Aaron Miller

on May 13, 2025

• 22 min read

Summary

Why do we struggle to make peace, even when it's what we want most? Professor Chad Ford joins us to explore the roots of conflict and the power of “dangerous love,” a courageous, empathetic approach to healing divisions. From family rifts to global disputes, Chad’s stories and strategies reveal how fear shapes our reactions, why justice must be about restoration, and how anyone can become a peacemaker. This episode offers real-life examples and actionable insights for anyone seeking more harmony in their relationships and communities.

About Our Guest

Chad Ford is an international conflict mediator, facilitator, and peace educator known for his extensive peacebuilding work around the world. He holds a Master’s in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University and a JD from Georgetown. He directed the David O. McKay Center for Intercultural Understanding at BYU–Hawaii for nearly twenty years, where he developed programs in intercultural peacebuilding. In 2024, Chad joined Utah State University, teaching courses on religion, peace, and mediation.

He has worked in conflict zones globally, facilitated for governments, NGOs, and corporations, and serves on the board of Peace Players International. Chad is the author of Dangerous Love and 70x7, books that explore transforming conflict and Christian peacebuilding. His hands-on experience gives him a unique perspective on resolving conflicts in families, organizations, and communities worldwide.

Useful Links

Chad Ford’s Book, Dangerous Love:

https://dangerouslovebook.com

Chad's Substack:

https://chadford.substack.com/

PeacePlayers International – Bridging Divides Through Sports:

https://www.peaceplayers.org

Mary Kawena Pukui and the Preservation of Hawaiian Culture:

https://www.missingwitches.com/mary-kawena-pukui-morrnah-simeona-a-unified-unifying-force/

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Aaron - Interview: How's your family adjusting to Utah? Because that's a big switch from Hawaii, especially after being there so long.

[00:00:06] Chad Ford: This is the first time we've had air conditioning in 20 years. Uh, so, um, that, that has been very, very popular, especially with my teenage girls who are excited to not be sweaty all the time.

[00:00:18] Aaron - Interview: Yeah. Yeah, I don't blame them.

[00:00:20] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller, and this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode two, Peacemaking. Now, I'll take a moment to say that you may be new to our show. How to Help is proud to join the family of BYU Radio podcasts.

We hope you'll listen to all that we have to share in the episodes to come.

Imagine going to see the newest Tom Cruise action movie. I think he's now up to Mission Impossible Eight, due to come out next year. Well, near the end of the movie, we're imagining his character finally comes face-to-face with the villain. Cruise probably has a limp at this point because of all the intense action before this.

They sit down across from each other in a corporate boardroom. On the top floor of a massive skyscraper. Something tells you that cruise is gonna jump from one of those windows in the very near future. And then the conversation begins. This is the one where the villain typically makes this case of why so many people need to die, or why governments need to be brought to their knees, and so on.

And then you'd expect Cruise to deliver a pithy one-liner, that's followed by a fight to the villain's inevitable death. Whatever disaster was looming, will be averted with obviously just one second to spare.

But what if that's not what happened? What if they just, you know, worked it out? What if whatever old grudge was at the heart of this conflict was laid out and both men found a way to come to some sort of shared understanding?

There could be a whole montage of them sharing their feelings and concerns, apologizing tearfully for their mistakes, finally in the end seeing eye-to-eye, and they decide to embrace each other in a big hug. The villain would then stand down his evil plans, and then the two of them would spend years together as best friends.

I mean, be honest. Would you even want to see this movie? I don't think many people would. There's only ever really one story in action movies. It's the story of good vanquishing evil, and that's what we go to see. Of course, there's plenty of conflict and difficulty along the way, and that's where the action comes in.

And I mean, some of Tom Cruise's stunts are truly incredible. He rode a motorcycle off a cliff in the last one, but if the movie ended with anything other than evil's defeat, I think we'd all leave the theater feeling really unsatisfied. Of course, we want peace restored at the end, but what we really want is justice.

The villain has to lose, not just come around. We like peace, but only after victory.

