God created the world in peace and for peace. And this peace is not just written on God’s heart, God wrote it on our hearts, also; that is, our need of it. The sad thing is we often get in the way of our own peace by pursuing a peace that infringes on others’ peace.
We strive to attain our peace by ourselves,
not comprehending that true peace comes
when we’re at peace with others.
God’s desire is peace; that everyone live at peace with one another, understanding it’s achieved through everyone’s quiet enjoyment of peace. When one is without peace it ought to concern others.
A FAKE PEACE
There is a tyranny of counterfeit peace doing the rounds in this age. There’s nothing new under the sun there. It sounds like, “I’ll have it my own way, thank you very much.” Such an attitude comes from leaning on one’s own understanding, and it never ends well.
The counterfeit peace is marked by a comfort that can be grasped, but a comfort all the same that isn’t the same as the comfort we need when we’re suffering. As there is a counterfeit peace, there is also a counterfeit comfort, and just as addictions are the clearest sign of this, the commonest sign is being right in one’s own eyes.
The counterfeit peace is marked by a self-serving nature that insists on feeling entitled to what it can have. Such self-serving, however, never derives a satisfying peace.
The feature of this counterfeit peace is it
has little regard for what others think or feel.
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God’s wisdom is entwined in peace to the degree
that we must behave benevolently to experience benevolence.
WE LIVE IN AN AGE OF “JUSTICE”
Ten years ago, abused people had no recourse to what had been done. But since the arrival of #METOO and #CHURCHTOO, those movements have established a ground for righting the wrongs done—or at least a hearing. In and of themselves, these movements are reforming the world and the church. Not before time.
But seeking justice for wrongs done is only one half of a two-part process to peace.
Too many people are still mired in the first half,
and they may wonder why there’s still no peace.
THIS is the work of the Christian: to love their neighbour as themselves. It doesn’t get any more complicated than that, but of course everything we do is done through this lens, and we’re all bound to get it wrong from time to time. We all fail love in our relationships, oftentimes daily.
Inherent in the work of the Christian
to love their neighbour as themselves
is repentance for when we do get it wrong.
If people call themselves Christian and do not repent and therefore demonstrate that they do not love their neighbour, they cannot achieve true peace for themselves because they do not first establish it for the other, as far as it depends on them.
If a person abuses us and in so doing, they reject peace, we can still take the upper hand and establish peace anyway through our forgiving them their grievous debt of stealing their love from us. We transfer that debt to God. We let God repay, which is biblical—see Deuteronomy 32:35 and Romans 12:19.
PROLONGED ANGER IS A SIGN WE’RE STUCK
Anger is part of the grieving process and it’s normal and natural to experience it in the face of loss and injustice. But when we linger in anger for weeks or months or years, or we continue to trigger in anger, it affects our and others’ peace. That peace is affected is a sign of two things: 1) the initial and ongoing injustice itself, and 2) our resultant anger.
The good news is we still have power
in choosing peace over anger.
Remembering that anger is right but only the first part of a two-part process, our anger is a sign we’re stuck, and that forgiveness is the key to going on to the second part which is peace.
It really does pay to imagine what is under all the anger. Is it sadness? Could it be some other unspeakable emotion? The emotion we feel could be justified, but do we want to be continually ransomed by our emotions?
WHY DO WE FORGIVE?
We don’t forgive what the person/people/situation did to us as if that was okay, nor do we forgive what it did to us, but we can forgive the person for their lack, remembering that we too lack many things, and OUR love will never be perfect either.
We may not treat others as some others have treated us, but we demonstrate hypocrisy when we behave as if we’ve never hurt anyone. We do. And especially in our anger. The longer our anger is tolerated, the higher the probability we’ll be destructive.
Forgiveness is the way we nip our anger in the bud. And if we cannot see why we would forgive, we have bigger problems. Once we know why we ought to forgive, we can begin to inquire into HOW we will forgive.
Forgiveness is a trust. A merciful action based on a decision to extend mercy, because mercy has been extended to us—mercy that gave us an unlosable salvation—we reciprocate God’s love. We love God back as we forgive others.
Forgiveness is as simple as loving God back
for the mercy that has been extended to us.
When we reduce love of others, love of our neighbour, to the attitude and action of forgiveness, we live a powerful love that works two powerful ways: it delivers a compelling love of hope and grace in all our relationships, plus it is the trust of God, which is God’s only requirement of us when we have accepted our salvation—God’s wisdom for OUR own good.
Forgiveness is the wisdom of God that crushes
evil’s design to steal hope, kill love, and destroy peace.
Forgiveness is the wisdom of trust. We must trust God to truly forgive, making forgiveness one of discipleship’s most important performance indicators. Those who take their faith seriously, seriously trust God to the extent of understanding and appreciating the value of the mercy that has been extended to them as an individual. It motivates behaviours of reciprocity because God has been so good to us.
A FINAL WORD
Forgiveness is the wisdom of God because it shows a person can accept the things they cannot change and that’s peace. When we cannot accept what we cannot change we have bigger problems. But forgiveness will take us all the way to peace if only we can trust it.
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