Mercy and Truth are met together; Justice and Peace have kissed each other.

—PSALM 85:10

In the early days of South Africa’s powerful transition from an apartheid state to a democracy, Bishop Desmond Tutu had a vision that would forever change the history of South Africa.

Nelson Mandela had just won the presidency, but his ability to rule was still in question. Blacks everywhere were demanding justice for years of human rights abuses. Whites—both Afrikaners and English—were defensive and contemplated everything from violent revolution to fleeing the country.

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word that roughly translates to “apartness.” From 1948 until 1994, under apartheid, black and mixed-race South Africans, who made up the overwhelming majority of South African citizens, were denied basic political, economic, and social rights.

After apartheid was dismantled, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), under the guidance of Tutu, invited victims of apartheid to come forward and tell their stories. The people who had harmed them or their families were offered amnesty if they would come forward, give a full confession, and state that their actions were politically motivated.

Many thought the TRC would lead to more pain, more separation, and more anger. But Tutu believed showing dangerous love to his enemies, including F. W. de Klerk, the former president of South Africa, was the only sustainable path to reconciliation for the people of South Africa.

“You see, we can’t go to heaven alone,” Tutu once said. “If I arrive there, God will ask me: ‘Where is De Klerk? His path crossed yours.’ And . . . God will ask him: ‘Where is Tutu?’”¹

Tutu realized that any sort of reconciliation process couldn’t be one-sided. It couldn’t weigh justice more than mercy. It needed to unite, not divide. What was needed was something that redeemed everyone, victim and victimizer.

Tutu then dug deep—back to a traditional African belief in something called ubuntu or botho.

Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. . . . You are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.” We belong in a bundle of life. We say, “A person is a person through other persons.”²

At the core of ubuntu was this idea that each human being is a link in the larger chain of humanity. As we deny the humanity of others, those links become broken. The chain falls apart. We believe, falsely, that our link is the chain.

Ubuntu’s central concern is “the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator.”³ Ubuntu is the reconnection of the links that bind us together as people. We cannot be truly, fully human until we are reconciled, ubuntu implores us. And being human—fully human—is the only path to reconciliation and sustainable peace.

Tutu took that dream and the idea of ubuntu and created a TRC that would invite people to share their narratives—not the blaming, self-deceived ones but the truthful ones about who we really are. The TRC invited those who were wronged to forgive and let go of the anger that had scarred their hearts. It created a form of restorative justice that didn’t seek revenge but sought to redress the wrongs that created the breach. And it envisioned a new sort of relationship between blacks and whites in South Africa centered on the idea that we are all connected and that the victory South Africa must achieve is a victory for everyone—black and white, victim and perpetrator.

In short, it insisted that the only path to peace was to see and embrace the humanity of one another. It was dangerous love at its very finest.

“Am I seeing someone as a person if I don’t want anything to do with that person anymore?” is the most challenging question I get asked in my work. It comes up almost weekly.

The idea behind the question, I think, is this: “I recognize she is a person. I recognize that I contributed to the conflict. I no longer hold anything against her. I wish her well. But do I have to be friends with her? Do I have to be in relationship with her again? I’m just not interested in that. Can’t we just go our separate ways?”

Certainly, given everything we’ve discussed, the answer, on the surface, appears to be yes. I can be your roommate or neighbor or partner and see you as an object. And I can choose to not be your roommate, neighbor, or partner and see you as a person. In fact, in situations where abuse has occurred and could occur again, creating boundaries seems especially wise.

But physical distance and emotional distance are two very different things. I can be deeply connected to people whom I rarely see or interact with and deeply disconnected from people who live under the same roof that I do.

If it’s a question of physical distance (which, in my opinion, it rarely is) then yes, I believe it’s possible to still see people as people and be far away from them. I can move out and still see someone as a person. I can get a divorce and still care for that person. Seeing people as people doesn’t proscribe a particular type of relationship with them.

But if we’re seeking emotional distance, I’m not so sure. We’ve discussed what happens after you see people as people, about how we become alive to their humanity, their needs, and desires and feel a sense of helpfulness toward them. Seeing another as a person means I have an active, caring concern for that person and implies a level of connection that appears to be more involved than allowed by the distance many are after.

Remember, dangerous love allows us to see the humanity of another person so clearly that the other’s needs and desires matter as much to me as my own. It’s the sort of love that engenders empathy, respect, and ultimately trust in a way that illuminates a path toward reconciliation. Dangerous love is about us-preservation.

Dangerous love transcends fear. It transforms conflict by calling upon us to let go of self-concern (“What will happen to me if l let down my walls and help the person I’m in conflict with?”) and embrace us-concern (“What will happen to us if I don’t?).

I suspect that the reason the question “Am I seeing someone as a person if I don’t want anything to do with that person anymore?” gets asked as much as it does is because somehow the process of conflict transformation can feel incomplete if it doesn’t lead to action. It doesn’t feel like dangerous love.

I can see you as a person. I can quit blaming. I can end collusions. But conflict is ultimately transformed when we are reconciled.

Changing the way we see another person is hard. Even harder is to then act upon that change and have the courage to treat someone we’ve been seeing as an It differently.

Conflict transformation takes place at the deeper, emotional level of seeing. But true reconciliation digs even deeper to the spiritual and consciousness level. What is happening is hard to quantify in a mathematical formula.

Reconciliation, writes John Paul Lederach, is the point where acknowledgment and forgiveness, justice and mercy, and security and peace meet. Reconciliation creates a space where the present can be reframed to encompass the pain of the past alongside the hope of the future:

First, in an overall sense, reconciliation promotes an encounter between the open expression of the painful past, on the one hand, and the search for the articulation of a long-term, interdependent future, on the other hand. Second, reconciliation provides a place for truth and mercy to meet, where concerns for exposing what has happened and for letting go in favor of renewed relationship are validated and embraced. Third, reconciliation recognizes the need to give time and place to both justice and peace, where redressing the wrong is held together with the envisioning of a common, connected future.⁴

Lederach highlights four principles—truth, mercy, justice, and peace—as major components of any reconciliation process. These elements of reconciliation lie at the core of dangerous love. They explain what we can do after we turn first.

These four strands of reconciliation allow us to move from “I see this person as a person now but don’t want to have anything to do with her” to “I am connected to this person and seek to strengthen my commitment to seeing her as a person in the future.”

Without reconciliation, we are doomed to repeat the past. With reconciliation, we learn from the past in a way that helps us build a brighter future together.

The next two chapters dive deeper into how truth, mercy, justice, and peace help us. Make the most dangerous move.