Being anti-war is easy. Peace-making is hard. I suck at it sometimes, but I'm pretty sure I would be much worse at it if I wasn't even trying. There is no peace without justice, so peace-making has to be about trying to create spaces where both I and the structures around me are treating people with the respect that all image-bearers of God deserve.Here's a digression that I may flesh out soon:
I believe that the means are the ends, so I can't build something good based on anger or fear or disrespect or trying to shove a particular political platform down anybody's throat. Most of us have come to our particular opinions through our lived experience, not logical arguments, so talking myself hoarse probably won't change anybody's mind.
Christy's post reminds me of the use of the phrase city on a hill at President Reagan's funeral. This is how a city on a hill exerts its influence--by being a good example, not by threatening and attacking. I hate the way that phrase is misused. The city on a hill is the church--God's people, not a particular nation. Governor John Winthrop was hoping that the good example of the Massachusetts Bay Company would purify the Church of England. He certainly didn't envision anything like the United States as it is today pretending to be God's city on a hill.
The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, "Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside, to lodge and get provisions; for we are here in a deserted place." But he said to them, "You give them something to eat." They said, "We have no more than five loaves and two fish--unless we are to go and buy food for all these people." For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, "Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each." They did so and made them all sit down. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.--Luke 9:12-17 (from today's Sacred Space.
