The 2001 Quaker Peace Roundtable:
WORKSHOP: What Can the
Bible teach Us About Peacemaking? -- 4
Ron
Mock
3. God is Truth
We are used to affirming that “the truth will set you free.” What we mean
by that is often obscure. The Biblical portrait of God as Truth, as the personification of
this ideal, has implications which are important for peacemaking.
Right off the
bat, it becomes pretty much impossible for a biblical peacemaker to succumb to
thoroughgoing relativism. Sure, different cultures do things differently, and there is no
automatic standing for a member of one culture to criticize another based on its
difference. But if God personifies Truth,
then there is a Standard to which all
cultures, and all persons, are accountable. Or,
to put the point in more Gandhian terms, there is Truth toward which we all should aspire
to grow.
Conflict becomes
largely a process by which the disputants are invited by God to learn more about Truth,
from each other and from the context of their disputing. Biblical peacemakers are pushed
to approach issues with humility. God knows everything, but we don’t. The Bible has
plenty of accounts of God using surprising people (or even donkeys, whirlwinds, or bushes)
to teach the devout something crucial about Truth.
Thus, the
peacemaker, knowing that she sees only “through a glass darkly” whereas God sees
everything clearly, learns to listen to everyone (and, I suppose in some way) to
everything, expecting to hear the voice of God. She listens in Meeting, of course, and to
her mentors. But she also listens to her
enemies, even the worst of them; and even to the natural order. I don’t know what I think about the notion
of natural law, but the Biblical lesson seems to be to listen wherever that of God can be
found. And nature is certainly one of those
places.
Conversely, if
God may be expected to teach through anyone, then in order for Truth to be one, everyone
must have a voice. Having a way to be heard is a basic human need, a requirement for
finding and doing God’s will (and, thus, a factor in deciding what is a true
“minimum wage” as we will discuss below).
If Truth is an attribute of God and the ultimate good, then we can rely on the
truthful to be good for us, and for everyone else. Evil
may be understood as distance from Truth. Anything that is true cannot harm us. Certainly
they don’t bribe or take bribes: they want choices to be made on their merits. But
biblical peacemakers go much further. They refuse to cut
any moral corners. They don’t manipulate facts, or deceive. They are
transparent to their friends and their enemies. The
last thing a biblical peacemaker wants is for anyone to make a choice while laboring under
a misconception.
Faith in the benefits of seeking Truth, and humility about one’s own grasp of
it, gives Biblical peacemakers a renewed respect for authorities outside themselves. Friends submit leadings to the Meeting to be sure
to confirm their Truthfulness. This is an
expression of both humility and faith out of respect for Truth. Biblical peacemakers show similar respect for
anyone, or any group, who shares the Meeting’s advantages in seeking Truth: better
connections with reality’s immense variety, and with the needs and wants of other
people; better capacity to reflect, independent of one’s own passions or
self-interest; more opportunity to coordinate one’s own actions with others.
Democratic legislatures score very highly on these variables, as do judges in common law
traditions amid effective adversarial process. If either agency tells you not to sell
coffee at 180 degrees through a drive up window, you can be fairly confident their edicts
hew closely to Truth, closer than you are likely to be able to do with your limited
contacts and unconscious biases.
Because biblical peacemakers believe Truth and Goodness are both attributes of God,
they go into conflict humbly, expecting to learn from any quarter, trying to give voice to
everyone (and maybe even every thing) affected by the dispute. They are transparent in their own lives, and
encourage it in others. They acknowledge the strengths of those who are in a better
position to assess the Truth in an issue. They tend to find their worlds populated by
legitimate authorities, and accord them due deference rather than pridefully assuming
their own superiority at discerning Truth.
4. God is merciful and just
If God can be both merciful and just, then both must be possible at the same time. Christians emphasize the aspect of God’s
mercy that leads to forgiveness for our sins. Believers
who want to be Christ-like must live in the tension between mercy and justice, working for
both at the same time. Like God’s, our
forgiveness is unconditional. But
reconciliation may not be complete without justice. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation
commissions are only one very promising experiment in finding ways to meld mercy and
justice.
Peacemakers have
to “separate persons from problems,” as Fisher and Ury put it. The Bible teaches that the only part of this world
that can last forever is the human soul. God intended us to live in reconciled
relationships. Jesus died to help everyone reconcile to God, and each other, for all
eternity. Imagine what an eternal reconciled relationship would be like. 50-year marriages would seem like first dates.
Even if I annoy you now, so you drop me to the bottom of your list of “People
I’d Like to Get to Know Better in Heaven,” eternity is a very long time. Eventually you would have crossed everyone else
off that list, and it will be my turn. And we
would still have an eternity in front of us to get to know one another.
Of course, by
then, under the influence of God and everyone else in Heaven, even I will be a pretty nice
guy. So you’ll probably find the
experience surprisingly enjoyable.
Now consider
your worst enemy. According to the Bible,
Jesus died for him, too, intending to make a way for him to come into eternal life, too.
Maybe he didn’t even make your list of “People I’d Like to Get to
Know.” But God’s will is that you
and he will also have forever to get acquainted. Eventually you and he are slated to
become closer than brothers.
No wonder the
Bible, which speaks so clearly about justice, also exhorts us to be quick to forgive. Of course we are to stand with the weak and
oppressed, especially when they do not have access to means to meet their needs, and have
no way to be heard. But even the oppressor is
beloved by God, and so deserves our love. And
even the best of us need God’s forgiveness, and so do not have grounds to withhold
forgiveness from someone else.
So far we have focused on Biblical
themes that draw mostly on God’s nature and relationship with us. We have been looking outward or forward to
God’s paradise – where we can see clearly pure Goodness, Truth, Mercy and
Justice, and no one’s needs will go unmet. This
is a consistent Biblical theme – the “Kingdom of God” is coming off in the
future, or even in the next world. But it
also has already come, at the Creation, in the form of the nation of Israel (especially in
the time of the Judges), and most powerfully in the life of Jesus. So Biblical peacemakers can justifiably think of
themselves as working in the midst of God’s realm.
Because it is partly here already, peacemakers can have confidence that the
promise of a loving, just, merciful, true omnipotent God is good for us, as well as for
the next world.
But now I want
to turn our attention to some features of this world, even in its unredeemed aspects. We start with a foundational point, one implied by
the Creation iself and reaffirmed in many ways throughout the Bible.
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