Proclaim Peace LIVE Episode // Peacemaking and Discipleship with Chad Ford

In this special live recording of the Proclaim Peace Podcast, host Jennifer Thomas is joined by repeat guest Chad Ford to discuss the impact of recent events on their community and the importance of fostering peace amid fear and conflict. Chad shares insights from his research on conflict mediation, emphasizing how fear can hinder collaboration and peace-building. The conversation highlights the significance of showing up for one another in challenging times and encourages listeners to create supportive spaces as they navigate their own concerns and emotions. Join them for a heartfelt dialogue aimed at uplifting and empowering individuals to become better peacemakers.

This episode was recorded with a live audience on 9/18/25 at the Compass Gallery in Provo, UT.

Timestamps

[00:02:29] Seeds of non-fear.

[00:06:00] Forgiveness and peacemaking challenges.

[00:10:00] Conflict resolution through love.

[00:14:30] Jesus' message of peace.

[00:17:44] Transformational call to action.

[00:21:17] Managing fear and suffering.

[00:24:39] Accepting differences in relationships.

[00:30:33] Resistance to calls for peace.

[00:32:40] Trauma and its impact.

[00:39:14] Transformation through love and growth.

[00:42:05] The power of meekness.

[00:45:34] Changing input for peacemaking.

[00:52:13] Peacemaking amidst fear and anger.

[00:55:16] Alleviating suffering through understanding.

Transcript

(00:03-00:05) Jennifer Thomas: Welcome to the Proclaim Peace Podcast. I'm Jennifer Thomas.(00:06-00:12) Patrick Mason: And I'm Patrick Mason. And this is the podcast where we apply principles of the gospel and read the Book of Mormon to become better peacemakers.

(00:15-00:38) Jennifer Thomas: Chad, I'm gonna be honest with you that my anticipation about this event was really high about two weeks ago. And at a certain point last week, it felt a little bit more weighty. And so I'm wondering if you would mind starting us out tonight to kind of lift some weight. Would you mind, do you have kind of some thoughts about how we could do that before we jump into what's gonna be, I think, a serious conversation?

(00:39-03:41) Chad Ford: Yeah. Weighty for me too, right? The world changed in the last week. Our world's changed in a lot of ways. Lots of people here, I'm sure, have as well. I think a lot of us have been trying to care for each other, also wrestling with our own concerns and fears and what have you. Some of the research that I do around conflict is around fear and the role that fear plays in how we respond to conflict. And as a conflict mediator, I actually know fear is, in some ways, my biggest enemy in getting to peace, getting to collaboration or what have you. And so I spend a lot of time with my clients that I'm working with thinking about how we get into a little bit better space. And there's a lot of different ways to do it. I want to care for all of us tonight because I think this conversation between us will land differently between us and it will land differently for you if that's not the space that we're in right now. Look, we're in an alternative location tonight because of violence. It warms my heart that you're here. We need to keep showing up for each other and keep being in spaces together. And I certainly understand anybody who wouldn't be here tonight and be worried about their safety and what have you. And I'm glad you're here, hopefully on Zoom or whatever, but for those of you that are here tonight, Let's take a breath together. I have a singing bowl here. This is one of the tools that I like to use to meditate. And the thing that I love about this bowl is that for the Buddhist, they use it to think about two types of things that can cause a lot of suffering in life. Things that I'm holding on too tightly to, The things that because of fear or a sense of a fear of loss that I'm gripping too tightly. And also the things that I don't want to look at. Right? So you hold the bowl with an open hand like we're supposed to hold our fears. And the bowl only sings if I hold it with an open hand. It doesn't sing if I close my hand around it so like you can hear it. The minute I grab it, it doesn't sing anymore. And so as I play this bowl for a minute, I want you to, actually, if you can physically do this, unclench your hands, open up your hands, and whatever you're worried about right now tonight, whatever fears you're bringing with us to the room, open up your hand to them and let them leave. And we're gonna try to water the seeds of non-fear tonight.

(03:42-06:47) Jennifer Thomas: I love that framing, the seeds of non-fear. One of the things that we talked about the first time we launched this podcast was, I think in one of our first earliest sessions, was the idea that part of the reason we were doing the podcast was because we felt sort of peace leaving. We felt peace was leaving the world and it feels like it's done that at an escalated rate since then. But I think that since that time, we talked about it, it's been 18 months since we started, or a little bit more now, 19, 20 months since we launched the podcast. I have become a deeply devoted and committed practitioner of peacemaking. And I think for me personally, one of the most important parts of that has been learning to manage, although I have not yet gotten rid of, my fear. And events like the last couple of weeks feel a little bit like falling backwards, like progress can be lost. And so I really appreciate you taking the time to start us from a place of non-fear, where we can just sort of be centered and start to feel differently and more open to the things that we're going to talk about tonight. So thank you. And I am going to jump in with the hardest question. Sorry, guys. I want to get the biggest, hardest thing maybe out of the way first, and then we can climb from there. You titled your book, 70 x 7, right? And I know we all get the reference, most of us here are scripturally illiterate, but I want to actually start this conversation by reading the scripture itself and emphasize to everyone who's listening to me that this is a record of the teachings of Christ himself and a recording of what, you know, he was believed to have said. It's found, a familiar version to all of us is found in the King James Version in Matthew 18, 21 through 22. And the verse is, "…then came Peter unto him and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven." Chad. This is hard at the best of times, it's been a challenge for all of us, even when the going is not rough, but I am going to be true to my name tonight and approach you as a doubting Thomas, and I am going to be the representative of the person in the room who. asks if this is really possible. How do you do this when you are being asked to practice this level of forgiveness and peacemaking with people who are your avowed enemies, and who have demonstrated that they can be violent? It feels impossible to me. I think it feels impossible to a lot of people in the room, and sometimes even unsafe. So I actually believe that you can help us get to a better place on that. So I'm wondering if you would share with us what you think that kind of practice actually looks like.

