The Courage to Make Peace: Knowing When the Table Needs Flipping

There is a version of peace that Christians have become very good at maintaining.

It looks calm. It sounds gracious. Nobody raises their voice. Nobody says the uncomfortable thing. Nobody asks the question everyone knows is sitting in the middle of the room. We smooth things over, keep our mouths shut, protect reputations, avoid difficult conversations, forgive as quickly as possible, and congratulate ourselves because, thank goodness, at least there wasn’t a fight.

We call dysfunction grace.

We call silence gentleness.

We call avoidance wisdom.

We call protecting appearances “protecting the church.”

And sometimes we are so committed to keeping everyone happy that we never stop to ask whether what we’re keeping is actually peace.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Matthew 5:9

Peacemakers.

Not peacekeepers.

There’s a difference.

A peacekeeper looks at conflict and asks, “How do we make this go away?”

A peacemaker looks at what’s broken and asks, “What needs to happen for this to become whole?”

Sometimes the answers are the same. Wisdom may say to let it go, lower your voice, refuse the argument, forgive, extend grace, and move on. Scripture gives us plenty of reasons to be slow to anger and eager to preserve unity.

But other times, making peace requires having the conversation everyone else has been avoiding. It requires repentance. A boundary. Defending someone who can’t defend themselves. Exposing what’s been hidden, correcting what’s false, or dismantling what’s become unhealthy.

Sometimes making peace causes conflict before it produces healing.

Many of us have been taught to measure peace by how calm the room feels.

But biblical peace is deeper than that.

The prophet Jeremiah spoke to people who had gotten really good at cosmetic peace.

“They dress the wound of My people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”

Jeremiah 6:14

What a devastating picture.

There’s a wound.

It’s serious.

And instead of treating it, they cover it up and announce that everything’s fine.

Thousands of years later, we still know how to do this.

Something is deeply wrong, but addressing it honestly might divide people, so the priority becomes getting everyone to “get along.” Sin is exposed, but instead of repentance, everyone scrambles into damage-control mode. Someone finally finds the courage to speak, and before we even ask whether what they’re saying is true, we ask why they couldn’t have said it more nicely.

Why talk about the gaping wound when we could critique the Band-Aid placement first? And while we’re at it, why can’t it be a different colored Band-Aid?

We’re afraid of division. Scandal. Damaged Reputations. Afraid people will leave. Afraid the ministry will look bad. The family will fall apart. Afraid we’ll look judgmental or unforgiving.

So we protect the appearance of peace at the expense of actual peace.

It’s lipstick on a pig. Except now the pig has a Bible verse in its Instagram bio.

Jeremiah’s warning should unsettle us because God wasn’t impressed by people announcing peace while wounds went untreated. He didn’t praise them for keeping things pleasant. He rebuked them for treating serious wounds lightly.

You can’t heal a wound by demanding that everyone stop acknowledging it exists.

God isn’t interested in cosmetic peace. He wants true healing.

And healing requires honesty.

“Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Peace is something God’s people make. We pursue it. Cultivate it. Build it. Work toward it. We enter broken places carrying the truth and grace of Jesus and ask what faithfulness requires of us there.

That work can be beautiful.

But it can also be deeply uncomfortable.

Peacemaking can look like forgiveness and reconciliation. It can look like swallowing your pride and admitting you were wrong. Listening instead of preparing your rebuttal. Choosing not to retaliate when you have every opportunity to do so.

And peacemaking can look like confrontation (I know someone is clutching their pearls right now).

It can mean establishing a boundary where there has never been one. Bringing darkness into the light. Refusing to laugh along with something cruel. It can mean defending someone vulnerable when doing so costs you social capital. Saying, “No, that actually didn’t happen,” when everyone else would prefer a more convenient version of the story.

We can’t confuse peace with passivity.

There are moments when silence contributes to peace.

But there are also moments when silence only gives dysfunction somewhere cozy to live.

Wisdom is knowing the difference.

The same is true of gentleness. Why have so many Christians absorbed this idea that gentleness means never saying anything that might make another person uncomfortable? Biblical gentleness isn’t cowardice wearing a cardigan.

Jesus was gentle.

Jesus was also remarkably willing to say the hard things.

He confronted hypocrisy, exploitation, self-righteousness, deception, corruption, and unbelief. He didn’t consider love and truth enemies. His compassion didn’t require Him to pretend sin was harmless.

Ours shouldn’t either.

Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

Proverbs 28:13

See where mercy is found?

Not in concealment.

Not in pretending.

Not in everyone agreeing to stop talking about it.

Confession and repentance open the door to mercy. Grace creates a pathway toward restoration; it doesn’t instruct us to lie about what happened. Forgiveness doesn’t force us to call evil good. Mercy doesn’t require the removal of accountability.

