Peace -v- Truth

Interesting conversation a few days ago debriefing a "peacemakers" mediation of a small business conflict. I was only speaking to one party to the conflict, but the perspective was interesting. Apparently, in an effort to come to resolution, peace was pursued more forcefully than truth. In our contemporary situation, this seems to be very attractive. When our churches are using an apologetic of community rather than conviction - I can see how this experience would result. However a community is always going to have conflict, and the best sign of our maturity and our witness as community is the means in which we handle that conflict. Naive peacemaking might get past an initial relational obstacle, but unless there is conviction, repentance, forgiveness and agreement I can't see how renewed relationships can ever emerge, and I'm afraid that community will always be scarred. Yet I am also a product of my age, understanding the conflicted nature of observation and perception, the personal filters that consciously or unconsciously we use to color what we see in the world around us and how we interpret it. A judicial pursuit of truth in business conflict is most likely going to emerge as a complicated "He said, She said" argument, unless more formal documentation emerges. Conflict often arises in that grey area where there is no clear victim, victimizer axis, where no obvious repentance is warranted. How do we handle this? My conclusion(initial and tentative) is that peacemaking without an initial pursuit of truth will not produce long term resolution. Yet there are situations where the pursuit of truth produces diminishing returns, and a balancing point must be observed where the pursuit must be put aside and resolution, compromise, agreement must be hammered out. In the messiness of community, that process is probably lots harder to ferret out than I'd like to imagine.