(06:48-09:05) Chad Ford: It's funny, and I get the pun of a doubting Thomas. But I actually think that if we had the deeper recording of the conversation that that Scripture is referring to with Peter, you would have accurately described what Peter was saying to Jesus. I mean, here's a fisherman. Right? Not a trained theologian, not a rabbi. And he drops his nets and he comes with Jesus to Galilee. Jesus takes his apostles up to a hill in Galilee. delivers the Sermon of the Mount directly to them. I think sometimes we miss that in the New Testament. The Sermon of the Mount was directed directly at Jesus' apostles. There are so many crazy things in the Sermon of the Mount, including if somebody strikes you on the cheek, you know, turn the other cheek. For example, Jesus telling people, look, if you're going to the temple and you're going to make a sacrifice, but you have a problem with your brother, you're supposed to leave the… I can imagine just like the gasp, right, from the apostles. Jesus is teaching a lot of hard things. And you have to believe, and it's kind of clear from the scriptures, that Peter, along with a lot of the other apostles, think that Jesus is the Messiah who's coming to deliver them from violent oppressors who have militarily, economically, religiously, socially oppressed them. That's the Messiah that they're looking for. And even though it's clear in retrospect that that's not Jesus's message, there's so many interactions that they're having with Jesus where they're like kind of waiting for that sword to fall, right? And so I imagine there's this moment of frustration for Peter. That sounds a lot like your frustration right now. This is not going to work. Yeah. And, and I think Peter is being clever by half. I know a lot of times when we hear the analysis, we say, well, Peter was being generous by saying seven times. I don't think so. I think Peter was being clever, right? Because the. Romans had offended him more than seven times, my guess.

(09:05-09:07) Jennifer Thomas: He's giving himself an exit strategy.

(09:07-11:39) Chad Ford: Yeah. Other people, Samaritans, other people that were his enemy, had already offended him, had sinned against him. more than seven times. And so when Jesus is responding to this, I don't think it's, I think it's a bigger, it's a meta question, it's a misunderstanding of Jesus's ministry that's happening repeatedly, and bless Peter, he becomes the rocking head of the church. He could have edited all this back out, right, in the scripture later, but he leaves it in. And to me, when I hear Jesus say, not seven times, but 70 times seven, it's looking Peter in the face and saying, Peter, you don't understand it. It's until it's done. Jen, I am here to reconcile us, not just to the Father, but to each other. I am here to end enmity. I'm here to end violence. I am here to break the cycles that have plagued my children for the longest time. And there is no number. It is until it's done. So we keep doing it and we keep doing it. We keep being frustrated. We keep failing until it's done. There is no end to this. And as a conflict mediator, I get that, right? Because everybody that comes to me and sits down in their conflict, they'll always tell me, I already tried that. I already tried apologizing. I already tried this once. I already tried to have this conversation. It wasn't civil at all. I've tried peacemaking. It doesn't work. And I'm like, OK, then try again. And I think that's the scariest and hardest thing, because we want quick results. We want things to happen overnight. We want to end these cycles that have been cycles that have lasted for hundreds of years and thousands of years and generationally in our families, and we want some sort of quick fix to end it. And Jesus is telling us, I think, something really powerful in the Scriptures. Conflict is It is there, it will be with us in this life, and I hate to break it to us, but at least for Latter-day Saints, we know it existed in the pre-mortal existence. It is likely to exist in whatever our afterlife looks like, and so we have to learn how to patiently love our brothers and sisters back into reconciliation. We don't punish them back, we don't push them back, we don't force them back, we don't fight them back. There's only one way back and it's loving them.

(11:39-12:28) Jennifer Thomas: Well, one of the things I love about what you just said is that Christ is essentially saying, I want this to continue until it is finished. And what Peter wants, and what these disciples want, is for him to finish it. They just want it done. You have the power to finish it. And what's interesting to me is Christ is acknowledging in that moment, and I think acknowledging he does have the power to finish it, but the only actual way it is finished is through us changing. I'm not articulating it this very well, but we have to also be part of it finishing. It doesn't finish with just him. It doesn't finish with just us acting. It finishes with us being absolutely committed to following his path, leaning on him as we do it. And then together, we can come to that really extraordinary resolution.

(12:28-13:09) Chad Ford: One of my favorite parts in the New Testament actually refers directly to what you're talking about, right? Jesus has been crucified. The apostles are absolutely terrified. They are stuck in Jerusalem. If this can happen to Jesus, it certainly can happen to us. They are still wrapping their heads around this Messiah that was supposed to lead to this revolution is now dead, right? Everything, every dream that they had built, their whole lives that they had given up for three years, snuffed out on a cross on Calvary.

