Rev Dr Sam Wells - 24/09/2026

Available for over a year

There’s a scene in the 1973 film The Sting where two hustlers are licking their wounds after losing a poker game. One whispers, ‘We can’t let him get away with that’; the other replies, ‘What was I supposed to do, call him for cheating better than me?’ I recalled this remark while reading about this week’s UN General Assembly. It’s had its usual parade of impassioned speeches, furious walkouts, threats, finger-pointing, and corridor confrontations. All of which raise the question at the heart of the United Nations: how do we find a way to make a relationship with those for whom we have no respect or trust; where there’s no common ground? We live in an age of denouncing and cancelling. The contemporary wisdom on those with whom we disagree is to wash our hands of them. But the UN’s based on a different philosophy. It says, ‘If you’ve given into hatred, if your language is coarse and hostile, you’ve allowed your adversary to colonise your head. You’ve let them win.’ So the first principle is always to maintain courtesy. Next is empathy. It’s hard, but the breakthrough moment in making some kind of relationship is to begin to understand the other person’s point of view – even to realise you actually want or need to learn something from them. That’s the journey from tolerance to respect. But there’s a further lesson, one modelled by the Nobel Peace Laureate Juan-Manuel Santos. In explaining his dialogue with the Farc guerillas in Colombia, Santos cited the example of former Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin. While working on the Oslo peace accords with the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Rabin said, ‘We must fight terrorism as if there’s no peace process, and work to achieve peace as if there’s no terror.’ What Santos meant was, sometimes you need to both fight and talk at the same time if you want peace. This sounds like a contradiction. The clue to it lies in Santos’ commitment to see the guerillas as human beings, and to recognise them not as deadly enemies, but simply as adversaries, with real needs and convictions. One of Jesus’ most complex sayings is, ‘Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.’ Recall that in the Garden of Eden the serpent is the source of evil; while the dove is the symbol of the Holy Spirit who brings life even through death. These words about wisdom and innocence dismantle both naïveté and cynicism. Jesus is saying, no situation is without a shadow side; but neither is it beyond redemption. Making peace is about courtesy, curiosity and complexity, whether in international relations – or closer to home.