And reconciliation can’t be manufactured by forcing a hurt person to pretend everything is okay.

You cannot repent of what everyone has agreed to pretend isn’t happening.

If we want to understand biblical peacemaking, we have to look at Jesus.

Jesus spent A LOT of time at tables.

He sat with sinners. He ate with tax collectors. He welcomed outsiders. He shared meals with people the respectable religious crowd had already written off. His willingness to pull up a chair scandalized people who thought holiness meant distance.

Jesus made room.

The gospel is an invitation to a table we could never earn our way into! Grace welcomes people who are hungry. Jesus pursued people others dismissed, listened to people others ignored, touched people others avoided, and offered mercy to those whose reputations entered the room before they did.

Christians should be known for that kind of hospitality. We should be people who pull up chairs. People who make room. People who are far more interested in introducing sinners to Jesus than collecting evidence that sinners behave like sinners.

But the Jesus who sat at tables also flipped them.

When Jesus entered the temple and found people buying and selling there, exploiting what was meant to be sacred, He didn’t survey the situation and decide that confronting it might create a little too much unnecessary tension.

He responded.

Tables overturned.

Coins scattered.

A Bravo-worthy scene was made.

The place meant for prayer and worship had been corrupted, and Jesus didn’t preserve the atmosphere at the expense of what was sacred.

That gives us a fuller picture of love than the one we usually prefer.

Sometimes love pulls up a chair.

Sometimes love makes room at the table.

And sometimes love flips the table because the table itself has been defiled.

We need enough discernment to know which moment we’re standing in.

Let’s be honest, some of you would’ve told Jesus not to flip the tables.

“Jesus, I know you have concerns, but this feels divisive.”

“Think about how this looks.”

“Couldn’t you have handled this privately?”

“Do you really think flipping tables is going to help your witness?”

“Don’t cause a scene.”

Some of us have developed a version of Christianity where nearly any confrontation can be dismissed as ungodly simply because confrontation makes people uncomfortable.

But sometimes the scene exists because something sacred has already been violated.

Jesus didn’t create the corruption in the temple.

He exposed it.

I can’t stress enough how much that distinction matters.

People can tolerate dysfunction for years and become outraged by the person who finally names it.

They can tolerate deception until somebody uncovers it.

They can tolerate harm until somebody establishes a boundary.

They can tolerate corruption until somebody refuses to participate.

They can tolerate the table just fine.

It’s the flipping they find offensive.

Truth has a way of agitating hypocrisy. When light enters darkness, somebody’s comfort is bound to be challenged.

Still, before anyone grabs this paragraph, marches into their next family gathering, and starts launching furniture in the name of JESUS, we need the other half of this conversation.

Yes, Jesus flipped tables.

But table-flipping wasn’t His personality.

Read the Gospels and you find a life overflowing with compassion, mercy, service, healing, patience, truth, sacrifice, and relationship. Jesus wasn’t wandering through first-century Judea looking for furniture to yeet.

The temple confrontation was an appropriate response to corruption. It wasn’t evidence that Jesus simply enjoyed getting heated.

If confrontation is your default setting, you might not be imitating Jesus. You might just enjoy confrontation.

If every disagreement becomes a moral crisis, every irritation becomes righteous anger, every person who disagrees with you becomes a Pharisee, and you somehow keep finding tables that “God told you” to flip, it might be worth checking whether the Holy Spirit is leading the charge or your ego has simply found a theological costume.

We are not called to become Christian wrecking balls (sorry to disappoint anyone who was queuing up Miley Cyrus).

Peacemakers don’t confront because they enjoy the rush of being right. They don’t expose because humiliation feels satisfying. They don’t wield “truth” as permission to be cruel.

Anger itself isn’t proof that you’re righteous.

But neither is the absence of anger proof that you’re holy.

There are things that should grieve us. God cares deeply about injustice, exploitation, manipulation, abuse, oppression, hypocrisy, and the mistreatment of vulnerable people.

Righteous anger is an alignment with God’s heart for what’s right.

But righteous anger has to remain submitted to God.

So before confrontation, we have ask ourselves:

Am I defending God’s honor or my ego?

Am I pursuing restoration or revenge?

Do I want repentance or humiliation?

Am I confronting this because I love truth, or because I love being right?

Whew. Those can take the wind out of a self-righteous sail pretty dang quickly.

Peacemaking requires courage, but it also requires humility.

(You can read more about righteous anger vs. self righteous anger in When Anger Feels Holy (But Isn’t): Where Christians Get It Wrong, and about surrendered anger in The Fool, the Future King, and the Peacemaker: A Story of Anger Redeemed.)

The goal is never to become better at flipping tables.