(13:10-13:10) Jennifer Thomas: In violence.

(13:10-13:11) Chad Ford: In violence.

(13:11-13:12) Jennifer Thomas: Extreme violence.

(13:12-13:53) Chad Ford: Feeling fear and shame. Peter denying Jesus three times, one of their own, Judas. being part of that process, and now dead as well. I mean, I can't imagine the level of fear and tribulation and stress that they're feeling. Even when they see the resurrected Lord, they don't know what to do with it or how to process it. So they lock themselves in a room. And this is really interesting. In John 20, it talks about the apostles literally locking themselves in a room from the inside. And I don't know about you, but there's been a lot of times in my life where that has felt like the safest course of action. We were talking about this pre the podcast.

(13:53-13:56) Jennifer Thomas: I think both physically and sometimes spiritually, right?

(13:56-13:57) Chad Ford: Yeah.

(13:57-13:58) Jennifer Thomas: I'm locking myself in, right?

(13:58-15:01) Chad Ford: Yeah. We both get a little social anxiety. We're not the normal types that come and do podcasts and speak with each other, and I think both of us at times would prefer to be up in the mountains in a cozy cottage with no other people around. That's how we feel peace. And books. And books, yeah. And so being out here is scary, right? We want to be locked in a room. And Jesus appears to them in the middle of the room, and he says to them, Shalom. You know, one translation, the literal English translation is, hello. But shalom also means peace. And then he tells them again, peace. And then he says, as God has sent me out into the world, so now he sends you. Now think about a terrifying message. Where they're at in the moment right now, as God has sent me into the world, so now he sends you.

(15:01-15:09) Jennifer Thomas: And how did that end for him? I mean, you absolutely have to inhabit a space where, okay.

(15:11-17:26) Chad Ford: And exactly what they did next was, no thank you. They went to Galilee. They went back to fishing. And I don't blame them. All of us, after we see the world around us, we just want to get back to fishing. I just want to get back to being normal. I just want to live my life, raise my kids, retire, feel happiness. I don't want all this crap that's happening around me. And, you know, when you see Elder Holland, he talks about this in one of his general conference talks about this sort of moment. He frames it in a really interesting way. Elder Holland reading into the subtext says, well, look, Jesus is resurrected. We're going to be resurrected. He saved us all. The ministry is over. That's not what Jesus said in the locked room, by the way, but we're going back a fishing. And so when Jesus appears to them a second time on the shores of Galilee, He has this other painful conversation again with Peter, of all people. Do you love these fish more than you love me, Peter? And Peter is slightly offended by the question, right? Of course, Lord, you know I love these more than you, than feed my lambs. Not once, not twice to Peter, three times. And notice what he doesn't say to Peter. Kill my lambs. Arm my lambs. Go avenge my death. Build up an army to punish the Romans or the Jews or whoever you want to blame for my assassination. He doesn't say any of that. Feeding implies uplifting, nourishing, like giving something back. It's an amazing speech by Jesus. But we know in Acts 1, they don't go. They stay in Galilee again, and an angel has to come down again to the apostles and tells them, why are you looking up at the sky? And I think about, I do that too. Jesus' second coming will end it. He didn't end it the first time, but he will end it in the second coming, all the bad people.

(17:26-17:33) Jennifer Thomas: And again, it'll be all him. All him. It's no requirement on our part to do any work or to prepare for that. It's just, he's going to come fix it all.

(17:33-18:30) Chad Ford: Yeah, all him. He'll do it. I'm sure that second coming's happening anytime. We'll just kind of wait around and look up at the sky, maybe do some prayers. And the thing that I love about what happens next in Acts is, This time they go, not with swords, not with anger, not with animosity, I'm sure some fear, but they go into the world, they change the world, they preach the gospel to their enemies, and we get Christianity, and they all die doing it. They all give their lives to this amazing call. And to me, it is profoundly relevant to our day and age right now, where we want to lock ourselves in a room, where we want to look up at the sky.

(18:31-18:32) Jennifer Thomas: Or we want to look up into the sky.

(18:32-18:59) Chad Ford: Look at the sky, or like maybe Peter a little bit before that, when Jesus is arrested, pull out that sword and take off the ear. Like all those very human, approaches to conflict, those very fears that come, I'm inadequate, I'm scared, I don't know how to do this, somebody else can do it better than me, all of those things that I think were very real for a group of fishermen are relevant to us today.