As much as we like peace, we're also easily entertained by conflict. Consider the state of reality television. There's a reason for having a Real Housewives show that takes place in, and this is a long list. Orange County, New York, Atlanta, New Jersey, DC, Beverly Hills, Miami, Potomac, Dallas, Salt Lake City, and Dubai. There's no shortage of people who can be terrible to each other and no lack of an audience excited to watch it all happen.

But all this conflict, were it real in our own lives, would make us miserable. And we know that because the conflicts that we do have make us miserable. In our families, at work, in our neighborhoods, and across our nations conflict is a pervasive source of deep unhappiness. Some conflicts are fresh and recent, and some have lasted for years. And they never entertain us. They only hurt us.

[00:04:04] Chad Ford: Conflict is hard. It distracts us. When we're in a negative conflict spiral. It's often all we can think about and we start to see the entire world through that lens. We start to mistrust even other people because of the hurt or pain or whatever that you feel in the way. So whatever is hard about doing the peace, we can't forget that the conflict itself is hard and in many ways is a cancer that is slowly eroding and eating us away.

[00:04:32] Aaron - Narration: Here at the start of the episode, consider what's maybe the most important thing.

There's no Tom Cruise coming to defeat our villains, to kill off the cancer of conflict in our lives. If we want to escape the contention, the simmering resentment, the distrust, we need to find a better way out. We have to be our own heroes, but not the action kind that defeats enemies. Peace building is perhaps one of the hardest and most heroic things we'll ever set out to do.

[00:05:03] Chad Ford: It's hard, but it's a good hard because the rewards are life changing.

[00:05:09] Aaron - Narration: My guest today is Professor Chad Ford and he's going to help us learn how to find that peace. Chad's an associate professor at Utah State University's Haravi Peace Institute. He's also the author of the book, Dangerous Love: Transforming Fear and Conflict at Home, at Work, and in the World.

[00:05:30] Chad Ford: I like the cancer analogy a lot because, you know, unfortunately a lot of times the response to cancer is chemotherapy and radiation. And anybody that's gone through that, the radiation and chemotherapy is terrible. It makes you nauseated, it, your hair falls out like, you know, it makes you sick. But in many, many cases, and in the case of my stepfather who had had cancer 20 years before, it gave him 20 extra years of life.

When he got cancer the first time, relationships were rocky with lots of family members, including me, and we thought about the gift that that 20 years gave us to, to reconcile, to where he had his whole family around him, loving, supporting. We learned things, he learned things in those 20 years. That chemo, that radiation that he went through 20 years ago was a gift in so many ways because it eradicated his cancer for a long time. However hard this is and how difficult it is to forgive or to confront or to look at these things, um, or what have you, you will look back on it as a gift as opposed to staying estranged, disconnected, broken. Because that, that's a sort of pain that never really heals.

And I've worked with so many people, including family members who then lose somebody and that pain just remains. And I reflect back on my stepfather and the joy and beauty that was in the room when he passed away because the relationships were right. And there's nothing that can bring more peace in an ending moment of life than that, than just to know that we're right with each other.

[00:07:00] Aaron - Narration: I wanted you to hear that story about Chad and his stepfather, so that you could see right from the start that he knows where you're coming from. He knows what it's like to be at odds with someone important to him. But Chad is also a pro at managing conflict. He's not only a professor of peace building, but he's also a professional mediator who's worked in conflict around the globe and at every level, from families going through divorce to boardroom disputes in corporations, and even in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, a part of the world that he's worked in for over two decades.

I don't think before talking with Chad that I've ever met someone who's so optimistic about finding a way through conflict. Let me give you an example that's impossible to be cynical about.

For many years now, Chad has been part of an organization called Peace Players International. They bring kids from across conflict divides and have them play sports together.

The program operates in a variety of places around the world, but it has also been in Israel and Palestine for over a decade. But since October 7th, 2023 armed conflict there has led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Things have never been as bad as they are now. How do you find hope in circumstances as hard as these?

[00:08:15] Chad Ford: I'm a hopeful guy, first of all, Aaron. I mean, I wouldn't be engaged in this. You know, I, I sometimes talk about impossible conflict and it's what I'm drawn to. So, you know, by, by my very nature, I don't get involved in things that I don't think are possible. Right. And it's, it's just partly the way my brain is oriented, and I think it has to be to a certain extent here.

