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.