(18:59-21:17) Jennifer Thomas: So last Wednesday, I was in D.C., and I was sitting with a group of people. And we had, you know, been through a rough day as we tried to all do, kind of manage conflict from afar, away from our organizations. And one of the things that I had said to people at the dinner table was, I am feeling, one of the things that I am struggling with most right now is just this feeling of deep disorientation. I thought I knew how things were going to go. They haven't gone that way, whether it's my country or just lots of things. I just feel like what I felt was so sure 20 years ago, doesn't feel very sure now. So I am again very much identifying with these poor apostles, right, who sort of had a set of expectations. That's what we do, we build up expectations. And they feel like not only were those expectations not met, but they were given a much more challenging task than they anticipated. It was that they were, instead of like getting an immediate reward, they got a job. And ultimately that job became transformational for them, which is the reward, but I guess what I want to say is I think it's fair and natural that you, I, anyone in this room is facing not only a life where there are really nothing's meeting our expectations. We don't know how to find our feet. And we live in an environment where, so that's productive of fear. And then we're surrounded by kind of things that are outside of our control. Truly, honestly, agents of darkness that are pushing that fear at us, either through social media or other sources. So they're trying to generate fear. That fear, in turn, is productive of violence and even more fear. And I think, so I want to ask you, this is another hard question. Look at me, I'm coming at you with all the hard ones. Talk to all of us in this room tonight and tell us what are some strategies, I think you offered the night by starting, or started off the night off by offering a really lovely one, what are some actual, whether spiritual or just strategies that we can use to manage our fear? And to become, to be able to do what those apostles did, move beyond our fear, move out into the world, heed the call that Christ has extended to us, and just be transformed in that process, because I believe that's possible.

(21:17-23:32) Chad Ford: Yeah. One of the things I love about our brothers, the Buddhists, is they have a tool that I think is actually really, really helpful there. In fact, people have done brain scans about Buddhists that are meditating and some of the work that they're doing, and you can see that the fear receptors in their brain are not lit up. but these other types of receptors that allow us to be creative, collaborative, to feel joy and happiness are lit up in major ways. And it actually starts in a paradoxical sense. I have to accept that suffering is part of life. that difference is part of life, that conflict is normal. It is meant to be part of our mortal experience. And so when fear or suffering or pain or conflict land in my hand, the first reaction shouldn't be… It's always to grip them. Is to grip or to run, right? Is to fight or to flight instead of to sit with it for a minute and accept that this is where we're at. This is part of our mortal existence, and I dare to say it's part of our eternal existence, that these are parts of life. And when I accept those things, there's actually something really dramatic that starts to happen in my brain. I quit resisting them. I quit trying to figure out how to squash it, how to end it, how to push it away. I quit trying to find a way out of the cycle of suffering or pain or conflict. And then I have to start to say, what am I going to do about it? But as long as I can't accept it, I'm going to find a way out. And I actually find that so much of our bad conflict cycles actually start there. We approach it with conflict avoidance, or we approach it with accommodation. We just give in. Or we take up the sword and say, I've got to get rid of this as quickly as possible. I think as Americans especially, we don't know how to mourn. We don't know how to suffer.

(23:32-23:34) Jennifer Thomas: We are- We are so bad at suffering.

(23:34-23:35) Chad Ford: Yeah.

(23:35-23:38) Jennifer Thomas: And we like would avoid it and inflict it on others in the process, right?

(23:39-23:39) Chad Ford: Yeah.

(23:39-23:42) Jennifer Thomas: Hopefully something we are very, very not equipped to do.

(23:42-25:06) Chad Ford: We're a palliative society that tries to numb it, tries to take it away. And we do it in the sense of this idea that if life is going right, or if my life is righteous, I shouldn't be experiencing pain. it should be smooth sailing for me. Again, read the New Testament. I don't know where we get that out of the New Testament. I don't know where we get that out of the apostles. I don't know where we get a poor Paul. And think about all the things that Paul ends up going through. I don't know how we get that out of the restoration and the Joseph Smith story, and all of the things that Joseph Smith suffers, or the Book of Mormon. And so part of the strategy at first is, can we normalize that conflict itself doesn't necessarily mean contention, and it isn't bad, right? It means that we're different. and thank the Lord that we are. Life would be really, really boring if we were all the same. And because we're different, and if I can accept that, then you being different isn't the threat to me that I think it is, right? Yes, it may cause me some discomfort. Yes, you being different may cause some suffering, and it may cause some pain.

(25:06-25:07) Jennifer Thomas: That's quite a lot of discomfort.

(25:10-28:13) Chad Ford: But that is what it means to be in relationship. That is what it means to be in community, what it means to be connected. And so much of what I hear the chatter online is, we're going to go to war so that the people that we disagree with or so that that difference is wiped out. But I've studied this stuff my whole life. I've worked in these societies. It will continue to purge and purge and purge and purge because there's always something different. And eventually you're going to get to the couple who decides that they're going to divorce because one likes Netflix and the other likes HBO Max. There will always be something. that will point to difference. And so accepting that, I actually think, is really powerful. And a lot of the work that I do with my clients at first is just saying, OK, I'm sorry, but now this is life. This is the reality of being married. This is the reality of having children. This is definitely the reality of raising teenagers. This is the reality of living in a pluralistic society. This is the reality of belonging to a church where our words are composed of people who live in a geographic area, and we don't get to pick our pastors, which means I'm gonna be sitting next to people all the time who are attending church for different reasons, and it's okay. It's okay. And then the second thing that I find that helps with fear is here are some tools to actually navigate that conflict better. Right? Once I can accept it, here are some strategies around navigating that better. And again, I think we want it to be natural. I think we want it to just flow through us. It wasn't natural for Peter. It wasn't natural for the apostles. It wasn't natural for the early Latter-day Saints. It's not actually natural for prophets. It is a skill that we build with time and energy, just like if we were learning to play the piano, or just like we were learning to be a chef, or an artist, or an athlete, or what have you. And so when Jesus calls us to be peacemakers, The other thing is, I can't just expect Jesus to give me 20 years worth of skill sets to do it. He can change my heart, and that's huge, right? But there's more work to be done. It's an actual skill set. And as Latter-day Saints especially, and as Christians, we should be leaning into that. We should be learning, we should be training, we should be preparing. That's what Martin Luther King did with his congregations, that's what the Mennonites have been doing for centuries with their congregations, the Quakers have been doing this, the Catholics often do a lot of work of this as well. Yes, it's an attitude, yes, it's a way of being, but it is also a skill set, and it's something that we just need to lean into.

