There’s a story in my family. My grandma has told it time and time again. Shortly after she and my grandpa were married, she wanted to pull him into an argument. He stopped her short, stared her right in the eye, and proclaimed, “We will not fight in this family!” 

I’ve always laughed at this story – especially having grown up living with my grandparents and knowing that my grandma is no cowering lamb. She is feisty and opinionated. And yet… the no-fighting script ruled the day. “Contention is of the devil,” was the unwritten motto of our family. 

I was recently relaying this family history to some friends after a visit home evoked this infamous story yet again. My friend mentioned having heard Elder Ballard share a similar story in no less than three talks she went to while at BYU-I. I wonder if Elder Ballard and my grandpa were at the same devotional when a male authority gave them advice to never argue with their wives. (They were both married in 1951 – I could start my search with general conference talks of that year!)

I don’t know what kind of relationship Elder Ballard had with his wife, Barbara Bowen, but to teenage me, reeling from my parent’s divorce, my grandparents’ union was nothing short of perfect. My grandpa was a kind and patient man who cheered my grandma on in her unquenchable thirst for life. 

But what if my grandpa had not been kind? What if he did not listen? When a person declares: “We will not fight!” who suffers the most from the restriction to raise dissent? When women aren’t on equal ground to begin with, lacking the same positions and authority as men in LDS practice, is it healthy to also demand that women keep the peace?

I’m learning how to better live with conflict. I’m trying to teach my children the importance of owning their voice and speaking up in the face of injustice. Growing up there was so much negative connotation surrounding anger, contention and arguing. I didn’t learn how anger is a tool of our body to protest when something is wrong. 

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me… was sung with the understanding that you could have inner peace – by choosing to be happy. By choosing not to complain. But true peace isn’t the absence of conflict. I love the way Martin Luther King Jr. described peace in one of his sermons. It came after Autherine Lucy, the first African-American student to attend the University of Alabama, was threatened and mobbed by white students and asked to leave campus. King’s sermon was in response to someone suggesting that the bus boycott was destroying race relations.

This is the type of peace that is obnoxious. It is the type of peace that stinks in the nostrils of the almighty God.

King went on to interpret what Jesus meant in Matt. 10:34-36, then described what kind of peace he didn’t want:

When I sing, Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me, I want it to begin by listening to those who have been silenced.

“When Peace Becomes Obnoxious” Sermon delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. Mar. 18, 1956, Montgomery, Alabama