Many parts of our world today are on fire. In addition to the horrific ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and elsewhere, many other areas of the world seem on the brink, as increasing polarization, demonization, and manipulation create tinderbox conditions. The United States is no exception, with many indicators from the right and the left of how poisonously radicalized the culture has become. Religion is implicated in these dangerous trends. The Pew Research Center’s global indices document alarming increases in religion-related conflict and social hostilities.
How do we live peacefully with deep difference? What does it look like to love your neighbor as yourself? To love your enemy? To love a neighbor who acts like an enemy?
As the eminent sociologist of religion Peter Berger once argued, although modernization and globalization do not necessarily result in the outright decline of religion, they do mean that people of profoundly differing religions/worldviews will encounter each other more frequently. To some, this encounter of deep difference can be unsettling, if not outright threatening. Fears and anxieties about the “other” are exacerbated in media echo chambers and exploited by political opportunists and extremists.
Berger writes of two contrasting responses to the modern environment of deep diversity: politicized fundamentalism and ideological relativism. Politicized fundamentalism attempts to (re)impose the hegemony of a particular religious tradition through various political and social means. By contrast, the ideological relativist makes a religion of “tolerance,” glossing the realities of deep disagreement with an all-roads-lead-to-heaven attitude of moral equivalence. Berger argued that both of these ways of responding to deep difference are problematic, and that instead we should develop a robust paradigm of pluralism.
The Christian faith speaks directly to this third, better way that is neither fundamentalism nor relativism but rather a principled ethos and practice of peacemaking.
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus proclaims in the Beatitudes, “for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). The Christian tradition teaches that Jesus’ atoning death and resurrection inaugurate a kingdom bringing peace both vertically (between rebellious humanity and God) and horizontally (between humans themselves).
While Christians of good will often disagree about pacifism as a response to violent conflict, the faith calls all Christians to be ambassadors for peace in a broad, holistic sense. This is a peacemaking that, like Jesus himself, rejects all temptations of political power and privilege, all idolatrous fusions of nation and religion. It is a peacemaking that is rooted in faith and submission to Christ’s lordship, the fruit of which is proactive, irenic, winsome, and courageous engagement across lines of difference. It is a peacemaking predicated on both loving God and loving one’s neighbor as oneself.
Ambassadors of peace plant seeds of hope for transformation and reconciliation in conflict situations, including even those conflicts that seem stubbornly intractable. But such hope is not a form of naivete. The Christian scriptures do not promise a miraculous end to all disagreement. The Apostle Paul chose words carefully in Romans 12:18, where he taught, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” The “if it is possible” phrase injects a note of realism. In some cases, peace may be elusive, or perhaps only a more proximate peace may be reached—agreeing to disagree, agreeably.
To be a Christian ambassador for peace is to be realistic but not pessimistic. It is to have a humble confidence rooted in faith in Christ. It is to be at one and the same time “shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves,” as Jesus commanded (Matthew 10:16).
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