A Sunday ago, we lit the Candle of Peace on our Advent Wreath, in anticipation of soon being able to hear the angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favors!” But let’s be honest; the earth doesn’t enjoy much peace these days—nations still strive against nations, terrorist groups still plot death and destruction, families still quarrel and bicker. Even the church is not immune from conflict!

So it’s worth asking, “Where is this peace on earth that the angels so joyously proclaimed?” Is it meant only to be an ideal that we reach for, but never fully grasp? Is it something that will happen only when Christ comes again at the end of time? Will there ever be a day, as both Isaiah and Micah prophesied, when swords are beaten into plowshares and spears turned into pruning hooks?

In the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, Jesus lays out what could be described as the basic steps toward peace and reconciliation. If someone sins against you, he says, first go to that person and try to settle it just between the two of you. If that doesn’t work, then go back again—this time taking a few others with you. If you are still not successful, then inform the entire congregation and have them join in a consolidated effort to solve the conflict. If no remedy is found at that point, then it will be painfully obvious that the other person is not interested in having a relationship with you.

There are a couple of things that strike me about this advice. First, Jesus puts the burden of reconciliation on the victim—the one who has been sinned against. Second, Jesus seems to be far more interested in getting people back together, than he is in determining who is in the right and who is in the wrong.

It’s difficult advice, to be sure; and frankly, the reason it usually doesn’t work is because, most of the time, we don’t even come close to following it. Our strategies for resolving the conflict are much different. For example, if we have been hurt by someone, a lot of us just keep it to ourselves, and pretend that the offense never took place. We do so because the illusion of harmony is always easier to achieve than actual harmony.

A second strategy might be to give the other person the cold shoulder. You never tell the guilty party exactly what is wrong, you simply ignore the individual. After all, the other person wronged you—so let the other person figure it out.

Yet a third strategy is revenge—the silent, deadly kind—whereby you embark on your own personal smear campaign; never missing an opportunity to question the other person’s character in public, or point out his or her flaws. You rationalize this, of course, by telling yourself that it makes you feel better. Only you have to keep telling yourself that over and over again, because the truth of the matter is you don’t really feel any better at all.

In his book The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis paints a vivid picture of hell as a vast, gray city, with rows and rows of empty houses in the middle—because everyone who once lived in those houses has quarreled with their neighbors and moved, and quarreled with their new neighbors and moved again, until only the outskirts of the city are inhabited. That, says Lewis, is how hell got to be so large!

The bottom line is that if you desire reconciliation, you are going to have to work at it. You may even have to give up the ability of saying, “I was right, and you were wrong,” in order to say, “Praise God that we are at peace again!”