Sacred DR Stories

From Charlie Pillsbury at Quinnipiac who has promised to send some of his stories our way for the blog and is interested in collecting more of these:

As a person of faith, I’m drawn to sacred stories about peacemaking and dispute resolution.  As a Christian, I’m most familiar with the Hebrew texts that we Christians refer to as the “Old Testament” and the Greek texts that we call the “New Testament”. Initially, therefore, I will be drawing these sacred stories from the New Revised Standard Version of the Christian Bible.

There are, of course, many other faith traditions with their own sacred stories, so I would like to invite you to share those stories with us. Post them directly [send them to Andrea] or send them to me, if you prefer, at Charles.Pillsbury@quinnipiac.edu . I also welcome your comments about the stories I select, the ones you like and the ones you don’t, either via this blog or, if you prefer, directly to me. We know from the work we do that there are always at least two sides to any story, as well as many different ways to interpret texts.

Let’s begin with a story from the Torah. Exodus 18 tells the story of Moses and his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. When Jethro visits his son-in-law in the Sinai wilderness, he discovers that Moses is spending entire days and nights trying to settle disputes among the people of Israel. Jethro tells Moses that what he’s doing is not good; that he’s going to wear himself out. Get help, Jethro says.

Moses listens to his father-in-law and appoints “able men from all Israel” as quasi-judicial “officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.” Exodus 18:25. The text then tells us: “And they judged the people at all times; hard cases they brought to Moses, but any minor case they decided themselves.” Exodus 18:26. As this sacred story from the Sinai wilderness takes us back around 3,000 years, I think this makes Jethro the first ADR system designer in recorded history.

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