(28:14-31:44) Jennifer Thomas: So I shared this with some of my MWEG friends, but I have always been struck. There was an experience in 2015, and maybe some of you remember it, where there are a couple of US airmen on a train in France. And someone entered the train with a machine gun to sort of execute a terrorist attack. And these two airmen stopped it. They tackled the person and took him down and really saved literally probably 100 lives. And it was at great peril to them. It was a really risky thing that they did. They charged him face on while he was trying to shoot them and he just wasn't able to do it. So they weren't running at his back or anything. And I thought a lot about that in the last couple of weeks, particularly in the last week. And I thought a lot about how all of the news that followed up, there were lots of stories that followed up. that talked about the fact that heroism is not innate to very many people. Some people it is. But most of us, and these men talked about the same thing, they had been trained. They had long ago made a decision about how they were going to act. And they just, they didn't even have time to decide. They just turned to each other and like, we're doing this. And there was a high level of trust between them. And so they went. And I've thought about that. That's a story of violence, so I'm sorry. But I have thought about it in the last week in terms of peacemaking, that when a threat comes at us, it is too late in that moment to actually become a master peacemaker. I can't. Even if my heart is pure and I desire goodness in the situation, I might be able to mitigate it a little bit. But the only way I am going to be heroically effective is if I have done the training, if I have prepared myself, if I have put a lot of thought in my heart as to how I'm going to act in that moment. And what I loved about that story is they had someone they were doing it with. And for me, that has been sort of the pattern to having an antidote. It's been the antidote to fear in terms of approaching peace. I would like to pivot, if you don't mind, and ask a question that is a little bit hard, and it breaks my heart a little bit, both in terms of the message of Christ. You talked about the fact that he brought this very difficult message multiple times to his disciples about peace, and they repeatedly ignored it. They just couldn't comprehend it. And I feel like I'm watching, particularly my own culture and faith community, to some degree, that pattern being repeated. We have a very, very unique situation where we have escalating violence and escalating tension, but we have a prophet who has been repeatedly calling for peace. He's been inviting us now for years to train ourselves up in the way and be peacemakers. But a lot of people just push back. And honestly, like they did in the time of Christ, they just say, no, I can't do that. Why do you think there's so much resistance to these calls, even when there should be a relationship of trust? The disciples had followed Christ for years, and yet they just resisted. Many of us would say that we believe President Nelson is a prophet, and yet we resist a call to peacemaking and sometimes react with violence. Why is that? Talk to us about it. How can we get better?

