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In the colorful, cacophonous carnival of life,
It’s easy for anyone to feel alone,
if one closes their eyes, stops up their ears, and
keeps their trembling limbs,
locked, safely,
to their sides,
while
keeping their back, safely,
against
an ancient wall
with no gates.
Peacemaking is difficult and I suck at it. I am a person who spends most of his time and energy trying to make or maintain “peace.” This “peace” is nothing like a real, honest and open peace. The peace I try to fabricate around me is merely the absence of conflict, by any means necessary.
In my life this form of “peace” leads me to massive levels of anxiety, passive-aggressive behavior, and self-loathing. If I am mad at someone else, I try to find a way to make it my fault and hate myself over it. If I want to yell angrily at someone, I instead have an imaginary conversation with them where they ultimate point out how I am the one to blame.
My way of “peace” is killing me.
To maintain, or create real peace, conflict must be involved. I often reject this truth. It is so much easier to just try to “go along to get along” and trust that things will eventually work out. It has taken me a long time to realize this line of thinking makes as much sense as, “I want to be a well-known artist. All I have to do is do nothing and wait. Eventually fame will come to me.” For peace to be real, honest conversations must take place and where there is honesty and difference, conflict will arise.
I don’t know where my fear of conflict was born. Maybe it was from my parents and their well-meaning practice of getting my brother and me to just ignore problems and stop arguing. Maybe it was my conservative Christian upbringing, whenever I asked about doing the things Jesus taught about (helping the poor, giving up possessions, opposing violence in all its forms) I was told those weren’t actually things I needed to do; all I was required to do was obey the church and wait for Jesus to come again. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t cause trouble. If there is a problem, maybe it’s me.
Wherever this twisted sense of peace came from, it was certainly built up over multiple years from a variety of sources. Yet, two moments stand out to me as moments when I lost my taste for conflict and abandoned the path of courage.
The first moment was an argument I had with my brother when I was 13 and he was 12, it became a physical fight and I remember wanting to break his neck like Steven Segal did in his movies. I had my arms in the correct position and the thought, “just apply some pressure and you will be done with him” running through my brain. In that moment I knew I could kill my brother and that clarity scared me. From that moment on I have never really challenged or disagreed with my brother, even when he does something that hurts other people. I retreated into the comfortable land of well-meaning cowardice.
The second was a series of events early during High School which made me retreat further into myself. I played football for a small school which meant I was on defense and offense. My nickname was “Sergeant Slaughter” because of how many concussions I gave out and how hard I hit the opposing team. I began to enjoy the violent nature of the football field and how I could fully let go and hurt people. At one game I tore the jersey off of the other team’s running back as I was throwing him to the ground (it ejected him from the game because he couldn’t play with a torn jersey). At another I found myself deliberately trying to hurt the other team after they hit our kicker so hard he had to go to the hospital. I was a beast on the field, and I realized how much that guy I turned into scared me. Luckily an injury took me out of sports, but the memory of that violent, brutish version of myself scared me into passivity.
Now I fear any conflict, even if that conflict is on behalf of someone else. I fear that I won’t have a mature response. Instead I can feel the monster within me wanting to come out and fight. I need to find a new way.
When I look at the life of Jesus as presented by the Gospels, the prince of peace sure had a lot of conflict in his life. He argued with people. It was often publicly challenged by his religious critics. He didn’t shy away from saying difficult things to people and even during his trial and execution continued to speak the truth AND to show love to those who were killing him. Perhaps I should take some notes.
Active peacemaking involves coming into direct contact with the law of violence which rules our various cultures. Conflict is necessary for growth. It is also necessary to stand up to those who willingly use violence and conflict to promote an agenda.
In my own life, people who challenged my prejudices and behaviors have helped me to mature more fully as a human. I am thankful for friends who called me out for being a poor loser at a game, questioned my assumptions, and told me I was a lazy, slob of a roommate and needed to learn how to clean up after myself. I appreciated the conflict they stepped in to for the sake of me being better. Like working out, if I don’t have resistance I won’t get stronger.
Peace is harder to wage than war. Real peace seeks to surround all sides with love and truth, then using the catalysts of honesty and conflict, matures both sides into deeper relationships. Peace is hard because unlike war, it asks me to see the darkness in myself and not just the other person. Peace forces me to see the person I don’t like as a person, like me. Peace, if taken for granted and not maintained through constant openness and courage, can be lost.
My unwillingness to step out in courage only adds to the darkness around and within me. Peace is not peace when honesty is silenced. Peace is not peace when people are not allowed to disagree. Peace is not peace when it is maintained through the suffering of others. Peace is not peace by simply avoiding difficult things.
How can I begin to undo the toxic threads binding me without being toxic in return? How do I embrace conflict without becoming a monster? How can I lament violence without resorting to it? Can I resist the darkness of unfettered racist self-interest that has dominated American culture for hundreds of years?
