In the Wake of Violence - Pt. 2

Blessed are the Peacemakers

Photo by Anne Moneymaker/Getty Images

In a previous post, I reflected on the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, which took place on July 13, 2024. As I watched the replays of the events, I kept thinking about how this could change a lot of things. At the time of that writing, it seemed like a historical hinge point. Three months later (October 2024), some things have changed, but by and large, it seems like the nation is basically the same as it was. Biden has stepped aside after maintaining he would not drop out of the race, allowing Harris to step-up to the plate as Trump’s challenger. We remember that there was an assassination attempt on Trump, but it seems like it has been overshadowed by his VP pick, JD Vance, and our bouts over immigration, race, abortion, and the economy. In other words, we’ve mostly returned to our post-2016 business as usual.

When I ended the last post, I left you, the reader, with a question I asked toward the beginning of the post,

How do we live as Christians tomorrow?

When I originally asked the question, I had two “tomorrows” in mind. The first was the literal next day. The second was the metaphoric “tomorrow” of life in the United States after an assassination attempt on a former president. Violence is always an option, and it is often boiling under the surface of people’s stress and fear, but it feels different when someone crosses that threshold and makes an attempt on someone’s life. At the time, it felt like the assassination attempt could deepen the divides between Republicans and Democrats, turn up the heat in our fighting, and embolden people into more violence. My question was motivated by my desire to explore how Christians could be peacemakers in a political climate where people and sides are seeking victory and control rather than peace.¹

The urgency of that moment has waned, at least for me, but the necessity of being peacemakers has not. To ask how Christians should live tomorrow is to ask how we should be living today. What was true about my answer to the question, namely making peace, is as true and urgent now as it was the morning of July 14. We still live in a state of deep division and distrust, social media and news outlets still capitalize on fear-mongering, and we are still called, as Christians, to be the shining light of our Good Father through our obedience to Jesus.

The Peace of the Lord Always be with You

Throughout the Old Testament, one of the hallmarks of God’s kingdom on earth is the presence of shalom and peace. When thinking of peace, we might think that it is simply the absence of conflict or strife, but that’s not the biblical image of shalom. One of Isaiah’s quintessential images of God’s reigning peace comes early in his book, and I believe it’s revealing.

In days to come
the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains…
Many people shall come and say,
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD’s house…
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, 
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples; 
they shall beat their swords into plowshares, 
and their spears into pruning hooks; 
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, 
neither shall they learn war any more."
Isaiah 2:3–4

When the people go up to the house of the Lord to learn from him, it sounds like it might be because they are in conflict, indicated by the fact that the Lord must “judge between the nations” and “arbitrate for many peoples.” After this arbitration, after this instruction by the Lord, the people return home and “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” They don’t need their weapons any longer because they have learned the way of peace from God. Instead of learning war, they learn shalom.

I’m under no impression that we are able to instantiate a political system that will bring about the shalom Jesus will bring when he rules on earth, but I also believe Christians are called by God to walk in this world as those in whom the peace of God already reigns. St. Paul says we are presently seated with Christ on his throne (Eph. 2:6) and that we are presently raised with him (Col. 3:1). St. Peter says God is already giving us all we need “for life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3). The New Testament is concerned about our ethics as disciples of Jesus, and each book has at least one section that is concerned with how we live in the world and how we treat other human beings. These ethics—whether we call them Christian ethics, Kingdom ethics, or something else—have their roots in the life of Jesus, in his teachings, and in the resurrected future in which Jesus already reigns.

This seems to be the logic undergirding the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke. Jesus has come to call people to himself, to create a community of people in covenant with God through him, and these teachings are a kind of rule of life given to those who would follow Jesus as his disciples.² When Jesus called us, and when we were baptized, every other identity was subjugated to the identity of being in Christ. This isn’t to say that other cultural, national, or family identities don’t matter, but our supreme identity is rooted in Jesus Christ and grows from him and his life. We may be loyal to our families, love our countries, and be proud of our ethnic and cultural backgrounds, but our devotion to Jesus comes before and supersedes them all, or at least it should (cf. Matt. 10:37).

