The place we were before conflict

"Faith in God's revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo.

Karl Barth

I was reading an article on the BBC home page about change this morning and it led to this post.... 

The full article can be found at this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23986212

The place we were before conflict.... 

There seems to be such a deep seated need to find the "status quo" within much of Christendom today. It constantly appears in our conversations about the future. It almost always sounds to me like a childlike adoration for a previous time and place. A hoping for a nice life....

"If only we could return our world to a time before "the Conflict" then we'd be back in a place we were comfortable in."

I find such dreaming of before to be dangerous and myopic. 

What is Conflict and are the resulting changes something that should be erased from our corporate memory?

Status quo begs us to avoid conflict, it encourages us to always seek the safety of conflict free landscapes. 

The trouble for me with this approach is that I believe that conflict:

• Produces the energy, that causes change, which then allows us to evolve as human beings. 
• Is the key component in making a narrative compelling. 
• Is the way we resolve the deeper rifts that are seething beneath the crust of our relationships and communities. 
• Is an essential element of life here on earth. 

So, I think working and scheming to erase the results of conflict all in hope of returning us to a pre-conflict state merely curses us with the imperative to repeat the conflict endlessly. 

Until we attain perfection there will be an imperative for us to embrace change, which always requires conflict. Dreaming of the status quo is just a very convoluted way of cursing us with stagnation and eventual extinction. Whether that is a local community of Believers, an organized society of Believers, or the localized cultural expression of the Christian Ideal within a unique cultural meta-narrative. 

We have an old hymn back home that has these lyrics...

The old, old story ever, ever new.....

While the Gospel is ancient, it ought not to become a quaint piece of history.... 

If you find yourself living in a place where conflict is overlooked or denied, you probably belong to a place that is hurtling towards extinction....