“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.” (Colossians 3:15)
“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7)
“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” (1 Corinthians 14:33)
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…” (Romans 5:1)
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” (Romans 16:20)
Usually I spend my sunday mornings walking the dogs and listening to podcasts. Three of them this past week were on the subject of peace.
One wouldn’t think the idea of peace could be misunderstood or overly complicated, and yet it didn’t take long for all three of these podcasts to underscore the need to dig underneath the surface, beginning with some of the common usages of the word in our present day.
For example, we might think about peace in the sense of “peace and quiet.” In this sense it evokes the absence of noise and distraction.
Or we might think of peace in terms of “world peace” or “justice of the peace,” or peace officers, peace treaties, peace corps, all which would evoke the absence of violence, war and conflict, or the subsequent justice or agreement or reconciliation that accompanies different ways of precievably bringing this about or solving the problem.
There’s the phrasing “peace out,” or simply “peace,” which, if outdated, carries the connotation of goodbye and good luck. Which is perhaps not far off from the phrasing “peace be with you,” which indicates a blessing.
Looking backwards from the English usage, which interestingly replaced the old English word for “happiness” (English frið, also sibb, which also meant “happiness.”). The old English comes from the old French word pais, which comes from the old Latin word Pax (also a Greek Goddess). All of these usages flow from the essential concept of a treaty or a rule and any subsequent agreement or Law. Or more specifically, to borrow from the original definitions, “freedom from civil disorder” or “internal peace of a nation.”
In the Greek, the word translated peace is Eirene. In the Hebrew the word is Shalom, both words writer Hugh Whelchel does a good job unpacking in his dual articles, “What is Shalom According to the Bible,” and “Are Shalom and Eirene the Same.”
According to Whelchel, the Hebrew and Greek’s strongest association is to that similar state of Rule and Law (or order), but it retains a much deeper thematic interest relating to wholeness or completeness. Thus it reaches beyond circumstance and speaks to the narrative idea of fulfillment.
It is this last distinction that is important for understanding peace in a Judeo-Christian sense. What is distinct about peace in this particular narrative is the particular nature of God’s “redemptive” work and the shape of God’s established rule (or Kingdom). The word peace cannot be understood outside of this story. Further, it is distinctly used to proclaim this story in the midst of cirucmstances that write otherwise. In this sense, it reaches to a greater Truth beyond it’s realization, which plays out into how one lives their life according to this peace.
I also heard mention of the Hebrew word Shalom’s connection to the Arabic word salam, which adds the conceptualization of peace as a space in which to bring about new creation, a space that is dependent on a moment of true reconciliaton between that which is divided. In the Judeo-Christian story, the creation-new creation narrative sits at the heart of the story, with Jesus framing the moment in which a divided creation, heaven and earth, is brought back togther, proclaiming peace on earth.
There is another facet of this that stood out for me- peace is not something I obtain for myself, rather it is something that is given. It is a reality that exists external to me. What is given precisely? The proclamation of this completeness, this wholeness, both in the larger narrative framework of new creation and in the particularness of reconiliation and restoration between the inhabitants of this present creation. This is the Gospel of peace.
Thus, peace in the Judeo-Christian sense is about contrasting rules, or contasting realities. It is also about how that which peace opposes and serves finds an answer. In the Judeo-Christian narrative, Christ’s rule opposes the rule of Empire. It also opposes how Empires concieve of peace being brought about and to what ends. In the Empire sense of the word, peace is something one does. In the Judeo-Christian sense of the word, peace is something one recieves.
In other words, peace is a narrative of hope.
But it is an embodied hope. Meaning, the giving of hope is so that we might bear it out in our lives, in the world. And here comes that important aspect of the narrative- in a world were peace has not yet been realized. Where else can the proclamation that peace is both realized and found in Christ find its power? Its meaning?
Or more importantly, where else can we find an answer to the divisions we find within the body of Christ, or within Israel? Within the whole of humanity and God’s creation? What else allows us to live as though reconciliation is a thing even where the division reigns? What frees us to forgive even where relationships remain broken? What frees us to serve and to give and to attend and to help, even where such actions can only ever bring about a world that remains mired in brokenness and conflict?
As someone with a very real anxiety disorder, the more I listened, and then contemplated, and then read, the more it became deeply aware to me- I have a complicated relationship with the word peace. Perhaps its my deeply rooted cynicism, which I confess was only made more aware and more vibrant by my foray into atheism and some of its most popular belief systems like secular humanism and positivism. Here I think of the endless conversations I’ve had with my older brother, perhaps one of my most timeless sparring partners to this end (although these days he has stepped out of the battle). As one of the most devoted positivists I know, his life is driven by a seemingly unshakeable belief in the ability of humans to bring about a changed world. When I pushback on this basic notion, bringing up science and history and the study of social and societal evolution to demonstrate that this most certaintly cannot be the case the will never be the case, I am typically met with some form of an answer that reduces peace to personal happiness. Which makes the shared connection between the two words all the more interesting. And yet, happiness is an illusion. It does not require peace, it requires manipulating our sense of what this world actually is. It requires reducing this world to something we can control, and finding our motivation to control it by appealing to false narratives. Poke that bubble using science? Using logic? Or have it burst by the simple awarness of reality itself, and the cloak comes off. And more importantly, when that cloak comes off, it reveals the kind of anxiety this secularized approach to really represents, taking the fear of hell motifs from relgion and appapplying it to to trhe self made life, or the self made world and all its systems and constructs.
This had me thinking- if peace is something that can only truly be given, what about anxiety? What about fear? If it is the case that both peace and axiety are things that are given, it begs the question, from where do these things come from? In the Judeo-Christian narrative, peace come from the gift giver, the faithfulness of God in Jesus. Within this narrative, peace relates directly to the establishing of God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, the fulfillment of the new creation promise. Within this peace also speaks to the outcome of this fulfillment, which is reconciliation between all things.
This same narrative then locates anxiety, or fear, in a different rule, a different reality. A reality that it names the Powers of Sin and Death, which bind us to a different narrative. One of the great marks of the modern world here in the West, which isn’t all that disimmilar to what we find in the promises of the Roman Empire, is that the answer to anxiety is us. We conquer our fears. We reshape our world. We control our outcomes. This is, I believe, where anxiety, an epidemic in the modern world, truly gains its voice. Peace is no longer given, it is earned, accomplished, constructed, achieved. And anxiety an outcome of our own failures.
But here was my thought. What happens when I locate peace not in circumstance, but in, to borrow from Marilyn Robinson, the givenness of things? What happens if we locate peace and anxiety within different narratives of this world, of reality, a given hope as opposed to human accomplishment and failure?
I suppose we get to the question, of which is the true narrative and which is the false one. Or perhaps its more than that. Perhaps its a question of what we are rooting our hope in, and how it frees us to proclaim peace. Logically. Rationally. But also experientially.
What frees us to proclaim peace and what frees us to embody it.
The Stories of my Life 