Yeah, I know it's gonna be hard and brutal, but on the other side, I'm really a hopeful guy. With that said, there's been things that I've seen before that are so beautiful where they started so hard. I've worked with Israelis and Palestinians, you know, for a really long time. I'm hurting like a lot of people are hurting over October 7th.

And you know, the murder and, and, and kidnapping of, of so many innocent Israelis followed by the war in Gaza with the, you know, the, the murder and destruction of, uh, tens of thousands of, of Palestinians, including many, many women and children. And I know this is a very polarizing topic, but as somebody who's like worked on the ground with both of those groups for a long time, I, I have a deep love for them.

And I get to see an aspect of them that very few people in the West get to see, which is that both communities have peace builders in them that have been working tirelessly for decades to find a way to live together and collaborate together. And they've done it at personal risk. They've done it often to the extent that their friends or family or their communities have, uh, judged them or expelled them.

And then you watch what happens in something like October 7th and, and the subsequent war in Gaza. Part of the emotion was, how do we ever come back from this? Like, this is so bad.

One of the nonprofits that I've worked for for a long time that works with young people. Everything shut down after October 7th. You know, the safety of the young people, the safety of the families, all that comes priority. Everything had to be shut down. We can't put anybody in danger. Um, and so we, we essentially shut down, um, the program.

About December, I start getting phone calls from the staff in Israel, the Palestinians, Israelis, saying that the children's mothers are calling us and they are telling us we need to start the program again, because they're losing their kids. And their kids, you know, this, this inability to connect with each other, the the social media bubbles that they're in, everything else, that they're losing them, and we can't lose the progress, um, that we've made. We have to start now, but it's dangerous. We're worried about this or this.

We will come out. The parents said we will guard the, the, the spaces. We will take the risks, because these are too important not to take. And so there was a lot of fear and should we do this? And if there's a one problem, like it's done forever. Right? But also sometimes peace building is about taking risks and their parents, the kids were consenting.

So we started programming in December. We thought it's gonna be a couple groups and families, um, that show up. Within the first week, 80% of the kids and their families were back engaging in peace, peace building talks. Even the most optimistic Chad would've told you that number would've been dramatically lower.

It wasn't starting for like a year and giving the ongoing frustrations that this kept going on, it won't last, that people are gonna get frustrated because this thing is dragging on and on and on. And it's been the opposite of that. They continue to meet, they continue to grow.

And one of the groups that we work with is basketball and

they field the only joint Palestinian Israeli youth basketball team in the country. And we were like, well, we're definitely not putting that team in the league this year because they're gonna go to all of these different gyms that are gonna be fully Israeli. And the kids insisted we're gonna go. There was jeering, people threw things at them, they swore at them.

Those amazing young people, and their parents said, we're gonna play anyway. We're gonna show, you know what's what's possible. And that to me, to be honest, Aaron, may be the biggest miracle I've seen in the last 20 years because the conditions couldn't be worse. The, um, challenges they face couldn't be harder.

Even the most optimistic person has the right to be skeptical, um, and jaded and angry, um, at what's happening. Um, but they know there is no future for any of us unless we find a way, um, to, to live together. And, uh, so they're doing what the adults haven't been able to do. And they're setting an example that, you know, for all of us, most of us that are harboring resentments or, or conflicts in our lives are not the people of Gaza and what they're going through right now, or are not the families of those Israelis.

Who sent their young people off to a peace concert only to see them, you know, murdered or raped. I thought on many occasions over the last, um, year where I've, I've experienced plenty of conflicts on my own moving and teenagers and all sorts of things, if they can do it, I don't care what it is that's in my face, like I can do it too.

[00:13:34] Aaron - Narration: What are the things that stand in the way of our peace? I mean, if the Peace Player families can work through ancient conflicts, what keeps us from dealing with our own usually far less stubborn disagreements? One element that runs through Chad's book and teaching is the role that fear plays in fostering conflict.

Conflict is scary and we're naturally inclined to turn away from it.

