As November approaches, questions of peace, justice, leadership, and our responsibilities to one another feel especially timely.
This month, Alumnx Council President Rev. Dr. Daniel Rodriguez Schlorff reflects on the meaning of peacemaking in a world shaped by conflict, threats, and fear. Drawing on Christian teachings and the example of Jesus, he asks what it truly means to pursue peace while recognizing the humanity of those we are taught to see as enemies.
Peace Cannot Be Threatened into Existence
This I believe…
I believe peace cannot be threatened into existence.
This week, the President of the United States stood before the United Nations and spoke about peace with Iran. And then, almost in the same breath, he contemplated annihilation.
The contradiction is so enormous that it is difficult to know where to begin.
Make peace with us, or we will destroy you.
Choose life, or we will kill you.
Come to the negotiating table, or there may be no one left to negotiate.
It is a strange invitation.
And I believe Christians, especially Christians who claim to follow the Prince of Peace, ought to notice the absurdity.
Because somewhere along the way, we have become remarkably skilled at putting the word peace on things that look suspiciously like violence.
We have peacekeepers carrying weapons.
Peace secured through deterrence.
Peace maintained by the threat of mutually assured destruction.
And now, apparently, peace offered with annihilation waiting in the fine print.
I understand the argument behind deterrence. Human beings have been making it since long before anyone invented nuclear weapons. Carry a large enough stick, the reasoning goes, and perhaps nobody will make you swing it.
Maybe.
But Christianity begins somewhere altogether different.
Our central symbol is not the sword.
It is the cross.
And the cross is, among other things, Christianity’s everlasting warning about what happens when empire becomes convinced that violence will finally solve its problems.
Rome crucified people to keep the peace.
That was the language of empire. Pax Romana. Roman peace.
Peace maintained by soldiers.
Peace maintained by intimidation.
Peace maintained by crosses lining the roads so everyone understood exactly what would happen if they disturbed the tranquility.
And into that world walked Jesus.
He did not announce a stronger empire.
He announced another way of being human.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Love your enemies.
Pray for those who persecute you.
Put away your sword.
Those teachings are beautiful stitched onto pillows. They become considerably less decorative when nations begin threatening one another.
Because Jesus seems stubbornly unwilling to give us the convenient loophole we keep searching for.
He never says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, provided they possess overwhelming firepower.”
He never says, “Love your enemies, unless they are geopolitical adversaries.”
He never says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, unless the polling is bad.”
Jesus offers us something far more difficult.
He asks us to believe that peace is not merely the absence of enemies.
Peace is the presence of justice.
The presence of dignity.
The presence of relationship.
The presence of enough imagination to believe that the person across the border is a human being before that person is a problem.
That does not mean pretending danger is not real. It does not mean ignoring injustice. It does not mean nations have no responsibility to protect human life.
Peacemaking is not passivity.
But there is a moral difference between confronting violence and becoming intoxicated with the possibility of greater violence.
There is a difference between protecting life and threatening to erase generations of it.
And perhaps this is where Christians have something especially important to remember.
There is no such thing as an enemy civilization.
There are civilizations containing people.
Children doing homework.
Grandmothers making dinner.
Musicians tuning instruments.
People falling in love.
People arguing about religion.
People worrying about money.
People praying.
People laughing at jokes that probably would not translate very well into English.
Human beings.
The Christian imagination insists upon seeing them.
Every last inconvenient, complicated, beloved one of them.
I believe peace begins there.
Not when we discover the weapon frightening enough to make everyone behave.
Not when one nation becomes powerful enough to terrify another into submission.
But when we refuse to surrender our capacity to recognize the humanity of those we have been taught to fear.
At Pacific School of Religion, many of us learned theology by asking difficult questions of inherited certainties. Perhaps this is another certainty worth interrogating: the ancient assumption that enough violence will eventually produce peace.
Human history has run that experiment quite a few times.
The laboratory is full of graves.
So I believe Christians must keep insisting on the scandalous alternative.
Peace through justice.
Peace through courage.
Peace through diplomacy.
Peace through repentance.
Peace through the stubborn refusal to imagine another people as disposable.
Because you cannot bomb the world into beloved community.
You cannot annihilate your way into reconciliation.
And you cannot threaten people into peace.
This I believe.
