For some time, I’ve understood “peace” in terms of the Hebrew word “shalom” (שָׁלוֹם), which can also be translated as “being whole,” “success” or “well-being.” With these possible definitions, I have further understood Biblical “peace” as one’s rightly relating to the whole of creation and creation’s Creator. Thus from a personal and individual perspective, it is both objective and subjective.
As a subjective phenomenon, culturally we are “at peace,” when the sum of our experience is tranquil, healthy and promising; and as an objective phenomenon, we are “at peace,” when no conflict exists – especially wars between nations. That is, subjectively we are “at peace,” when we feel good emotionally; objectively we are “at peace,” when our nation is not engaged in a military conflict. However, typically we concede that peace is relative: I am “peaceful,” because I am mostly calm and content, and the US is “peaceful,” because it is not at war, apart from our “war on terror.”
These thoughts are not particularly new to me (and most likely not to you either), but they took a decided turn this morning as I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thoughts regarding peace:
“When we wish to speak about the conditions for peace, … [the] relationships between two nations bear close analogy to relationships between two individuals. The conditions that are opposed to peace are in the one as in the other relationship: lust for power, pride, inordinate desire for glory and honor, arrogance, feelings of inferiority, and strife over more living space and over one’s ‘bread’ or life. What is sin for an individual is never virtue for an entire people or nation.”[1]
The turn for me came in that last sentence: I have known that many discount Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as inappropriate for international relations – as a personal ethic, it might be suitable but not as an ethic for nations. And yet Bonhoeffer’s words gave me pause for thought. On the anniversary of 911, I wonder: what might happen if we American Christians truly knew ourselves as blessed to be a blessing – to build up others, and other nations, with our great abundance, rather than seeking to secure safe pleasures? I wonder what might happen, if we were truly at peace within and among ourselves. Oh, I know: our world continues to produce the Saddam Husseins, the Kim Yong-uns … but I still wonder.
Faithfully,
Stan
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom, Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson, eds. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995), p. 95.