[00:13:58] Chad Ford: I think the reason we don't talk about fear, as much as. It's one of those emotions that I think is less socially acceptable to admit to, even than anger. I think there's a certain, like righteous anger or, yeah, there's a certain like, almost like macho to, you know, being angry, but you know, we don't really lionize people who are afraid.

When I was reading Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, in his book he describes this moment where early on in the Civil Rights movement, he was getting a lot of death threats and threats towards his family. And one night in his house, he got a phone call in the middle of the night, um, and he picked up the phone and they said, "I'm gonna blow up your house and kill all of your children in it."

And this was very early in, in the movement. He talks about in the night getting up and pacing and worrying about his family and wondering how in the world he got into this space and just wishing he could go back to writing his sermons every Sunday, and live this sort of peaceful life of as a pastor.

And he, he reported that he was just overcome with fear and he was actually trying to think about how he could step out of the movement, let someone else go into the forefront because he was afraid. He was afraid about what was going to happen to his family. He was afraid it was going to happen about him. So he gets on his knees and he, you know, he says this prayer and, and says, "Look, people are looking at me to do the right thing, but I'm afraid and I don't think I can do it. I don't think I have the strength to do it. Can you help me get out of this?"

And his answer was, "No, but I'm going to give you the strength to go through it." And, and it really ties to the title of the book, the Strength to Love. The strength to love will overcome fear.

[00:15:42] Aaron - Narration: Martin Luther King's courage is inspiring to me, but it also makes me feel small.

I mean, no one's threatening to bomb my house because of a disagreement. My fears about conflict, and probably yours, feel so much tinier than that. Luckily, Chad has empathy for our small but potent fears.

[00:16:02] Chad Ford: I, I, I think first it requires the vulnerability to admit I am afraid. I'm afraid you're gonna take something that's important to me. I'm afraid that my voice isn't being heard. I'm afraid that you don't recognize my identity or that our relationship, you don't see me or value me. I mean, there's so many little different fears that go into this, and because of that, I need to protect myself. And I'm gonna start doing insane things that are about protecting me, but are actually making the conflict worse, but I can't see it, right?

So if I'm running from conflict, I'm making it worse, not better. If I'm fighting with the person, I'm inviting them to be defensive. I'm inviting them to experience fear, and I'm actually escalating the conflict. If I freeze and do nothing right, it, it can come off to other people like, "Oh, he just doesn't care," or "It doesn't, doesn't really matter" right?

But it deeply matters inside whether we're avoiding conflict, whether we're competing or fighting, whether we're just giving in or kind of playing dead. Uh, you know, at those moments. Our, our fear-based responses that are the opposite of what we really actually need, which is collaboration.

[00:17:11] Aaron - Narration: Consider the conflicts in your lives.

What are the fears that are hiding underneath them? For me, I think it's a fear that the wrong that was done will happen again. I'm scared of the pain and unmet expectations or a violated trust. I worry too often about being embarrassed or called out for my mistakes. And to be totally honest, I'm an ethics professor for goodness sakes, and I feel like I'm supposed to be above this sort of thing.

I'm scared of being a hypocrite. All of my worries and all of yours stand in the way of our peace By now, it should make sense why Chad named his book Dangerous Love. We need a kind of love that's courageous in the face of fear.

[00:17:53] Chad Ford: You know, in English, it's tough because um, we use the same word to mean so many different things, right?

[00:18:00] Aaron - Interview: Right.

[00:18:00] Chad Ford: So it's not romantic love that we're talking about here, or you know, in the Greek, Eros. It's not Philia, which is the sort of love where we say like, which, you know, often sort of means friendship or you know, what have you. It's, it's not that. But it's this Agape, this other sort of Greek term of love, which is love because of the value of someone else. Love because I can, I can value the soul force--that's a word Gandhi used a lot--within another, and their needs, wants and concerns matter just as much as mine. You don't have to like the person. You don't have to want to be roommates or be married to the person, or like be best friends with them. You don't have to do any of that to experience that sort of love. But I have to value that your needs and wants and desires are just as important to you as mine are.

Our job is to find a way forward where both of those things can be met.

