Blessed Are the Peacemakers . . .

WILL ONE WORD SUM IT UP?

Confucius was the great teacher of the ancient Orient. He was a master in teaching self-improvement and he stressed devotion to parents, ideals that our modern culture has weIl nigh lost sight of. Confucius believed that one is morally obligated to improve himself, and this he is to do by building right relationships. He was a humanist in the noblest sense of that term. Even though he lived in the sixth century before Christ, he was enamored by the wisdom of the past and would refer to “ancient times” in his teaching. “In ancient times,” he would say, “men learned with a view to their own improvement. Nowadays men learn with a view to the approbation of others.” He laid it on us all, in all ages, with that one, didn’t he?

Since I look through a glass darkly from the perspective of this world, I know not whether the old sage is numbered among the redeemed, and, if so, what street he lives on in glory. But one day an angel may take my order on whom I wish to visit, and I will include the name of Confucius, who may now have a new name. But the angel will know. That visit would be something else. I could ask him how he ever gained such insight as “Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men,” and “Without recognizing the ordinances of Heaven, it is impossible to be a superior man.” Yes, and how on earth did he ever come up with the Golden Rule, six hundred years before the Messiah himself pronounced it?

It is the occasion of Confucius giving the Golden Rule that serves the purpose of this essay. His disciples asked him if there was not one word that would summarize all of his teaching. They wanted it shelled, capsuled in easy-to-grasp terms, like many a modern student. Yes, there is such a word, Confucius told them, and the word was reciprocity. If they would just go through life reciprocating, in every relationship, that would do it. And before they could ask him what he meant by such a big word as reciprocity, he told them: “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” It was the Golden Rule stated negatively, and when the Jewish rabbis taught it hundreds of years later they also expressed it negatively. Only the Messiah put it this way: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” And Jesus, like Confucius, indicated that this summed it all up, for he added: This is the law and the prophets.

For several months I have been writing about the peacemaker in this column, and in the tradition of master teachers I am asking if there is not one word or idea that wraps it all up. Who is the peacemaker, teacher, in a word?

Yes, there is one word that tells the story, and that is love. He loves the giver of peace, who is the Creator, and he loves those for whom the gift of peace is intended, all of humanity. Moreover, he loves to make peace. So love is the word. The peacemaker is in love.

Peace is the fruit of love, or as Gal. 5:22 puts it, peace and love are the harvest of the Spirit within us. Love makes peace because it expects nothing in return for what it does. It acts because there is a need. It does not even calculate what good may come to it once it has cultivated peace in a heart where hate and suspicion once lurked. Love does not make peace so that it may enjoy peace and be free of the ordeal of malice and oppression. It is not even that much concerned for self. Love makes peace very much as a tree makes peaches. It is love’s nature to make peace. Where there is love there is peace, where there is peace there is love.

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard suggested that the love that makes peace is like an infinite debt that one pays on, realizing that he can never get it paid. Indeed, since it is infinite, the debt is not even reduced. So love has no idea of ever finishing its task or redeeming its debt. It is never “through” with anyone; never gives up on anyone. Love goes on making peace, like the tree goes on bearing its fruit, as long as it is what it is, love.

The love that expects no reward may be very rare, and it may seldom be within us without mixture. But to the extent that it is there, flowing through us from the heart of God, it makes peace. The apostle makes clear the source of this love: “God’s love has flooded our inmost heart through the Holy Spirit he has given us” (Rom. 5:5). The power is clearly not our own. Selfless love is possible only because “He who is within us is greater than he that is within the world.”

To act for others without expecting anything in return! This is what love, agape love, is all about, and it is this that distinguishes it from all other loves. And these loves (such as eras love in friendship) are great blessings to the world, and they too make for peace—at least the peace that the world knows. But the peace that Christ gives, and the peacemaker that he promises to bless, is produced only by a love that “seeketh not its own,” which is a love that takes no thought of itself when it acts. Friendship love, as productive as it is for good, does seek something in return, the fruits of friendship. Friendship has its laws, and if they are violated one loses his friends. But not so with the peacemaker-lover. She goes right on making peace, and there are no laws controlling it. It is not a reciprocal agreement, Confucius notwithstanding. Agape love believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things, when nothing else will.

This is to say that love can do all things, and it takes that kind of power to make peace. Love is power! When we plug into the outlet that God makes available to us through the indwelling Spirit, powerful things can and do happen. The enemies that peace must overcome—envy, jealousy, hate, bitterness, partyism—are deeply rooted and invulnerable against the powers of this world. It is only when the power of the Holy Spirit is brought to bear against them that such enemies can be destroyed. So the kingdom of God is not just talk, but power, as 1 Cor. 4:20 assures us. Love makes peace because love is power.

We see this power in a changed life. Those who have learned to love have not only plugged in to the power that has changed their own lives, but that power flows out from them like rivers of water. Those who are adept at arguing against a doctrinal issue find themselves silent in the face of a changed life. And no change is so dramatic as a sectarian who becomes a peacemaker. I see this now and again all over the country, and I rejoice over what the power of love has done in the lives of humble people.

But in all this we must realize that we are at best frail, sinful creatures, and that God’s love can operate within us only imperfectly. It is like trying to cultivate a beautiful garden in soil that is beset with ever-increasing weeds. Some semblance of the beauty can be realized with proper application, but the imperfections are ever abundant. God knows all this and uses us anyway, warts and all. But we must not look for perfection, and we must be patient both with ourselves and others, and be thankful that love is able to work in our lives at all. We must believe in love, and even this faith in love is begotten of love. Love believes all things—even in the love that is trying to flow through the labyrinthine ways of our selfish lives.—the Editor

 

Love looks through a telescope; envy through a microscope.—Josh Billings Love is like the moon; when it does not increase it decreases.—Pierre de Segu