“So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other [people] and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”
This is a quote from “New Seeds of Contemplation” by Thomas Merton, a famous Catholic monk, priest and writer whose writing and ministry spanned from the 1940s until his death in the late 1960s. While it was written about 40 years ago, this eloquent passage transcends time and speaks to our inner core of faith.
This quote is relevant in our day because, sadly enough, there is a lack of wrestling with questions of the worth, justification and morality of the war in Iraq and the War on Terror and the possible consequences. It seems that in both our political and religious spheres we lacked the foresight and wisdom to truly question these things.
But even now it is important that we do debate and come to conclusions or even new revelations about the morality of this conflict. If the final judgment is that this war was a mistake, unjustified or even immoral, it is imperative that history does not repeat itself.
Such a debate is very important, but there is a deeper issue in the context of our Christian faith that must be dealt with first — the allegiance to a particular party’s or ideology’s view of war. Sadly, we have come to a place that has put the majority of its values into one basket. The best summary of who and what we should follow is supreme in Colossians 1:16-17, “For by him all things were created … whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
This supremacy demands we listen to Jesus when he speaks in the Gospel about this. At least six times Jesus makes the famous exclamation, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He goes even further saying, “… pray for those who persecute you” as well as, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God.” These words should not be taken lightly but should be guidelines for beliefs on peace and nonviolence.
Sadly still, there seems to be a grand contradiction in this area. Even Christians will go to rallies and public protests against a war in another country. Yet there is fear, ignorance and apathy when it comes to opposing their own country. This seems to conflict with the long-standing history of nonviolence within the church. From the Apostles’ martyrdoms for the Gospel to Telemachus’s ultimate sacrifice that ended the brutal gladiatorial games to Saint Patrick’s radical nonviolence that brought salvation to the savage Celts, and from the words and actions of Martin Luther King standing for racial and global peace to the unyielding pacifist ministry of Desmond Tutu to defeat the injustice of apartheid, and with even more unmentioned, the history of nonviolence is displayed in the church. We should study these men and their actions and also bring that into our determinations.
It seems Bono’s lyrics ring true: “Heaven on Earth, we need it now …” We live in such a time of violence, oppression and war that it is easy to lose hope. But if we look upon the words of Jesus and the examples of these great men, we will be able to follow nonviolence in way that is pleasing to the Lord.
We as the Church of Christ have the ability and responsibility to bring about such nonviolence. We can and should be the leaders in nonviolent efforts to change our world. As Thomas Merton said, we should not hate those who make war, but hate the war and violence in ourselves. May we as Christians reestablish our history of peace not just within ourselves, but also in true responsible dissent, publicly acting the way we are intended to.
