Living in a Peace-Challenged World

The problems and challenges of today's world far outstrip our moral, ethical, and relational capabilities to respond. What's a Jesus-follower to do?

I leave you peace.
It is my own peace I give you.
I give you peace in a different way than the world does.
So don’t be troubled.
Don’t be afraid.

John 14:27, ERV

The various forms of social unrest and political cruelty in our country leaves lots of us peace-challenged. Because of the daily barrage of bad news and hateful social media at this turbulent time, people are desperate for peace and goodwill. The problems and challenges of the world far outstrip our moral, ethical, and relational capabilities to respond. Desperation has become a common rationale for all forms of violence: from war to everyday cutting remarks. Emotional cruelty is readily seen in social media and in the “comments” sections of news articles.

Several factors underlie and animate this reality: the need to win at all costs; the desire to posture oneself in a certain way; the urge to strongly express one’s political or theological views (without the sincere heart-desire to listen or to consider the perspective of another); the need to express relational hurts or moments of being slighted; being trapped by social or economic realities; workplace factions, or family tensions.

These all become the bedrock justification for our current, peace-bankrupt social discourse. The thinking often goes like this: something in the world, in my world, is horribly wrong. That wrongness means something should be done. That something can include all manner of violence, because, consciously or not, the end justifies the means. 

Such justifications lead to human interactions that are far too often marked by anger, meanness, and disrespect. Gone are conversation partners from whom we might learn, grow, and find new perspectives. In place of such discourse, an alarming pattern has arisen of dismissing, dividing from, condemning, or hating people. Conversation partners are no longer simply wrong or misinformed, they are evil, dehumanized, and made objects of ridicule.

This destructive civil discourse does not arise from out of the blue. It comes mostly from fear or disordered desires and is found in every human place of endeavor. It rarely occurs to us that ruthlessness does not find its rationale out there, in my “dumb,” “evil” friend, family member, or colleague at work, but in here—in my heart, thought-life, emotions, the current structure of my desires, and my fear-based anxious need to control outcomes, to win at all costs.

Given all this, peace seems to be impossible, just the wish dream of activists, pacifists, artists, and mystics. Peace seems weak. Contentious resentment, anger, and rage seem strong, the way to really get things done, to get one’s way, to make one’s point and to win. As humanity gives itself increasingly to combative forms of discourse, I observe people wondering, “Is this all going too far?” Peace is now being wondered about, prized even, and sought after.*

How to Find Peace

Even when the struggle for a peaceful spirit and peacemaking is real—such as when we need to resist bad-acting people or challenge social issues—there does not need to be unnecessary struggle in us. Jesus dealt with all manner of social, political, ethical, and religious conflict. And though he experienced troubles and felt a full range of human emotion, no one ever said that Jesus was characterized by crossness, exasperation, or touchiness that led to him being abusive, or even unkind.

Christ’s life depicted in the Gospels is one of majestic calm and serenity.

Charles Feinberg, “Peace,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology

How do we take on Jesus’ manner of being when we have troubled hearts from facing abuse, injustice, disease, and death?

Simply put, we pursue peacemaking and peace within by becoming disciples of Jesus, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). We apprentice ourselves to Jesus because he not only knows about peace—like a professor knows their subject matter—he experienced peace within social conflict and personal tribulation. Yet, he never let his rightful feelings of being troubled make him fight back on the terms of the world. He modeled peace-ability. He invites us into his kind of life, to follow him, and to learn to live our life in peace.

Today, can you join Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, who, full of the Holy Spirit, prayed:

 …Show us the way, one foot at a time, down the path of peace.

Luke 1:79, MSG

*Material excerpted from my book Deep Peace: Finding Calm in a World on Conflict and Anxiety (Zondervan, 2021).