HAVE just finished writing a play for an Australian company on the Israeli-Palestinian skirmish, and through the script have offered a solution to the same. But even as I wait for it’s production and performance and hopefully that it will be converted into a serial, I decided to write on another aspect of the conflict:
“But they are both so different?” people tell me. “No! They are not!” I reply sadly, “The only thing that exists between two people quite often is pride and this pride is what often causes conflict between them!” Say the holy scriptures, “Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice. —Proverbs 13:10
I loved this small article I read by David Roper and would like to reproduce the same for you: ‘Some years ago, my wife, Carolyn, and I spent a few days camping on the flanks of Mount Rainier in Washington State. When we were returning to our campsite one evening, we saw in the middle of a meadow two male bears boxing each other’s ears. We stopped to watch.
There was a hiker nearby, and I asked him what the conflict was about. “A young female,” he said. “Where is she?” I asked. “Oh, she left about 20 minutes ago,” he chuckled. Thus, I gathered, the conflict at this point was not about the female bear but about being the toughest bear.
Most fights aren’t about policy and principle, or about right and wrong; they’re almost always about pride. The wise man of Proverbs swings his axe at the root of the problem when he writes: “Pride leads to conflict”. Quarrels are fueled by pride, by needing to be right, by wanting our way, or by defending our turf or our egos.
On the other side, wisdom resides with the well-advised—those who listen and learn, those who allow themselves to be instructed. There is wisdom in those who humble themselves—those who set aside their own selfish ambition; who acknowledge the limits of their own understanding; who listen to the other person’s point of view; who allow their own ideas to be corrected. This is the wisdom from God that spreads peace wherever it goes. Even as today, I see daily reports of suicide bombings by Palestinians and retaliation for the same by the Israelis my advice to both is to strip themselves of pride, and to ask them both whether it’s really worth fighting with a brother. Because both the people are descendants of the same father, known to one group as Abraham and the other as Ibrahim.
Oh yes, there are always differences between siblings, but when stripped off pride they could well realize they are still brothers and need to keep war talk aside and speak peace again!
And then comes another thought, “What about Pakistan? Can’t we come to a point when we exist together peacefully? When pride and egos can be set aside? Worth thinking about isn’t it?