(31:46-39:13) Chad Ford: As an LDS peacebuilder who started a peacebuilding program at BYU-Hawaii and literally had protests on campus the first day of class and had to fight for two years to actually get the program off the ground, I know these battles well. And I have to admit, I'm a convert to the church. I didn't grow up in Utah. I didn't grow up around the culture. And so a lot of it baffled me. Maybe that was what made me open to a lot of this in the first place, was that I didn't carry with me some trauma. And let's just face it, as Latter-day Saints, we have a lot of trauma in our history. We have a lot of attempts of trying to just be ourselves, settle down, create our own communities, and those were met with threat and violence. There are so many painful stories that we tell and retell, that we read in our sacred scriptures, both in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, that are, I think, feel very present. We also live in a state where many of the people who settled this state fled that violence, right? It's their family history. It's their family history, only to watch that violence follow them here, right? And I think we have to take that, first of all, very seriously. I work in Israel-Palestine a lot, and the trauma is real. The trauma for the Israelis, and what happened in the Holocaust, and what has happened in lots of other previous historical events for Jews, plays a significant factor in their responses and how they react to the Palestinians. It also turns out that Palestinian trauma also plays a significant factor in how Palestinians respond to Israelis. And when we want to talk about politics or what people should do and we want to ignore the fact that these human beings have this history very, very close to them, a history that's repeated again and again. If you're Israeli, you will go visit a Holocaust camp as part of a high school journey. You're going to visit it. You will likely have a safe room built into your house that you're trained to use. The trauma comes in at a really, really young age. So let's just say that In defense of Peter and James and Thomas, there are a lot of trauma, Roman trauma, right? Pharisee trauma that came into their life, watching Jesus murdered. And I don't want to discount for a minute, all of us are carrying with us some of that. And so that trauma leads us to a very defensive position where safety and protection are so primary to us and our stories that when we hear calls for peacemaking, it feels weak. And it actually feels like it's putting us in a less safe tradition. And I just want, that's a very human factor. And when I hear people, and trust me, I get this week, I get some really sometimes troubling messages coming at me. I can do some double listening and hear what I hear on the other end of that is fear, right? Fear and trauma and seeing the world crumble around them or the world that they want the world to be not looking that way and wanting to just control it and get it under control and feeling like that's what Jesus would want for them too. And so I can reject that. I think that's one thing, but I think there's another thing that we have a tendency to do as Latter-day Saints. And that's that we tend to look at the Old Testament a lot of times in the same way that Jesus' apostles did, the same way that the crowd in Nazareth did when they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff. And what they see is a pattern of a vengeful God that destroys enemies, and prophets that preach hellfire and damnation, and refer to that as the good old days. right? The good old days when it was God was on our side. Yeah, when God was on our side, it was clear who was good and who was evil. God didn't really suffer fools in those sorts of situations, and life was more black and white. right, as I look at the scripture that way, and there's a sense of safety in that, right? To know who my enemy is, to be able to identify it, to be comfortable speaking that into the universe. Jesus messes all that up. In a really real sense, he is messing that up, and I don't think we've ever, as Christians, completely come to terms with it. And one way that I look at the Old Testament prophets that I think is helpful sometimes is with some of them, like Isaiah, for example, or Amos. Amos was a fire, was a flamethrower. I mean, read Amos, those first few chapters of Amos, it's like, wow. Right? And I know that there are people, Latter-day Saints included, who look at, boy, I wish we had Amos as the prophet today. He would tell us exactly who to go and who to attack and who to hate. But there's something strange that happens with those prophets, which is that they change. And the Amos that we find in the first eight chapters of Amos is not the Amos that we find in the ninth. And the Isaiah that we find in some of the early chapters of Isaiah is a little different than the Isaiah that we find that Jesus quotes in Isaiah 61. It turns out in the Old Testament, prophets often got called pretty young. They were young men. I think they had a lot of testosterone surging through their veins. I think like a lot of young men, they looked at the best way to go about dealing with evil in the world is to kill it, right? But they become old men. And because they become old men and because they become prophets, God does something to their hearts as well. Amos 9 may be one of the most beautiful passages of scripture that exists in scripture, and it's the same guy that was throwing fiery darts before. And so when Jesus says that he comes to fulfill the prophets, I think that he understood that the prophets got it eventually, right? God is the reconciler, not the divider. God has not come to punish, he has come to heal. God is inviting us back into his arms. He is not closing the doors of heaven as Jesus scolds the Pharisees, right? And if you read the prophets carefully, even the Old Testament prophets, you'll see this shift that happens. I actually think it's part of the wisdom of Latter-day Saints having old prophets. Thank goodness we don't have 20-year-old prophets and 18-year-old prophets. A lot of heads nodding over here right now. There's a lot of life experience that it sometimes takes to understand that the safest way, my greatest protection, is actually love, not hate.

(39:14-40:08) Jennifer Thomas: So I love the idea that probably what we should do is allow even our prophets to grow, right? And I'm old enough, I'm an old person, to remember when Ezra Taft Benson was called. And there was a lot of anxiety because there were a lot of people who were worried they were going to get an angry, vengeful prophet, honestly. And he was not that. And I think, he was himself, but I think we have to let people grow and change. And I love the idea that that's possible for all of us too, that we can start out in that place of kind of fighting it and disagreeing with it and saying it isn't possible. And then if we, again, do that thing that we talked about at the very beginning, where we agree to walk with Christ, then we can kind of experience the transformation and be the vehicle for transformation of those around us, right?

(40:09-41:22) Chad Ford: And so President Nelson really does make our life complicated when he calls us to be peacemakers. And sometimes when I'm already in fear, having that clear black and white is one of the things that makes me feel a little safer because I know who to blame. I know who I need to change. I know who I need to protect myself against. And Jesus has called a vulnerability to opening up our arms towards the people that have hurt us. It does come with cost. It comes with risk. I can't promise you that you won't be hurt or taken advantage of. I can't promise you that the enemy will not respond to your peacemaking as weakness and attack. I can't actually promise you any of those things. Jesus doesn't promise us that sort of peace. But I think it's actually very clear in the scriptures what the other thing will give us. What violence will beget? What throwing stones will invite back? One way has almost a 0% chance of reconciliation and peace. And what I like to tell other people, the other way has a greater than 0% chance.

(41:22-42:05) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, it's always been stunning to me that it makes perfect intuitive sense to us that I will go to give my life to fight a war, but I would not go to give my life to bring a peace. And I don't know why that is. People willing to say, I will fight and harm myself in the process and also die, or I will work to bring peace and potentially be harmed in the process but transform my soul, right? And potentially transform the environment around them. And we just frame it in such weird ways. We cannot accept that one seems like an act of valor, and the other seems like an act of abdication and letting go, and I don't know why that is.

(42:05-42:39) Chad Ford: Well, when Jesus says, blessed be the meek, When I was writing my book, I thought I knew what meek meant, but when I looked up the Greek term for that, it was actually a really moving moment for me. I can actually remember it quite vividly. Meek means having the power to force or control and not using it. which I actually think is a hard thing to do.

(42:39-42:44) Jennifer Thomas: So it's not that you're a nothing, it's that you choose.

