Growing as a Culture of Peace (Prt 2)

I am continuing on the point that peace should not be the end goal to conflict, but rather that peace should be the means by which we respond to conflict and be the very thing we embody. I think people might scoff at this because we have an entire history of proving the enlightenment wrong about knowledge equaling right behavior. As James K.A. Smith says in his book, You Are What you Love, there is an enormous gap between what we know is right and what we actually do.  So how does one close that gap?

It may sound cliché, but the conflicts we experience externally are usually conflicts that began internally and we are witnessing the result. In the same breath, peace can also flow from the person who has internal peace because old thought patterns have been transformed into rhythms of humility and grace.  We Christians know this as the inner work of the Holy Spirit.  That sacred place where God is in search of us (and often us of Him) and we suddenly find ourselves found and reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:18-19). More shocking is that God then dwells with us.

The revelation is that there can be and is peace with our Creator because God says in His kingdom you count too and that He won’t count you out if you won’t count you out (Lk. 15:1-32). When you know that you count there is deeper understanding that we all count, so then to rage against someone else for our own vindication or claims of righteous indignation is to only diminish what is true about both of us and all of us.

I believe most Christians know this to some degree. Maybe many haven’t been able to put it into words and give it language, but the inner workings that made anyone want to follow Jesus in the first place was usually some internal revelation like this.  The problem is that this was the beginning of something really big and it soon became a distant memory for too many Christians. They return to life as usual internally and externally.

But, to follow Christ is to be formed into Christlikeness, also known as “spiritual formation” (Gal. 4:18-19). As Dallas Willard defines this formation, it “refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.”[1] We are taking on the character of Christ in that we become, like Paul says, a people marked by peace and characterized by compassion, kindness, humility, patience and forgiveness (Col. 3:12-17). 

Being this kind of person can sound vainly wonderful, but the missing component is our cooperating with God in the work of self-emptying. This is primarily the work of emptying the self of all arrogance, hardened insensitivity and self-sufficiency.  To consciously be walking with God and learning to let those things go regularly changes how we think, feel and relate to everyone.

This is precisely why the mystics regularly practiced what is known as the “spiritual disciplines”. These are that habits of worship, prayer, fasting, simplicity, meditation, service, confession and so on.  Each one of these practices produces many things in our walk with God but at the top of the list would be the practice of unhurried listening to God, the practice of trusting God and the practice of loving God and neighbor. This takes the peace we so often experienced as new Christians and gives it much deeper roots and much more meaningful attachment to others.

So if you feel like your relationship with God and love for others has grown cold then this is a pretty good place to start, but to my main point, if the church is ever going to grow into a culture of peace and embody peace amid conflict, then spiritual formation must be practiced regularly and be part of how we disciple someone who wants to follow Christ.

Ideally I would suggest finding someone who can teach you this within your own church family.  But if that looks bleak, no matter what stream of Christianity you come from, you might just find that a priest (Catholic or Orthodox), Franciscan monk or nun, or protestant pastor in your area is receptive to teaching someone who wants to learn.  If you are not comfortable with that, then my personal reading suggestions for more on this are:

1.      Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline The Path to Spiritual Growth

2.      Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

3.      Henri Nouwen’s Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit

4.      Richard Rohr’s Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi

[1] Dallas Willard. Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs: NavPress 1989), 22.

Growing as a Culture of Peace (Prt 1)

Banksy

Peace is probably one of the most important topics the church should be discussing right now. I say this not just because we have so little of it these days, but because how we understand peace set the parameters for how we view and resolve conflict, personally or otherwise.  For example, if we simply define peace in the dictionary sense it is freedom from disturbance, a tranquil state of being, or a state of not being at war. That alone makes peace an end goal with a lot of open territory for how one can arrive there. 

If a marriage is hurting from lack of communication and lots of disagreements you can just terminate it: get a divorce and file under irreconcilable differences and peace will ensue; if you have a friend, sibling, coworker, or someone of the sort whose relationship with you is centered only on them, their needs and based on seeing everything their way, then go along with it and you will never be without peace; if another country or people group is standing in the way of peace blow them all to hell so peace can be restored.  Of course none of these are good ideas, but they are where we tend to take them when conflict disrupts our definition of peace.

As an alternative idea, what if we stopped thinking of peace as the end resolution to conflict and make it the means to resolve conflict? And while we’re at it maybe we could stop seeing every conflict as a bad thing and become alert to the fact that it is necessary for alerting us to a need for change.   

Why would I say this? Because, when Jesus says things like, “forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12), and “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (Jn.14:27), peace is not the end goal because we already have it. We have God’s peace so when we read something like “Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the children of God” (Matt. 5:9),  we cannot see it as peace being the final resolution, but rather peace being the way to treat each other and the means by which we do life together. 

Miroslav Volf (theologian) says it like this: “Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only we do not resist being made in into its agents; what happens to us must be done by us.”[1] To my mind this is the epitome of what the church should be, representatives of God’s grace and peace wherever we go.

Yet as the Kreiders have said, churches really do not describe themselves as being “cultures of peace” even though that was one of the good things being cultivated by the early church.[2] As far as I can tell the church now might struggle with even wanting to be such a people because we are more comfortable drawing lines in the sand that reinforce our stance against those we don’t support. Rather, what should be happening is learning to posture ourselves as a loving people who were and are recipients of grace and peace and therefore extensions of it. 

My point is there is a much better picture to this creation story we are in, but we have to insist on re-finding and refining it in our lives.  This is just the beginning of what needs to be said about this, which more will be coming in the following posts, but I want this to launch the conversation. And I want this to remind us to be aware that “the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus… make(s) you complete in everything good so that you may do his will…”(Heb. 13:20-21).  Peace is already present even amid our conflicts.

[1] Miroslav Volf. Inclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 129.

[2] Alan Kreider, Eleanor Kreider, and Paulus Widjaja. A Culture of Peace: God’s Vision for the Church (Intercourse, PA; Good Books, 2005), 9-10.