Growing as a Culture of Peace (Prt 3 & Final)

To continue building on the last section, when it comes to being a people of peace, knowing and explaining what is right is far easier than putting it into practice.  I insist that it begins with a heart that has been transformed by God’s grace, but there is a progression in living a life found in grace. But it must be further learned and shaped within the domestic life of the church community.

I find it best to look at the guidance from the early church. The very early church was good about forming a people that would act more in the way of peace as appose to a people who just try to convince others that it was the right way to be while showing no sign of it themselves.  This was not, and should not be, viewed as a behavioral modification emphasis, but rather it was unique transformation.  In fact these Christians drew lots of people because they were known for being radically peaceable and patient and it was for that reason that the early church improbably flourished amid the violent Roman Empire. That is of course before Constantine and others drove Christian growth via violence and force thus making our story a cautionary tale, but let that mark the way not to go.

            To get back on topic, in Alan Kreider’s book on the early church he shows that some of the practices that initiated their habitus was memorizing scriptures that they felt embodied the Gospel and God’s Kingdom being present.[1] Yes, this looks like one of the spiritual disciplines discussed in the last post because it is, but I’m moving to somewhere new I promise.  The Sermon on the Mount was among the obvious that Christians focused on, but Kreider highlights another one that was cited most by early writers. It was Isaiah 2:2-4,[2]

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

This poem in Isaiah comes right after chapter one’s judgment on Israel, but it strangely looks beyond judgment to a vision of hope and a day when YHWH is tabernacled with the world again. He will be the life giving presence in Jerusalem which makes it the central place of peace that draws all nations. Walter Brueggemann also adds that Jerusalem is the torah of YHWH in which the torah will be the clue for peace and points to the way of justice for everyone.[3]  Perhaps a justice that only acts restoratively.  

            Fast-forward to the Christian writer Justin Martyr who said that while Isaiah’s words were not seen as fulfilled on the grand scale of a still violent and war stricken world, they were already being formed and fulfilled within the culture of church communities.[4] “We who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter, and every wickedness, have changed our warlike weapons (our swords into ploughshares and our spears into implements of tillage) and we cultivate piety, righteousness, philanthropy, faith and hope, which we have from the Father Himself through Him who was crucified.”[5]  Jesus’ life and teaching offered creative expression for the church community to live this out because it had a new way in which new possibilities were emerging.  But we can only get to the new way if we are willing let grace and spiritual humility lead us into rethinking everything.

As I said in part 1, conflict is not a bad thing, but our perspectives and responses to it tend to be quite terrible. Look at race in the U.S. right now. The black population clearly sees inherent racism in many areas but particularly in our justice system.  It seems that very few whites (especially those in power) are taking them seriously and many white people say awful things like slavery was in the past and “they just need to get over it” because it was their great-grandparents and grandparents enslaved and not them.

The black majority realize they are not being heard or taken seriously and they protest and form movements that attempt to highlight that they are witnessing police brutality and mass incarceration rates higher among them than anyone else and they are right. Yet nobody wants to step up for them and say “black lives matter” so they have had to do it themselves. The response to that from many has been to say well “all lives matter” even when they clearly don’t believe that and it only became another division for the political right and left to take sides on which itself seems to be a new turf for racial division.  Still not being heard though, many protests have turned violent which brought new condemnation and equally violent responses. 

Mark my words, this intractable polarization will continue so long as the adversarial thinking continues. Those with the dispute will continue to be ignored and downplayed by those who do not experience it firsthand and by those who want to make sure they stay suppressed.  Now I am sure there are arguments against me from other sides of the conflict, but it will not negate that somebody was first not being heard and the same old cycle of conflict with anger, violence, depression, broken relationships and so on is just being carried forward.

The counter-cultural witness that was in Isaiah’s vision, Jesus’ embodiment and the church’s continuation was that conflict was the uncomfortable failure that brought opportunity for change. But the hurt ones were heard by the other side who would confront the issues by taking it seriously and empowering all parties to work for change as one people, not “colorblind” as they say, but color-bound. 

To borrow Kreider’s illustration, in Acts the Hellenists within the church community were upset with the Hebrews because they were neglecting to feed their widows in the daily distribution of food (6:1-6).  Now note that the response was not to ignore them, or downplay their issue, but rather they assembled as a community and decided to appoint seven notably responsible people who would shoulder the task of distributing food just to them. The whole community liked the idea and it worked well.

So what I am trying to get at is that along with God’s grace and spiritual formation is the need to develop practices and skills that say we to belong to each other.  There are three main skills I will throw out there to consider (Kreider and Augsburger both tout these).  The first two are interlinked, “attentive listening” and “truth speaking”. Each highlight that communication is the key to a strong relationship, yet always has to be centered on some idea of love for the other. As David Augsburger says, “To love another is to invite, support and protect that person’s equal right to hear and be heard. To love is to listen; to be loved is to be fully heard. Love is first the action of the eyes attending, the ears attuning and then the soul connecting.”[6]  And if you follow the God who is love then there should be no reservations about wanting to follow this.

Subsequently, “attentive listening” is to suspend judgment and receive the criticism not in a way that reads something else into it or using what is being said to create ammo for a counter argument, but by truthfully attending to what is said and meant and uninterruptedly identify with what they are feeling. Another way to think about it is as a matter of being open to a different perspective and goals and taking it seriously.  "Truth speaking" correspondingly works to mutually use the simplest and clearest words one can come up with to convey and clarify their meaning and experience.  Then, as Miroslav Volf says, “…we enlarge our thinking by letting the voices and perspectives of others, especially those with whom we may be in conflict, resonate within ourselves…”[7] This helps us to see and hear each other.

          The third skill is alertness to community wisdom. Community is always a complex intertwining of lives and experience that is part of something larger especially in the church sense. Churches are usually a close knit people who have entered the story of the Prince of Peace and we can often recognize those among us who genuinely embody that (usually the older generation). We then learn that way of peace best when those who have been well formed by it consistently model it, teach it and empower others to do it better.  We are creatures of mimetic behavior (see Rene Girard for more on that) and so it must first be learned by observing others doing it well and then become a padawan of sorts to follow "the way". Thus the way justice and peace is learned and practiced inside the church will become the way justice and peace is practice outside of the church and if it does not embody Christ’s peace we might need to raise some questions to our church leaders.  

 Now, I believe this can only lead to conversations about mutual accountability and how to discern as a community. Yet what this is about is that we are to be a people so committed to the practices and values of peace (as-well-as belonging to each other) that good outcomes will be subsequent but not central to our task.  Peace is the way, not the end goal. 

So to tie this back together we live lives in flux. What began with encountering God’s transformative grace and work should continue with our connecting with God in spiritual disciplines of fasting, prayer, worship, silence and so forth to internalize Jesus’ way of peace, and then this should lead us to outwardly rethink how we relate to everyone else and become better at making room and tending to each other.  If we do this regularly together, we will be a community that no longer needs to fear conflict because with God we know how to care for it, transform it and even welcome it into our lives growing together.   

[1] Alan Kreider. The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic 2016), 91.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Walter Brueggemann. Isaiah 1-39: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press 1998), 24.

[4] A. Kreider, 92.

[5] As quoted by Kreider from Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho 110.3.

[6] David Augsburger. Caring Enough to Confront: How to Undersand and Express Your Deepest Feelings Toward Others (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Publishing 3^rd Ed. 2009), 29.

[7] Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press 1996), 213.