This extends to our political affiliations. We may be more or less conservative, more or less progressive, more or less left or right, but none of those are—or at least should not be—identifiers for who we are. We might register as Republicans or Democrats (or whatever political party we sympathize with), but we do so first and foremost as disciples of Jesus Christ. As disciples, our relationship with others, Christian or not, Republican or not, Democrat or not, is always mediated through Jesus Christ, and it is our responsibility to relate to the Other through Jesus Christ.

There were many things Jesus came to do, but among the most important things he did was come as a peacemaker. Through his death and resurrection, he made peace between humanity and God (Rom. 5:1). Also through his death and resurrection, he made peace between Israelite and Gentile, a conflict that becomes prototypical for all division between races, ethnicities, cultures, and groups that are at enmity with one another. If Jesus’ death and resurrection can heal the tear between Israelite and Gentile, it can heal the tear between any group. This won’t happen magically, though. It will take Christians being obedient to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.

Shalom as Harmony

“Peace” is a funny word. It almost feels trite. It’s a word we sing at Christmas time. It’s a way we say hello or goodbye to people. It’s a hand sign we throw out for pictures or to our friends. It’s something we pray to happen in the Middle East, and I wonder if we mean it or believe it can become a reality. As I said, peace is more than the absence of conflict. It is more than a blanket thrown over the passions and convictions of humankind. Our trust in the tenuous nature of the word is revealed in the way we use it to describe nuclear warheads (peacekeeping missiles) and military presences (peacekeeping troops). Peace, it seems, can only be had under threat of war and death. But peace, as it’s envisioned in Scripture, is bigger than that.

Shalom (שָׁלוֹם) is the Hebrew word we typically translate as “peace,” but shalom is so much more than our flimsy feeling English “peace.” In my Pentecostal days, I’d hear preachers say that shalom meant, “Nothin’ broken, nothin’ missing,” and that’s as good a translation as one could hope for. The Lexham Bible Dictionary defines the Old Testament concept of shalom as a state of “welfare, prosperity, or wholeness as well as the absence of hostility,” or as relationships “characterized by friendship, loyalty, care, and love.”³ The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, among many other glosses and translation notes has things like “to remain intact and to be in good health, stay well, be successful,” or the Greek eirene (εᾑρήνη).⁴ Eirene for the Greeks and Romans was similar to our conceptions of peace, in that it was mostly the opposite of warfare, thought won through warfare, but the New Testament writers clearly had Hebraic (Old Testament) conceptions of shalom in mind.

Indigenous theologian, Randy Woodley, does a lot of work to show the resonances between Hebraic conceptions of shalom with indigenous⁵ conceptions of harmony, demonstrating that shalom has much more in common with harmony then with Western ideas of peace. This isn’t to say shalom does not mean the absence of conflict or war, but that it’s broader, including relationships within families, communities, and nations at every level and in every sphere.⁶ Shalom is a peace that experienced holistically, and while a fruit of it may be the absence of warfare, that is not the heart of it. It’s heart, at the risk of being repetitive, is people working together with God to create harmony within the community.

The thing about harmony is that it must be created. You cannot decree it. You cannot force it. You must link arms with the person in front of you and work for it. Sometimes the work is easy, sometimes it’s hard, and sometimes it feels impossible, but it is the life to which Jesus has called us. Though harmony leads to peacefulness, it is not saccharine. It doesn’t mean we don’t have to struggle to create it. Sometimes it takes great effort, and sometimes we have to confront one another, to argue, and to talk through hard things in order to create shalom.