(42:45-43:26) Chad Ford: I choose to not force. I have the ability to do it, but I choose not to. And as a parent to six teenage daughters, my next book, by the way, will be entitled, You Suck At It. The story of a conflict mediator who tried to raise six teenage daughters. I wrestle with that temptation every day. I control your food, your money, your phone access. I have all of this power. and the temptation to use it is delicious, right? Like all of the time.

(43:26-43:27) Jennifer Thomas: And you can even argue that it's protective.

(43:28-43:28) Chad Ford: Yeah.

(43:28-43:31) Jennifer Thomas: You can even argue that you're doing this to make their life better.

(43:34-46:46) Chad Ford: I run around dreaming about all the things that I really wish that I had said or that I was going to do. But that makes me question the interiority of my own heart. I study this stuff for a living, and I teach it. And I actually understand why people choose war, because sometimes so do I. Even when I know better, even when it cuts against every moral value that I care about, the beat of war, I still hear it. in my heart, I understand the siren call to it. And so when somebody chooses war over peace, it's hard for me to put myself in a judgmental position because I'm like, you haven't spent 25 years studying peace. You haven't actually seen the problems of war and still chosen war like I have. And so there's a lot of grace that goes out to me. for people who are making these choices, because I see it reflected in my own soul. And one of the things I love about Jesus is he always is asking for that change to come inside, outside. And that moment and the Last Supper, when he announces that the apostles have betrayed him, and each of the apostles goes around the table and says, is it I? That moves me, and it moves me because that is the fundamental peacemaking move. is in those moments with the drums beating, in those moments where my adrenaline is pumping, in those moments where I want to hate, where I want to fight back, when I want to force, and I want to blame, and think that my conflict will go away when others go away or stop doing, to take that pause and say, is it I? And recognize that the single most powerful tool that I have for peacemaking is to change my input into the system, my input into the relationship, my input into the social media sphere, my input into the community. And one of the reasons I'm here tonight is just how much I respect and honor MWAG for changing their input into the system. bringing together people and changing the ways that people on the blue side and the red side talk to each other, work together and collaborate together, that they go to systems of power and change their inputs into the system. You are, to me, an example of what we all need to be. And we need to be it together. And that's the other thing I love, is you have a sangha, you have a community. You're not doing it alone. It's not the Jen Thomas show. It's not the Emma Adams show. It is a community that has decided that they're going to change their input into the system. That's how we make peace.

(46:47-47:34) Jennifer Thomas: I love this. Let me ask you a straightforward question. What feels like the most urgent message of Jesus' peacemaking for Christians right now? We're in a situation where people are increasingly using his name as a justification for war and violence and hatred. So it feels like there's multiple ways that we need to kind of change to meet this moment. What can we do? How do we do that change? How do we meet the moment? If we really and truly want to be a disciple of Christ, how do we meet that moment?

(47:34-49:45) Chad Ford: Join MWAG. No, and I mean that, and I'm glad there's a few cheers out there. If MWAG's not your jam, find a group of people that are changing their input into the system. Recognize, as President Nelson has reminded us, peace is possible. And it is up to us. I think I've heard from you as sometimes quit waiting for the cavalry. We are the cavalry. We have to quit waiting around for our leaders to change this or for our institutions to just magically overnight change it. We have to change our input into the system. And two lines from Jesus that I think are really important. One of the reasons I named the book 70 x 7, we can't expect this to happen overnight. We have to do it until it's done. We have to join this movement, not expecting that overnight everything is changing. In fact, things may get worse. Things are likely going to get worse before they get better. And working with Israelis and Palestinians on the ground for 20 years and watching them put their families at risk, their lives at risk, watching them having to go through multiple wars, and seeing them show up every day. I don't know how sometimes, but they show up every day because they are not giving up until it is done, right? That to me is the essence of Jesus's message to us individually. He's not giving up on us until it's done. And we can't give up on each other until it's done. And how do we know that we're on his team? We love others exactly the way that he loves us, right? He does not give up on us, so we don't give up on each other.

(49:47-52:08) Jennifer Thomas: I would add to that, I think we need to not give up on ourselves. I was asked recently in a conversation, how I was finding the will or the hope to continue to live a life or run an organization dedicated to peacemaking when all of the evidence around us indicated that things were getting worse, not better. That it didn't seem like my inputs were achieving the output that was desired. The answer that I was able to give, which is first, that I do believe very sincerely and deeply that that promise of peace is sure, for collectively. I may not see it in the moment. I do have deep, profound belief that I can help make it sure for someone else. But the one thing that I have seen in myself in this process is that even as the world around me has gotten worse, in direct correlation to my commitment to following a disciple's path, I have gotten better. And that is so counterintuitive. And I think if I hadn't kind of started down this path and said, this is how I'm going to frame my life, and this is what I'm going to kind of dedicate myself to, Not only would I have not been able to control the world, but I would have gotten worse. It would have led me to worse things and to being a worse person. Does that make sense? And so to me, I am so, so, so grateful for the charge that Christ has given us to be a peacemaker because it just truly is I think sometimes Peter and sometimes people in fear, the way we've talked about, see that as a manifestation that Christ is not actually understanding their problems and not actually caring for them as deeply as they want to be cared for because they want it to be fixed. But what I see is that Him caring about us so deeply. that he's saying, no, I want you to be me. And this is the only way. The only way out is through. And so I'm inviting you into this place of safety and growth and transcendence. But it's your choice. And it's not going to always be easy. That's not a question.