[00:18:57] Aaron - Narration: You might be listening to all of this and feeling, I don't know, maybe skeptical or perhaps even indignant. The conflict that's been needling you all episode probably wasn't even your fault to begin with. If anyone's the peacemaker in this situation, you are. Isn't it at least sometimes true that we're simply in the right?

[00:19:17] Chad Ford: It's funny you say it's sometimes true. It's, it's, at least from a perception standpoint, it's almost always true, because virtually everybody that comes in my office says, "I'm the peacemaker here. And it's the other person who, who won't move and, and won't change."

And it's so interesting to me, first of all, usually it's one person who will instigate and come in and I'll get the other party to come in, they tell me the exact same story, but in reverse, right? "I'm the peacemaker. I'm the one trying to make a difference. They're the ones who are doing this." I think we get in this mode of, of storytelling and conflict narrative where anything that I might do that maybe you would say, oh, Chad, maybe that wasn't the best decision, or whatever, I felt justified in doing it because it was in response to a slight, or was in response to years of someone's using these words against me or what have you.

So look, the first thing I would say, Aaron, is when I hear that, my first thought is, you don't see your role. These, are... conflicts are dynamic. There are patterns that are involved. And in virtually every case, you are involved in the pattern and you can't see it right now, right? Now, there are conflict escalatory patterns called Contender/Defender where someone's always coming, and I'm the defender, and there's been a lot of political science research about this. There's been family research about it. They're rare. But most of the people that I talk to think that that's what they're in, in a conflict escalation. I"'m the defender. This person's the contender" coming in, but they're rare. But almost always those contender/defenders, even if they're, they exist, they will morph into a conflict spiral, which is an action/reaction model that's coming over time.

People won't stay the defender forever. Eventually I'm going to get pushed to take up arms and try to stop the relentless or constant attacks that are coming in. And so it's so fascinating to me when Jesus tells people, if somebody smites you on the cheek, you know, turn the other cheek. I find that to be incredible conflict advice for a second, right? Because when I slap you, what I expect to happen is that you are gonna slap me back, right? And when you do so, I know this is weird and convoluted, but when you slap me back, it gives me justification for that first slap. It makes me actually feel like, "I was right, because look at you, you're violent or you know you're not Christian because you didn't turn the other cheek" or you know what have it. When we respond to negative conflict with negative conflict, when we respond to contention with contention, it almost always gives the person who instigated it the justification that it was right to start it in the first place, because I've exposed your true self and who you are.

And I see this a lot in like verbal conflicts, right? Someone will insult somebody and then somebody will insult them back and they will be shocked. "I, I can't believe you used that language, or I can't believe you stoop that low." And of course, your insult was always worse than mine. You always escalated it, um, further.

And so for most people, I said, you know, forget about what they're doing for a minute. Let's think about. What we're doing and how we're contributing to that, because that's the part that's the easiest to change, right? Our input into the system is the easiest part to change.

[00:22:30] Aaron - Narration: What about the truly one-sided conflicts? There are people in the world who, because of trauma, mental illness, or just a taste for cruelty, abuse those around them. Where does dangerous love fit in these situations?

[00:22:45] Chad Ford: I wrote a book called Dangerous Love, and unfortunately some people read the book and said, "Oh, so I'm just supposed to stay with my abusive spouse and love them and keep getting punched in the face, right?"

And I'm like, no, no, no. That's, that's, that's not what I mean by that sort of dangerous. I mean, vulnerable, dangerous, not like physically I'm dangerous. But even in those cases, I've found that when I can see the humanity of the other person, I can make decisions like "I'm not gonna live with you anymore, or I'm gonna create very strong boundaries that don't allow you to engage in that behavior anymore. I'm going to call the police because that behavior is dangerous to me and to others. I'm going to force you as a teenager to go into rehab even though you don't want to be there, even though you're gonna hate me because you know I've enrolled you in this wilderness program or what have you."

I can engage in those behaviors, but if I am not blaming, if I'm seeing that person with Agape, if I'm doing it because I'm actually trying to help them so that maybe somewhere down the road we can engage in that sort of collaborative process that will make all the difference in the world in our healing.

