Sunday, May 3, 2020
Balance is not easy to find.
Beauty and Peace are as difficult.
God guides us to both, as gift and blessing unearned.
2 Samuel 2:26
Then Abner called to Joab, ‘Is the sword to keep devouring for ever? Do you not know that the end will be bitter? How long will it be before you order your people to turn from the pursuit of their kinsmen?’
1 Corinthians 7:15
But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. It is to peace that God has called you.
Words of Grace For Today
God calls us to peace.
Peace between nations, between people, between spouses, and peace within ourselves.
Peace is much more than the absence of conflict.
Given merely the absence of conflict we humans always find our way into open conflict quite easily. It is because everyone is wrong about something, and they still think they are right. [Except of course me. I’m always right. Right?]
Girard provides that it is more complex than that, involving mimetic desires that lead to competition, which is ‘resolved’ through scapegoating. We compete with each other for what we see as limited resources/things. Aware we cannot afford open conflict with our closest friends we project our conflict on to some innocent, vulnerable bystander. Seeing that innocent as the source of our problem we destroy that person. Our urge to compete and destroy is ‘satisfied’, the thing we competed for becomes insignificant, and we are able to return to a ‘peaceful’ co-existence.
Except for the innocent person we’ve gaslit, attacked, destroyed and most often exiled or killed.
And except that, since we are not entirely oblivious to reality, we know we are now guilty of ruining an innocent person, of not working out our conflict with each other, and the root cause of that conflict is not addressed. It just goes underground in both of us, in our relationship, only to re-emerge at a later date. Then it will be an even less comprehensible conflict, which we will ‘resolve’ by destroying yet another innocent bystander.
Peace must be diligently sought anew each hour of each day, or it is lost. And it is lost long before anyone notices any conflict arising.
Peace is lost when we no longer see the souls of other people, for whom Jesus died, as the most important part of our own lives, when we no longer give everything we are to provide care for those in our daily lives, or when we no longer work to meet the needs and satisfy the yearnings of those with whom our lives are intertwined.
Peace is a marvellous way of being. It is fragile and can disappear in an instant with a [wrong] word or deed. It is threatened most by an errant thought.
God gives us peace. We can treasure it, with our hearts, minds, and strength.