who God is, and who the other person is. God, who is on our side, is also the God of the person or national representative sitting on the other side of the table. Restorative Justice takes intentional personal and community involvement. The healed relationship, the resulting handshake, and the peace experienced, offer a foretaste of the shalom and inner peace every person longs for.
What does this have to do with war and relations among the nations? We think of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, and his years in jail followed by the peaceful dismantling of Apartheid. I remember well Mandela’s plea for other nations to also consider using restorative justice (RJ) principles to settle their conflicts. But as Archbishop Tutu stated it, Israel, Ireland and Rwanda did not seem interested and said it wouldn’t or couldn’t work..
What made it work in South Africa? Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics and atheists made up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It worked because according to Archbishop Tutu it was bathed in prayer and because there is ‘no future without forgiveness’(Archbishop Tutu). There were also the native South African Ubuntu teachings that call for mutual respect and the pre-industrial community practices that underlie the restorative justice thinking that guided the bloodless dismantling of apartheid.
Opposing sides, victims and offenders, looked each other in eye, recognized each others hurt, anger and pain. Without that there can be no peace, forgiveness or reconciliation. The underpinning of the dismantling of apartheid and the relatively bloodless aftermath was due in great measure to the Christian framework shared by the majority of South Africans. The teachings of Ghandhi who lived in South Africa earlier in his life were also a contributing factor.
In South Africa the ‘restorative justice principles’ drawn primarily from the Christian Bible and native people’s practices shaped the profoundly spiritual Truth and Reconciliation Commission process. A war and a national bloodbath were averted. Lives were saved. Both sides were enabled to respect each other and work toward a common future as they worked ‘to make things right’.
It takes a conversion from retributive justice focussed on blame, power, punishment, and destruction to restorative justice focussed on making things right, healing, dialogue, community, and a future for all. I am reminded of my youth and cowboys and Indian movies - good guys and the bad guys. But life and relationships are not that simple. There is good and bad in me as well as the person or nation that has been the perpetrator of evil. As Rick Prashaw from the Church Council on Justice and Corrections stated, “If we just allow the lines of criminal (or international) justice to exist, we forget that God is on all sides.”
As Christians we recall the example Mandela, Archbishop Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in averting war and bloodshed. We are called to be the sign bearers of the Kingdom and to make swords into plowshares. Less dollars for bombs and more dollars for starving children, human dialogue and peace. We know mentally and confess verbally that Christ’s way is the way of sacrifice. But we do not easily practice the sacrificial risks that forgiveness or reconciliation may call for.
We recall the recent war and dessert storm in Iraq. Between 1990 and 1996, according to United Nations statistics, 500,000 children died of post-war malnutrition in Iraq - three times the number of persons that were killed in Hiroshima in the 1940’s. Our Christian Reformed response of ‘worldwide disaster relief’ initiatives are the beginnings we can celebrate. We can no longer be silent as persons, churches or communities.
May God’s forgiveness, reconciliation and love for his people nurture our passion for justice and peacemaking locally and globally. Justice is peacemaking. Peacemaking begins at home, with you and with me.
John de Vries Jr. is a Chaplain at the Chatham Kent Health Alliance.
Posted by editor on September 30, 2003 10:56 AM