(52:09-52:13) Chad Ford: It's a beautiful, a beautiful way to end this podcast, actually.

(52:13-52:33) Jennifer Thomas: I'm going to ask one thing. I think a lot of us feel caught, caught between fear and faith, caught between anger and peace. So what's one small thing? Let's each of us share maybe one small thing that we think people could do to move towards peacemaking.

(52:37-53:15) Chad Ford: So I teach a religious studies class at Utah State right now, and today we were studying Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who developed the form of Buddhism called engaged Buddhism. And I don't know how familiar everyone is with Buddhism here, but the goal of Buddhism is to end suffering. right? And nirvana is the sort of extinguishing of that suffering, and for years, much of the Buddha, not all, but much of the Buddhist tradition, that was a very individual pursuit, right? Like, I individually am working on trying to end

(53:16-53:17) Jennifer Thomas: in my closed-locked room, maybe.

(53:17-56:18) Chad Ford: Yeah, in that closed-locked room. And Thich Nhat Hanh, who was in Vietnam and witnessed the horrors of the Vietnam War and ended up being exiled from his own country and started something, the Plum Village in France, something that I thought was really interesting in his teaching was, if the goal is to end suffering, If I'm a true Buddhist, then that ending of suffering extends beyond me to my brothers and sisters as well, that I should be engaged. in ending the cycle, not just for me, but for others. And so he has this line that I actually thought about today when I was confronted with some anger directed towards me. When someone is angry at you, he says, do not be angry back at them. Recognize their suffering. Right? See through the anger and recognize the suffering. Let it permeate you. Let it sit with you no matter how uncomfortable that is, that suffering. And then offer and work to alleviate that suffering. It changed an angry message for me overnight. I suddenly saw the human writing the message. I suddenly started to be able to open my heart up to the immense suffering that they were feeling. And instead of a retort or forward this to campus authorities or whatever, my heart was filled with, brother, I'm suffering too. How do I help alleviate that suffering? If we could hear that in our enemy's words, if we could hear that in whoever it is that we feel opposed to us right now, if we could sense and hear their suffering, Jesus was a master at this. and then offer whatever that sense is from the Holy Ghost to alleviate that. I find that those senses will come quickly because God is interested in that, that He uses us to answer those sorts of prayers, and that it can open up our hearts and our world to people that we were just absolutely closed up to before. So I guess today, something very fresh with me right now is feel the suffering. And then don't try to extend that suffering. Don't feel joy that they're suffering. Actually, what can I do to alleviate that? I love that.

(56:21-57:35) Jennifer Thomas: Mine will be shorter. I would encourage anyone who feels caught in this place to find probably a new copy maybe of the New Testament. and spend a lot of time in the Gospels, just in those books, and spend time with Jesus, living his mortal experience, forced to deal with tensions and conflict and pain and hunger and That has been so helpful to me recently. I've gone back to that and I just think, and the question I keep asking myself over and over again is, I believe in him, but do I really believe him? Do I really believe that what he is saying here is a way that I can pattern my life? And every time I make a baby step to try, I feel such a strong witness that it is, that it is something I can believe, and it is something that I can act on, and that it will be transformative. And sometimes I think it will be transformative in ways that are absolutely beyond our vision. So that's what I would encourage people to do. Spend time with the living Christ.

(57:36-58:16) Chad Ford: And if you want a new version of the New Testament to read, my favorite is, I was reading 70 times 7, I read several versions, but my favorite by far was called The Message by Eugene Peterson. He's a poet and it brings the New Testament to life in a way. that I've never quite read it before. It brought me to tears a number of times, even though I was familiar with the passages in the past, to have a poet kind of take that language from the Greek and put it through the lens of a poet again. So if you need a moment to read Jesus Anew, pick up a copy of The Message by Eugene Peterson. It is a beautiful translation of the entire Bible.

(58:17-58:40) Jennifer Thomas: Hey, Chad, thank you for being with us tonight. I always feel very grateful any time I get to spend time in your presence. You are both gifted in your peacemaking, and it comes off of you. I can feel it in your presence, and it always makes me want to be a better person. So thank you. Thanks for being with us.

(58:40-58:48) Chad Ford: Thanks for having me and thanks for being here to the audience tonight and everybody online as well. It took some courage to be here tonight.

(58:48-58:50) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, it did. So thanks for joining us. We loved having you here.

(58:54-59:13) Patrick Mason: Thanks everybody for listening today. We really appreciate it. We just want to invite you to subscribe to the podcast and also to rate and review it. We love hearing feedback from listeners, so please email us at podcast at mweg.org. We also want to invite you to think about ways that you can make peace in your life this week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

(59:18-59:34) Jennifer Thomas: Thank you for listening to Proclaim Peace, a proud member of the Faith Matters Podcast Network. Faith Matters holds expansive conversations about the restored gospel to accompany individuals on their journey of faith. You can learn more about Faith Matters and check out our other shows at faithmatters.org.