[00:23:50] Aaron - Narration: My full interview with Chad lasted for about two hours, and there was so much more to include than I had time for in this episode. That's why I've decided to break the things he said into two parts. In this one, we focused on what it takes to make peace in our own lives and relationships. But what if we want to do it for others too? Chad's taught an entire generation, the same generation, he was inspired to join all those years ago to be professional peacemakers. That episode will come next.

So let's end this part of the conversation by going back to our fascination with action movies. Like I said at the start, we love peace, but only if it comes after justice. Can there really be peace if wrong isn't made right? What about justice?

[00:24:36] Aaron - Interview: Especially in personal relationships where there's conflict, what's the right way to think about justice? Because it doesn't feel like it's appropriate to just say justice should never matter here. It's just about getting in harmony again. Surely having justice be your main priority is probably gonna enhance the conflict. How do we think about justice, not just at the big scale, but also in the the personal conflicts we have?

[00:25:03] Chad Ford: You know, the interesting thing about when we use the word justice is, to me it's a lot like love. It means different things to different people. Justice can mean revenge. We see both culturally, religiously, you know, justice used in those ways. But it's not the only way that justice is used. It's not the only definition, um, for justice. And again, this is where sometimes I feel like English fails us a little bit because we are wont to use the same word to mean a lot of different things.

And living in Hawaii for the last 20 years, I've been fascinated by the Hawaiian word for justice. It's called "pono." And it means justice. It means righteousness. It means things becoming right again. And so when things are "pono," we are right with each other.

And there's another word in Hawaiian, 'cause I love, Hawaiians can do this. You can't do this in English. They'll stack the words together, so when they say ponopono, it means the most, right? Right. So pono can be right and we can be right about a lot of things or what makes right. But what is the most, right? So when we say ponopono, what is the most right? And the most right, is relationships, right?

So I can be right on the facts. I can be right on the merits. I can be right on who started something or who didn't start something. I can be right that my interpretation of my religious text or my political text or, or whatever are right and yours are wrong. But I can also be wrong, at the exact same moment, if I'm not right with you.

Their conflict resolution mechanism is called Ho'oponopono, and is about making things the most right again. And the whole process is about reconciliation. And reconciliation has four strands. It has mercy or forgiveness. It has truth, it has justice, and it has peace. And you can't have one without the other to be reconciled.

So truth has to come out. It's important that we talk about the things that are our conflicts, that we surface them, that we speak them, that we don't hide them or bury them in the ground, or ignore them or forgive them. It's important that we practice forgiveness and mercy towards those that have hurt us. It is important that we seek justice for wholeness' sake, so that, that things that were wrong are made right again. Not about punishment, not about hurting the other person, but about a commitment. And, you know, in faith context, sometimes this is called like restitution, like trying our best to sort of make things right again.

And so having a conversation about justice, without talking about mercy, without talking about truth, without talking about peace, and without frankly talking about reconciliation. The goal is and should be injustice to make us more fully connected, to make us ponopono again. Then I have to think about the justice that builds, about the justice that reconnects, not about the sort of justice that destroys, or tears down, or marginalizes or hurts people in another way.

And then peace is a commitment that whatever we've had in the past, we are gonna work to make sure that it doesn't, that it doesn't happen again.

[00:28:26] Aaron - Narration: The Hawaiian tradition of Ho'oponopono was preserved largely thanks to the work of Mary Kawena Pukui, who documented and restored Hawaiian practices during a century of tumultuous change on the islands.

Although the practice is sadly slimmed down now, and popularized today as a kind of new age self-care, the traditional Ho'oponopono is a mix of ritual, accountability, forgiveness, and healing that Pukui described in part this way:

"Every one of us searched our hearts for any hard feelings of one against the other.

And did some thorough mental house cleaning. We forgave and were forgiven, thrashing out every grudge, peeve, or sentiment among us."

The end goal of this process is to do what Chad Ford described, not to make things right in the sense of achieving justice, but to make right our relationships. I'm inspired by Chad to do this more in my life, and I hope that you are, too.

How To Help is hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller, and produced in collaboration with BYU Radio. My thanks to Erica Price, Kenny Mears, and Blake Morris for their help with this episode. Scoring and mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club. For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes.

As always, thank you so much for listening.