In October 2023, I found myself in a bomb shelter in Jerusalem with Israeli, Palestinian, and US American friends and partners.
Just moments earlier, we’d been talking about righteous disagreement: the kind that doesn’t require us to abandon our convictions or diminish those with whom we disagree, but invites us to move through our differences toward a fuller understanding.
Then the bombs began to drop.
We sprinted for shelter. Amid the terror and uncertainty, my Palestinian brother reached out and grabbed my hand and the hand of our rabbi brother. Holding both of us, he said:
“This is what happens when righteous disagreement breaks down. When will we stop reaching for power and start reaching for one another?”
We were an uncommon friendship, shaped by different histories, identities, and traditions. Over time, we’d become brothers. In that moment, we held one another’s hands while the world outside reminded us what happens when the pursuit of power overwhelms our capacity to recognize one another’s humanity.
His question remains urgent as we live through a crisis of power.
Everywhere we look, people are reaching for it. Political power. Economic power. Cultural power. Religious power. The power to control the narrative, silence the opposition, and make the world conform to our vision.
Of course, power matters. Injustice is real. Those denied a voice deserve the power to shape their futures. Those who cause harm must be held accountable.
But what happens when winning becomes more important than understanding? When domination becomes more appealing than relationship? When defeating opponents matters more than repairing what’s broken between us?
What if the hopeful alternative begins when we stop reaching for power as our primary answer to disagreement or dissatisfaction and start reaching for one another?
That possibility requires deeper formation and more uncommon relationships.
We’ve become skilled at identifying what’s wrong with the world and underprepared to remain in relationship with the people we believe are responsible.
We know how to argue our positions, defend our identities, and mobilize our constituencies. But where are we learning to listen when challenged, speak truth without dehumanizing, and remain open to being changed without abandoning what we believe is right?
This formation begins with an honest examination of ourselves. What happens inside us when we feel threatened, dismissed, or powerless? What fears, wounds, and insecurities cause us to reach for control rather than connection, force rather than friendship, domination rather than dialogue? When do we confuse being right with being righteous?
The invitation is to confront the ways fear and grievance have shaped us and allow love to form in us a courage that can enter conflict without surrendering our humanity, or anyone else’s.
This is what we see in Jesus. His interior work moved him toward people others avoided, compelled him to confront those exploiting the vulnerable, and gave him courage to tell the truth to people with power. He never shied away from discomfort or dehumanized the person in front of him.
But interior formation alone isn’t enough.
We can’t become people of courageous love in isolation. We need relationships that interrupt our assumptions, expose our blind spots, and stretch our imaginations. We need to practice the very things we hope to become. That means cultivating three kinds of uncommon relationships.
We need uncommon friendships with our ideological others. I’m not referring to relationships built around winning arguments or converting someone. I’m pointing to actual friendships in which we become curious about the stories, experiences, and hopes shaping another person’s convictions. We need not pretend every belief is equally true or every position equally just. But we must refuse to reduce people to the worst idea they hold or the political tribe with which they identify. This kind of friendship makes dehumanization harder.
We need truth-telling relationships with people in power. Elected officials, executives, religious authorities, and institutional leaders need relationships in which they can hear truths they might otherwise avoid. As Palestinian pastor and theologian Munther Isaac reminds us, peacemakers must call things by their names and speak truth to power. We need enough proximity to power to challenge it and enough integrity not to be captured by it.
We need costly solidarity with people in pain. We must move toward people whose experiences differ profoundly from ours across divides of race, class, religion, privilege, sexual orientation, and lived experience. The objective isn’t to rescue or speak for them, but to listen, learn, share risk, and become deployable by those most affected by injustice. Isaac reminds us that solidarity is costly. It asks more than sympathy. It may require risking our comfort, reputation, access, or certainty to stand with people whose pain we might otherwise keep at a distance.
Together, these relationships become an immersive school for the people our world needs us to become. Friendship across difference teaches us to see one another more fully. Truth-telling relationships with power teach us accountability without contempt. Costly solidarity teaches us to move toward suffering rather than protect ourselves from it.
Interior formation gives us the courage to enter these relationships. These relationships reveal where our formation remains incomplete and invite us deeper still.
So here’s the invitation.
Do the interior work. Get curious about the fear, anger, and need for control that cause you to reach for power when what you really need is connection. Let the way of Jesus form in you a love strong enough to hold conviction without making enemies.
Then take that love somewhere.
Build a friendship with someone whose politics or worldview you struggle to understand. Develop a relationship with someone who has the power to change what you can’t change alone, and have the courage to tell the truth. Move toward someone experiencing a pain you have the privilege of keeping at a distance. Listen. Learn. Share the risk. Become interruptible.
Don’t wait for someone else to make the first move. Don’t wait until the other side changes. Don’t wait for your political party to hold the power. And don’t mistake the comfort of agreeing with one another for the hard, holy work of becoming reconciled.
As I learned in that bomb shelter, our world doesn’t need more people reaching for power to get their way. It needs people willing to reach for one another and, in so doing, becoming those who can repair what the abuse of power has broken.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on November 3, 2026 on Hopeful Alternative, a free Substack by Dr. Jer Swigart, co-founder and executive director of Global Immersion. Featuring “provocations for disarming conflict and remaking our world,” Hopeful Alternative invites readers into the everyday work of peacemaking. (Learn more)