It takes courage to make peace. Seeking peace requires a strength and clarity that following violence does not. It is easy to be violent. It is hard to be peaceful.
For the last few years I have been in therapy trying to get to the roots of my various problems. I realize that my mental and emotional conditions won’t improve on their own naturally but that they require my intentionality and honesty to heal. I once believed like other adults before me that I just needed to put up with the psychological slings and arrows of modern existence and all would be well, and when all else fails, alcohol helps.
Ignoring problems is as effective as ignoring a weed in my garden and hoping it goes away on its own. The problem will grow, it will flower, it will fruit, and it will multiply. And, like weeds, you often need to get to the root of the problem before it can be removed or healed.
Enough with magical thinking and inaction.
I am choosing courage. I am choosing conflict. I am choosing peace.
Why is monetary value the main metric used to determine success in America? Why do the economy, profitability, and materialism stop us from making moral decisions? When did I begin to internalize the lies of my colonizer culture?
I used to be wiser when I was a foolish teen, determined to live a life of purpose and substance, rather than chasing the tail of the Conqueror Worm. My twenties and early thirties have been plagued by the idea that my life’s value should be based on my: earnings, fame, position, and buying power. Trying to find my value, or any REAL substance to viewing the world through the cold lenses of Global Economics, almost killed me.
Today I know I need to learn. I need to root out and destroy the colonizer narratives in my mind which keep me from seeing the world as sacred, or at the very least, blessed. Reducing everything in life to dollars and cents strips it of any deeper, fuller meaning. I have been turning my attention away from the marketplace, its priests, and the endless scramble for more at the expense of other people’s lives, not to mention the life of this planet. I am beginning to read and listen to voices much wiser than myself, and who are not a part of my toxic culture.
The voices of those who have been crying in the American wilderness are my new school. I have begun reading books by American Indian authors about their history and culture. I am listening to The New Jim Crow about how our legal/prison system functions to trap mostly male African Americans into a life with no escape and no freedom. I read accounts of refugees and migrant workers who only want to provide a life free from fear or hunger for them and their families. I am learning how my passive silence is an active vote for the status quo. It is time for me to repent.
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” –Matthew 6:19-21
Jesus said to his disciples, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” He was teaching about how hoarding physical things, and obsessing about them, limits our freedom and ability to love. When I treasure fame above all else, my heart can only focus on how I don’t HAVE any fame and how I can GET that fame. When my treasure is my bank account, my heart will think FIRST about money and the economy rather than justice, or grace, or mercy. Where my treasure is, that becomes my worldview. And it is a sad worldview indeed that only sees things in terms of something imaginary like money.
Churches I grew up in would only focus on the “treasures in heaven” section of the teaching and completely lose the point. To them the “good works” we do as Christians here will furnish our mansions in heaven with all the best stuff heaven has to offer. It was a very vague layaway plan and still focused on a materialistic vision for heaven and faith. How exactly did one “store up treasures in heaven”? Did converting someone equal a new heavenly couch or King-of-Kings-sized bed? Would I earn more treasure in heaven if I supported one political party over the other? What if Jesus, or more precisely Matthew’s recollection of Jesus, wasn’t talking about LITERAL treasure?
Thank the Lord I moved beyond this closed, transactional understanding of faith years ago. In my exit from a toxic, Nationalistic version of Christianity have found many vibrant, open, and socially-conscious communities of faith to join. I have learned to call the way I was taught to view the world as evil. The good things of this good earth are sacred and need to be protected, and so should human life, dignity, and livelihood.
Jesus speaks a lot about the Kingdom of Heaven in all four Gospels. It elevates the poor, the broken, the marginalized, and the forgotten. It is a realm of grace where “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” The apostle Paul rightly described the people and hierarchy of this Kingdom as being radically egalitarian, “There is no more Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one through faith in Christ Jesus.” It wasn’t about materialism at all. Heaven, and its treasures, is a counter-narrative to the grasping, groping, blind-greediness of our corporate Imperial impulses.
For readers who have tasted and found that the “living” water of many churches is poisoned with evil, I get it. So let me phrase “the Kingdom of God” in another way, the things that mattered most to you when you were a child, those are the things we need to protect, uphold, nourish, and celebrate: friendships, pets, good food, good sleep, a safe home, family, wonder, joy, laughter, helping, conversing, imagining, dancing, sharing, cooperation, exploring, and more.
Heaven isn’t a McMansion in the sky. Heaven is wherever we experience love, grace, and peace. Love, grace, and peace are impossible to monetize without distorting them. My heavenly treasures are those things that cannot be stolen or destroyed: the love I share with my family and friends, the grace I receive from other people, and the peace I experience during the quiet valleys of silence during a great conversation. Slowly, ever so slowly, I am returning to a place of right thinking and banishing the colonizer mantra of “money and things first” from the central pillar of my psyche.
I know this is the right path to take and I know it means standing with people who are suffering. But, that is where my treasure is, and, thankfully, so is my heart.
Whither Shall I Go? 