In last month’s post, I shared what encouragement I found from the book of Daniel
while living in a time of devastating war here in the Middle East. Although he
was overwhelmed by the amount of destruction that was revealed to him, even to
the point of becoming physically ill, Daniel was strengthened by God and able
to continue in his daily responsibilities. He was able to be at peace even
while holding the knowledge of such tremendous suffering because of the
strengthening power of God’s grace.
But what
does it really mean to be at peace? Throughout this iteration of the decades-long
war that has been waging in the Holy Land, we have been praying for a just
peace—not simply for the war to end, but for it to end in such a way that the
conditions at the end of it are favorable for freedom, equality of opportunity,
and human flourishing for all peoples in this area. And yet, as I was reading a
book on a (seemingly) unrelated topic a few weeks ago, a sentence about peace
jumped out at me in a profound way.
In her book
Missional Motherhood (which, by the way, is based on the premise that
all Christian women are called to be mothers through discipleship regardless of
whether or not they have biological or adopted children), Gloria Furman (who
incidentally also lives in the Middle East, just in a different part) writes, “When
our modern ears hear the word peace, we think of the absence of
conflict, but the Hebrew word shalom speaks to the presence of
wholeness.”[i]
What a mind-blowingly transformative concept. And in true fashion, over the
past few weeks since I first read that line, God has brought the same idea to
my attention from multiple other sources, impressing upon me that this is
something I should pay attention to.
Gloria
Furman is right; we usually think of peace as the opposite of war, or perhaps
as a state of calm and quiet, e.g., “This is such a peaceful night.” But what
if we saw “the opposite of war” or “a state of calm” as really being a
condition of wholeness? It makes sense when you stop to think about it. This
war has created the opposite of wholeness. It has created incalculable
fracturing and/or total destruction of homes, land, infrastructure,
communities, families, bodies, and minds. And when we say we are praying for
peace, are we not really praying for the wholeness of all these things to be
restored? (Of course, there are some things this war has taken that can never
be returned to us this side of heaven, such as dear brothers and sisters in the
faith, but we trust that while their earthly bodies were shattered, their
spirits are alive and well with the Lord, and we pray for the broken hearts of
those who remain to be healed by the grace of God).
On an even
deeper level, though, there is a sense in which the opposite of wholeness is
not simply the effect of the war but is the preexisting state out of which this
bloody, decades-long conflict has grown in the first place. There are those who
seek satisfaction in possession of land, those who seek to fill the gaping hole
of grief by enacting vengeance, those whose physical needs and imposed
limitations drive them to desperation and violence, and those who find their
identity in hating “the other.” In each case, whether they realize it or not,
people are trying to fill a void in their lives. They are trying to make themselves
whole, but because they don’t understand the nature of their need and the
Source of the solution, they end up creating less peace instead of achieving
it.
In the days
of ancient Judah, God reprimanded the southern kingdom’s leaders through the
prophet Jeremiah: “from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They
have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 8:10b-11, ESV). The Jewish religious
leaders looked at the brokenness of the people and brushed it off as no big
deal. They proclaimed wholeness where there was none. What a grievous mistake
to make. In reality, the people expressed their woundedness by forsaking the
LORD their God:
“But
this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; they have turned aside and
gone away. […] For wicked men are found among my people; they lurk like fowlers
lying in wait. They set a trap; they catch men. Like a cage full of birds,
their houses are full of deceit; therefore they have become great and rich;
they have grown fat and sleek. They know no bounds in deeds of evil; they judge
not with justice the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper, and they do
not defend the rights of the needy. Shall I not punish them for these things?
declares the LORD, and shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as
this?” (Jeremiah
5:23, 26-28, ESV).
And prior
to this, God pointed out the same woundedness of the northern kingdom of
Israel, through the prophet Isaiah, “Their feet run to evil, and they are
swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;
desolation and destruction are in their highways. The way of peace they do
not know, and there is no justice in their paths; they have made their
roads crooked; no one who treads on them knows peace. Therefore justice
is far from us, and righteousness does not overtake us; we hope for light, and
behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom” (Isaiah 59:7-9,
ESV, emphasis added).
We tend to
think that justice must be established in order for peace to reign, but we see
from these verses that justice, righteousness, and light are absent when peace
(i.e., wholeness) is not present. The greatest capacity for justice and
righteousness exists in a person who is whole. And therein lies our problem. The
true nature of our need is that we are helplessly lacking without Christ. Yes,
we have been given the common grace of life, health, and abilities, of
intuition, intellect, emotions, and so much more. But even with all of those
beautiful gifts, it is impossible for us to fulfill our intended purpose of
being in right relationship with our Creator and glorifying His Name in the
earth without our wounds being healed, without receiving a new heart and the
reconciliation made available to us because of Jesus’s righteous life,
sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection whereby our sins can be forgiven
and the holiness of Christ can be imputed to us.
As the Holy
Spirit said through the apostle Paul, “For in him [Jesus] all
the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to
reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making
peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:19-20, ESV,
emphasis added). Jesus is the one who makes peace between us and God. With our
earlier discussion about the definition of peace in mind, we see that this
doesn’t just mean Jesus resolved the conflict between us and God (although He
did), but in a deeper sense, it means that He restored the state of wholeness
in our relationship with God. No longer is our relationship fractured by
rebellion, pride, and self-righteousness. No longer are we separated from our
holy Creator because of our unholiness. In Jesus, we exchange our filthy rags
for His pristine garments (see Isaiah 64:6; Isaiah 61:10; 2 Corinthians 5:21);
we give up our heart of stone and receive a heart of flesh (see Ezekiel 36:26);
we are revived from death to abundant life (see John 5:24, 10:10).
But our
relationship with God isn’t the only one made whole by Jesus. Jesus also makes
possible the restoration of wholeness in our broken relationships with our
fellow humans. As the Holy Spirit said through Paul elsewhere, “For he
[Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken
down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by
abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might
create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and
might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby
killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who
were far off and peace to those who were near. For through
him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians
2:14-18, ESV, emphasis added).
Specifically
talking about Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews), Paul explains that Jesus makes it
possible for the hate-filled relationship between these two groups, which is
marked by hostility, to be completely restored so that not only is there no
hostility but also there is no fracturing. There are no longer two groups of
people but rather one unified whole who are no longer blood-sworn enemies but
are Blood-bought family. Only Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit can
effect such profound change to the glory of God the Father!
But we must
recognize our need and accept the Solution, because until we accept the gift of
peace from God through Jesus, we will keep making war. It is when we “let the
peace of Christ rule in [our] hearts, to which indeed [we] were called in
one body” (Colossians 3:15, ESV) that we cease operating out of our
brokenness. It is when we embrace the wholeness He offers that we cease trying
to amass earthly property for ourselves, oppressing those who stand in our way,
and we cease lashing out in desperation against our oppressors. It is when we
walk in this wholeness that we are not threatened by the prospect of offering
forgiveness and mercy to others nor by the idea of loving those we used to
hate. It is when we live in the power of the Holy Spirit that we can be at
peace in a time of war.
I can think
of no better way to close than to leave you with the following benediction from
2 Thessalonians 3:16 (ESV): “Now may the Lord of peace
himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with
you all.” Amen.
PC: Rose Creger Tankard. Used with permission.
[i] Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2016), 117.
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