The goal is to become more like Jesus.

And sometimes becoming more like Jesus means having the courage to confront what everyone else has decided would be easier to tolerate.

There’s another place where our obsession with “keeping the peace” becomes especially dangerous.

When harm occurs in a family, friendship, church, ministry, workplace, or community, watch who receives the most pressure afterward.

Far too often, it’s the person who’s been hurt.

“Forgive.”

“Move on.”

“Don’t gossip.”

“Don’t divide people.”

“Give them grace.”

“Be the bigger person.”

At some point, we should really ask why so much spiritual instruction is being directed toward the person bleeding while so little is being directed toward the person holding the knife.

What about repentance? Accountability? Truth? The wounded person’s healing?

Please don’t mistake what I’m saying. Forgiveness matters. Scripture doesn’t give us permission to harbor bitterness, fantasize about revenge, or refuse the mercy we ourselves have received from Christ.

But forgiveness cannot become a weapon we use against hurt people because their pain is inconvenient for everybody else.

Do me a favor and read that again.

We can’t make the wounded person responsible for keeping everyone comfortable. That only creates a second wound.

The first one says, This happened to you.

The second says, And now it’s your responsibility to make sure nobody feels bad about the fact that it happened.

Darling, that is the opposite of peacemaking.

Sometimes accountability creates discomfort (uh hello, if iron sharpens iron, stop hangin’ around a bunch of butter knives!). Truth can disrupt relationships. Bringing something into the light can change how people see a leader, organization, family member, or friend.

That doesn’t automatically mean telling the truth was wrong.

This gets even more complicated when the person being confronted quickly reframes themselves as the victim of the confrontation.

Imagine one of the money changers stumbling out of the temple afterward.

“You would not BELIEVE what this man just did to me! He came in yelling! He knocked over my table! I was just serving in the temple! I’ve never felt so disrespected!”

The entire conversation shifts.

What was happening at the table disappears. Now it’s all about the flipping.

Their behavior is no longer the conversation. Your reaction is.

Their actions are no longer the problem. Your anger is.

The original wound fades into the background, and the great crisis becomes the fact that somebody had the audacity to respond to it.

Don’t let outrage over the flipped table distract you from asking why the table needed flipping.

That does NOT mean every accusation is true or every reaction is justified. It doesn’t mean anyone who feels harmed is automatically correct about every detail. Truth matters in every direction.

But accountability creating tension doesn’t make accountability the greater offense.

We Christians can spiritualize passivity with impressive creativity.

“Just pray about it!”

Pray is essential. We should pray before difficult conversations, during difficult seasons, after difficult decisions, and when we have absolutely no idea what to do next.

Sometimes “I’m praying about it” means I am sincerely waiting on the Lord.

But sometimes it means I’m hoping God handles this without requiring anything uncomfortable from me.

David didn’t stand across the valley from Goliath pretending the giant wasn’t threatening God’s people. He trusted God, and then he stepped forward.

There was a moment for faith, a moment for courage, and (apparently) a moment for a rock.

Some of us would’ve told David to pray for Goliath when God called David to knock him in the noggin with a rock.

Before anybody gets nervous, the lesson here is obviously not that Christians should start carrying slingshots to conflict resolution meetings.

The lesson is that faithfulness sometimes requires action against what threatens what God entrusted to us.

Prayer should prepare us for obedience, not become an excuse to avoid it.

This question is especially important when dysfunction exists inside something we love: What are we actually protecting?

A church? Family? Friendship? Business? Leadership structure? Community?

Loyalty is a beautiful thing until it gets twisted into secrecy. Then we start believing that protecting something means protecting its reputation at all costs.

Protect the church.

Protect the family.

Protect the leader.

Protect the name.

But the Church belongs to Jesus. We don’t protect Christ’s Church by hiding what He condemns.

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.

Ephesians 5:11

Darkness thrives under the assumption that bringing something into the light is more dangerous than leaving it hidden.

That logic can sound stunningly spiritual.

“What will people think?”

“What if someone loses faith because they hear about this?”

“What if this damages the church?”

“What if people leave?”

Those are understandable fears. They’re also terrible foundations for deciding what’s true and right.

You don’t protect something sacred by protecting the thing that’s corrupting it.

Go back to the temple.

Jesus’s confrontation wasn’t an attack on what was sacred. He confronted what was happening because He cared about what was sacred.

He wasn’t dishonoring the temple by exposing corruption within it.

He was defending its purpose.

Sometimes exposing what’s wrong isn’t betrayal—it’s stewardship.

Now, that doesn’t give us permission to become suspicious, reckless, or eager to publicize every failure we encounter. Scripture gives us wisdom for confrontation, church discipline, forgiveness, and handling offenses with maturity. Not every sin needs an audience. Not every disagreement belongs online. Not every failure is corruption.