Here’s where we miss it so terribly, as Westerners and as Christians. Early in our history, it became necessary to combat wrong ideas about God, the divine-human nature of Jesus, and the nature of the Trinity. This battle for and protection of “orthodoxy” was so engrained in us from that time that we have largely convinced ourselves that believing the “right thing” is most important, at the expense of active “orthopraxy.” As Western culture developed over the ages, and as we have become increasingly individualistic in the United States, this has created an ecosystem hostile to harmony. We’ve taken our fear of being wrong in orthodoxy and implanted it into our politics, and we’ve taken our loathing of heretics, and often apply it to the political other.

Because we’ve been ritualized in this way of looking at the world, we look across the political aisle and yell, “Anathema!” And it seems to be getting worse as more people are saying, “You cannot be a Christian and vote for…” To be peacemakers in a time like this, to create shalom and harmony, will be long and difficult. It will take a commitment to harmony many of us haven’t cultivated in a long time, and I believe it begins by looking at the person across from you, with whom you have deep, painful disagreements, and remembering they are a person who God loved so much he gave his only Son that they may not perish, but have everlasting life.

Creating harmony within our communities begins with remembering that God himself is working toward harmony, and that through the pierced body of his Son Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount, among other things, is a way that Jesus has given us to begin creating harmony, not just within our churches, but within our neighborhoods and even in, if we can imagine it, our nation. Jesus’ words—turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, pray for your enemies, forsake lust, give to those who ask—are all rooted in the Kingdom’s life and ethics, and when we live them, we become beacons of the kind of life God has promised his people.

Our nation needs hope and healing, and it cannot come, it will not come through our democracy. Our media and politicians are hell bent on keeping us fractured because it’s good for business. The people of God, the disciples of Jesus Christ, have been called to live a sacred path of shalom, which demands that we take political actions and make political choices, but it simultaneously transcends our political systems.

What Now?

A post like this begs the question, “So what do I do?” and that’s a fair question, but the list of things to do is as numerous and complex as the unique situations we all find ourselves in. As we ramp up to the election, and as we prepare for a post-election season that looks to be as chaotic as anything we’ve known up to this point, I think a good first step would be to spend some time in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:-49) and allow it to shape our imaginations. Ask yourself questions like, “How can I love my family member who votes differently than I do?” Ask how you can create harmony while remembering that harmony isn’t a relinquishing of your convictions, but is also committed to hearing and serving others, particularly those with whom we disagree.

We have to begin to imagine something better and more than what we’ve given ourselves to over the last decades, and the teachings of Jesus have the power to shape our imaginations if we will lay down our defenses and truly hear what Jesus is saying. To commit ourselves to his teachings is to commit ourselves to harmony and to shalom. It’s not anemic, it’s difficult, but it is possible.

1. A “peace” that is enforced by the ruling party or class is not the harmony and shalom of the kingdom of God but is more akin to the “Pax Romana” of the Roman Empire, which was enforced by a military-police force.

2. I don’t mean to suggest that only these teachings form the “rule of life” of Jesus’ disciples, leaving out his other teachings throughout the Gospel. They all have the same authority over us, but these two teachings read a bit like covenant terms and, therefore, are explicitly tied to the idea of being binding on Jesus’ disciples.

3. Greever, Joshua M. “Peace.” In The Lexham Bible Dictionary, edited by John D. Barry, David Bomar, Derek R. Brown, Rachel Klippenstein, Douglas Mangum, Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, Lazarus Wentz, Elliot Ritzema, and Wendy Widder. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016.

4. Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, M. E. J. Richardson, and Johann Jakob Stamm. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994–2000.

5. Randy himself comes from the Cherokee people, and is so recognized by the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, but he recognizes that his observations about harmony are shared by indigenous people across North America and the globe. You can read more about these pan-indigenous similarities in Woodley, Randy. Indigenous theology and the western worldview: A decolonized approach to Christian doctrine. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2022.

6. In his book, Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2012.), Woodley expands the vision of the harmony way to include the non-human world as well, naming mountains, rivers, plant life, and animal life all as those for whom God desires shalom.