It is easy to say peace.<\/p>\n
It is easy to preach peace.<\/p>\n
It is easy to promote peace.<\/p>\n
It is impossible for our world to have peace.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t make that statement lightly, but I also don\u2019t make it as cynically.\u00a0 I truly believe that global peace is impossible for our world.\u00a0 A common theme in science fiction is a fictional world enjoys enough sociological advances that it finds its way to a peaceful existence, free of war and strife.\u00a0 The inhabitants of the world speak of a time when they had war, before they were enlightened enough to stop fighting themselves.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the utopia preached in fiction is just that, fiction.<\/p>\n
It is impossible to have peace, because we are unable to separate ourselves from our desires.\u00a0 We want something enough that we find a way to acquire it.\u00a0 Even if it costs someone else their desire, we seek our own fulfillment first.\u00a0 This is the natural way of things, and we have to consciously fight against this natural state if we hope to overcome it.\u00a0 Not everyone is even willing to fight self-fulfilling desires for the sake of others.\u00a0 Those of us who do attempt to be self-less, will find ourselves failing from time to time.<\/p>\n
In spite of our best efforts, we are not perfect people.\u00a0 Imperfect people are incapable of forming a perfect peace.\u00a0 We will always need social structures to bring justice to those who have done wrong, we will always need corrective action to reform the world around us into something more closely resembling peace.\u00a0 Peace is an elusive goal, one to be pursued with rigor by all of a like mind, but never attainable.\u00a0 We will never succeed at creating global peace.<\/p>\n
Our world is filled with wrong that can not be made right.\u00a0 What remedy is there for the parents of the 140 students killed in a Pakistani school this month?\u00a0 How can we set right that wrong? \u00a0How can we restore the innocence of Yazidi women taken as sex slaves to serve a perverted view of manhood?\u00a0 Can you justly judge who should pay the price for the death of Eric Garner?\u00a0 We can send our support to the Pakistani people, we can do our best to comfort the Yazidi women who have been raped.\u00a0 We can even do our best to bring peace to family of Eric Garner, but we can not restore life to the lifeless, or erase the emotional and physical scars left on the bodies of young women taken from their homes.<\/p>\n
Peace is outside of our power.\u00a0 We can not achieve it.<\/p>\n
The world has not yet learned how to judge correctly between two parties with equally legitimate claims to territory or resources.\u00a0 Crimea, Palestine and Israel, the many countries in disputes over regions of the South China Sea should not expect the world to assist them in redrawing their borders.\u00a0 Some of these conflicts can only be solved by force.\u00a0 We should not be surprised when those times come.<\/p>\n
Global peace is impossible.<\/p>\n
Why have I wasted my time writing these articles you ask?\u00a0 Well, I accept that global peace is impossible, but I believe wholeheartedly that individual peace can be pursued.\u00a0 I can choose to set aside my selfishness in interest of serving you.\u00a0 You can set aside your desires to help provide for someone else.\u00a0 They can pay the good deeds forward for another, and the cycle can continue between individuals.\u00a0 Where global peace is unattainable, individuals pursuing peace can make a difference to each other.<\/p>\n
I also ultimately believe that this world will fall into darkness.\u00a0 We will push ourselves over the edge and we will discover too late that we have gone too far.\u00a0 We will near our end, but in the darkest moment, before we slip into a cold and eternal night, a light will shine in that darkness.\u00a0 Our world will be reborn and made new.\u00a0 When Jesus was born into our world 2,000 years ago, he was a herald of that rebirth that awaits this world.<\/p>\n
Jesus made possible a peace we could have never imagined, restoring sinners and healing the broken.\u00a0 By paying a price in blood to erase the deeds of man, he has secured a victory we could not have foreseen.\u00a0 He has opened a way for Pakistani parents to forgive the murderers of their children.\u00a0 He has paid the price to redeem Yazidi women from slavery.\u00a0 Jesus has even paid the price for you and I to approach the throne in heaven from which all judgment is justly delivered, and to be found free of fault.\u00a0 Jesus is an element from outside of our equation that has come to restore balance where no balance was possible before.<\/p>\n
I also hold fast to the last words attributed to Jesus in the Bible.\u00a0 \u201cBehold, I come to make all things new.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though I do not know what exactly this newness will look like, I do know that I can trust the one who has promised it.<\/p>\n
With Jesus, all things are possible; global peace, a restored world, and a virgin birth. \u00a0Tomorrow we celebrate that God is with us, and we remember his entrance into the world as a child.<\/p>\n