But neither should “protecting the church” become Christian vocabulary for protecting powerful people from consequences.

Our loyalty belongs first to Christ.

If protecting an institution requires us to lie, conceal sin, intimidate hurt people, manipulate forgiveness, or punish truth-tellers, we are no longer protecting what’s sacred.

We are protecting the table Jesus would’ve flipped.

Peacemaking isn’t a hunger for destruction—it’s a hunger for restoration.

That point has to stay at the center of this conversation because confrontation without love can become its own form of destruction.

The Christian hope isn’t: You hurt me, so now I get to hurt you. You sinned, so now I get to humiliate you. You were wrong, so I need everyone to know I was right.

Biblical peacemaking wants something better:

Truth. Repentance. Forgiveness. Healing. Restoration.

That’s a very different progression from the one we often settle for:

Harm. Silence. Image management. Forced forgiveness. Repeat.

Restoration requires truth because you cannot rebuild something while lying about why it broke.

It requires repentance because biblical reconciliation is more substantial than everyone agreeing to stop mentioning what happened.

It requires forgiveness because we are people who have been forgiven.

It requires grace because nobody should be permanently reduced to the worst thing they’ve done.

It requires wisdom because while restored relationship and forgiveness are related, they aren’t identical.

And sometimes, despite our deep desire for reconciliation, another person refuses repentance, safety can’t be established, or a relationship just can’t return to what it once was.

We can leave room for redemption without pretending restoration has already happened.

We can hope for reconciliation without manufacturing it.

We can forgive without lying.

We can extend grace without abandoning truth.

Restoration built on denial isn’t restoration—it’s reputation management.

Part of our struggle with all of this comes from our tendency to build a version of Jesus around whichever parts of His character make us most comfortable.

Jesus is the Lamb—gentle, sacrificial, merciful, willing to lay down His life. He welcomed children. Ate with sinners. Washed feet. Touched lepers. Restored failures. Showered mercy onto people who had every reason to expect condemnation.

This is our Savior.

But Jesus is also the Lion—King, victorious, holy, uncompromising toward evil.

This is also our Savior.

We love the image of Jesus kneeling with a towel around His waist, washing the feet of His disciples. We should.

But those same hands overturned tables.

The same Jesus who welcomed sinners confronted Pharisees.

The same Jesus who made room for the rejected drove corruption from the temple.

The same Jesus who said, “Come to Me,” also spoke truths hard enough that people chose to walk away.

If our Jesus is only gentle in the way we define gentleness—never confrontational, never disruptive, never angered by corruption, never demanding repentance, never saying anything that might offend us—then at some point we’ve stopped following Jesus and started editing Him.

On the other hand, if our Jesus is always flipping tables, denouncing enemies, correcting people, and confirming that everyone we dislike is wicked, we’ve edited Him, too.

Jesus is the Lamb.

Jesus is the Lion.

Christ calls us to Himself, not to the half of Him that most resembles our personality.

Some of us have spent years keeping peace God never asked us to keep.

We learned the rules early: Don’t rock the boat. Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. Don’t question leadership. Don’t talk about it. Be nice. Move on.

So we became skilled at reading rooms. Managing reactions. Swallowing words. Smoothing tension. Protecting people from consequences. Carrying secrets that were never ours to carry.

But Jesus didn’t call you to keep everyone happy—He called you to follow Him.

And following Him will sometimes lead you toward the table.

Sit there.

Listen.

Share the meal.

Welcome the outsider.

Show mercy.

Forgive extravagantly.

Be patient. Give others the same room to grow that you desperately hope they’ll give you. Refuse the addictive pleasure of outrage. Be hard to offend and quick to examine your own heart.

But when something sacred is being harmed, don’t confuse your silence with holiness.

Speak truth.

Protect.

Expose what grows in the darkness.

Offer grace without abandoning truth.

Fight for restoration without worshiping appearances.

Keep your heart soft enough to forgive and your spine strong enough to stand.

There will be moments when peacemaking looks like lowering your voice, and moments when it looks like speaking up.

The goal is peace.

Peace strong enough to survive honesty.

Peace that is whole.

Peace that is holy.

Peace worth making.

So rise up, peacemaker.

And flip tables accordingly.

Jesus, make us people who look like You. Give us hearts that forgive without pretending, and courage to confront without becoming self-righteous. Protect us from the pride that wants to win, the anger that wants revenge, and the fear that would rather preserve appearances than pursue what’s right. Teach us when to speak and when to remain silent. When to sit at the table, and when to flip it. Give us the tenderness of the Lamb and the courage of the Lion. Make us peacemakers. Amen.