The 2001 Quaker Peace Roundtable:
WORKSHOP: What Can the
Bible teach Us About Peacemaking? -- 3
Ron
Mock
IV. The
Biblical Message on Peacemaking
The Bible
addresses peacemaking in all three aspects of our lives: coercive areas such as
governments, exchange points including markets, and areas of affiliation which we are
calling communities. When we
catch the Bibles drift on this fuller vision of peacemaking, we will find that the
way before us, far from being passive, pulls us into action on fronts in every arena of
life. The compleat peacemaker is a listener,
creator, visionary, activist, and culture builder who finds ways to nourish shalomist
peace in every arena of life.
Most of the
Biblical studies of peacemaking and pacifism take a detailed, passage-by-passage approach. Done poorly, that approach descends to the level
of proof-texting, picking and choosing among the verses that support ones position. Some books do better by including discussion of
the problem texts the ones that proof-texters for military service
might pick out. The good text-by-text studies help us stay connected to the Bible as the
Word of God. They reproduce in Bible study
the close attention Friends give to individual comments people make in open worship. One
cannot know Gods voice without listening to it closely.
But I want to
join those who take a different approach. In
this paper I almost ignore individual texts, to try to capture the broadest themes in the
Bible. Partly this is a concession to time
and space. Partly it is a concession to
laziness. But my principle justification for this approach is the one I alluded to
earlier. To know what the Bible teaches, and
even to find a way to harmonize individual passages in tension with each other, we have to
step back and try to see the entire Biblical text as a whole.
The Bible has
many themes. But when it comes to teaching us
about peacemaking, it seems to have at least these six:
1. God is the
omnipotent Creator
2. God is love
3. God is truth
4. God is merciful and just
5. Everything is Gods
6. The
world is fallen but redeemed and the people in it are of infinite value
These may
seem like obvious points, pretty standard Christian theology. But their implications have some interesting
impacts on how we might understand peacemaking. Taking all six together lets us build one
upon the other in exciting ways.
1. God is the omnipotent Creator
God,
who created the universe, cannot be confined to it. Things can happen which do not follow
our settled (and sometimes dismal) expectations. That
is, miracles are possible. Bible believers should expect them, at least once in a while.
Biblical peacemakers look beyond appearances for that of God in every reality.
2.
God is love.
If God
is love, and loves us (and the rest of creation), what does this mean? There are a lot of ways to describe love. Some of them are pretty extravagant. For our purposes I am ready to settle for a rather
skimpy definition of love: wanting the loved one to have a way to meet her needs. Some may
not be satisfied with this definition of love. Couldnt we ask for just a little bit
more in our definition of the kind of love a Creator and redeemer would have for us? Even
George Bailey, before he was ready to confess his love for Mary, was already prepared to promise her the moon.
Maybe
we could say more about Gods love than wanting us to have ways to meet our
needs. Go ahead, be more expansive if
you wish. But the skimpy version is more than
enough to lead us directly to some rather eye-popping conclusions, as we will see
directly, so I am a little nervous about using a richer conception of Gods love.
What
if we join the first theme (God as omnipotent) with this theme (God loves us)? The first theme tells us that anything God wants
is possible God couldnt very well be omnipotent if this were not true. The second one tells us that God want us all to
have ways to meet our needs. Put them
together, and it adds up to this: in any situation, God wants us to have ways to meet our
needs, and what God wants is possible. Thus,
no matter how desperate the conflict seems, there must exist some way for all needs to be
met.
This
is not the same as saying all needs are always met.
According to the Bible, God has left us free to make choices, to both err
and succeed. Each time a poor choice is made, opportunities are lost. We sometimes miss opportunities, even deliberately
sometimes. But they were there; they are
there still if time has not run out.
The
biblical peacemaker is caught in a wonderful trap called Hope. Believing the Bibles depiction of a loving
omnipotent God, she can at the minimum come to any situation confident that God has a way
in mind for all needs to be met. Like the boy looking for the pony in a room full of
manure, the Biblical peacemaker knows there is that of God even in the middle of a fight.
The
Biblical peacemaker will never settle for leaving anyone out with no way to meet their
needs. To do so would be to despair, to
disbelieve in God. Instead, she will take risks and embody hope.
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