OUR RELIGION IS A PEACE-BUILDER

 

The world feels to be in turmoil. We have two major wars going on this week. We lament that the invasion of the Ukraine has now entered its sixth hundredth day. The foreign ministers of the major Western countries are hop-scotching from government to government in the Middle East trying to bring stability and sanity to the war-torn situation. 

 

While all this is exploding my prayer turns towards the power to work and build peace that comes from my Christian religion. This is not an escape but a challenge to be embraced by the power that comes from living in the Gospel of Christ. 

 

We must never deny the power of evil or deny the terrible consequences of any war. We must walk through the graveyards of the soldiers of war and all the victims of war who suffered  as a result of disease, displacement and starvation. At every turn we must ask: what has war ever accomplished? How has war ever made humanity better? 

 

Every war, every battle (even the battles between the drug gangs on our Canadian streets) is a failure of humanity. We are at our worst selves when we make war!

 

How many countless people have been displaced and have their homes and their fields destroyed by war? Has anyone ever counted the number of refugees from all the wars of the last one hundred years? The suffering is indescribable!

 

The first victim, the first person to be shot down in a war, will be the truth!

 

We Christians have a very poor history when it comes to making war and causing great suffering to displaced refugees. We have much to repent by our participation and support for making war. 

 

Christians have always had a difficult time trying to justify the making of war.  Way back in the fifth century we had the thinking of Augustine that created the ‘just war’ theory. With the advent of atomic weapons that theory collapses. 

 

Jesus came to bring humanity to be builders of peace. 

 

This is where every human being needs to become aware of the power within their own lives and their own community to bring and build peace. 

 

First, we must be reclaimed by the love of God for every single human being. We must see everyone (no matter how different from ourselves) as the very image of God. We must value, treat every human being with the respect that arises from the simple fact that they exist. Here is where I rejoice to see so many of my fellow Christians deliberately trying to speak good of each person. They wrestle with any feelings of racism, superiority they might be tempted to hold in their own lives. They do the hard work of facing their own shadow side when it comes to valuing other people. 

 

And then they practice respect for each human being. They ask the tough questions, such as ‘does everyone have safe secure dwelling and clean water? ‘ Each country has its blind spots and does not pay attention to the people on the periphery who barely survive. They work for more justice and respect within our own country. And at the same time, they extend that respect and care to the neglected people in other countries.

 

This is not a time to throw up our hands. Our Christian religion gives us great strength. It gives us great power to go forth into the next day with hope.