Did anyone in the world wake up truly craving peace today?
My computer and I just embarked on a quest for answers to life’s core questions about peace…but my brain keeps interrupting with an S-O-S for mid-afternoon coffee. My fingers pause on the keyword while my brain successfully triggers my poorly subdued chocolate cravings because coffee gets lonely when sipped alone. I had best keep writing, I tell myself, and ignore that trigger-happy craving brain. Maybe if I concentrated harder, I could crave peace instead.
I really should not blame my brain. Google unkindly plastered lattes and decadent desserts across the screen when it machine read the first four words in my search bar.
My intended question: “Does the world crave peace?”
How intense is your craving for peace?
‘The World Craves Peace.’ At least that is what I was often told. Today, I question the validity of that statement.
The “Gift of Peace” has always had a central place in my weekly themes for the celebration of Advent, “The Gifts of Christmas.” Several blog posts on this website are dedicated to exploring that theme. This Advent season, the phrase “the world craves peace” will not be featured.
My less than optimized Google search
You would be hard-pressed to convince Google that the world craves peace. In sorting through six-page (large computer monitor sized pages), I learned that the world craves a lot of things, including:
Authenticity, clarity, leadership, a better capitalism claimed the top spots in the first several SEO ranked suggestions. I had already previewed what was populating search by image, so I advanced to the next page of Google’s Search Engine report.
By page three, Google started feeding me articles on craving brains and craving minds. It hoped that I would like craving rum and rum cakes and provided all sorts of reasons why our bodies crave any calorie-dense food. It told me that what the world craves is to have a piece of you (i.e., presumably me, the reader, Ouch!). People with social anxiety desired personal growth. Peace failed to score a hit on Google. Apparently, if those articles do exist, their writers had not employed current Search Engine Optimization tricks.
Gold strike on page five
Finally, on search page five, I struck gold, well almost that is. The title proclaimed that the world craves peace and stability. Still, the focus was primarily economic fears due to a New Zealand earthquake necessitating the evacuation of Chinese citizens, plus concerns over the military conflicts in Libya. I would not have known that if Google had not kindly translated this February 2011 Chinese post into English. Page six was back to 2009 when Psychology Today announced that our brain craves certainty and avoids uncertainty like pain. My brain had figured that out long ago.
By this point, my brain was experiencing pain until my amygdala lit up after spotting a post from Brain World Magazine on music. I knew that my brain craved music, but I was curious why others might. Yeah! I scored one more brain study for my growing collection to support my theories on how music affects our mood and health. Enough!
And then, I went downstairs to make my craved cup of coffee. Gratefully since I was now well-informed on the issue of cravings, I safely returned to my office without chocolate in any form. Boring but useful.
So, meanwhile, what has happened to the world’s craving for peace?
Have our relationships and societies become so conflicted that we feel it is unattainable, not worth talking about, hoping for, or working towards?
The Christmas Holidays are just around the proverbial corner. Hallmark will not think twice before they employ “Peace” to pull in some fourth-quarter profits. We will sign our names to cards bearing messages of Peace and Joy and Hope.
Peace. We will sing its carols, listen to programs, hear sermons, and devotionals all about peace. For a moment, the thought of it brightens our human journey.
But for most of the year, peace eludes us.
I would like to believe the world craves peace. I wish that, individually and collectively, we could agree – we genuinely want that elusive peace.
Unfortunately, the world accumulates irreconcilable differences. The greatest minds of each age in history have sought to promote peace. The powerful have labored to negotiate peace and mediate hostilities. Yet, peace talks stall. Peace accords unravel.
On a personal level, relationships dissolve.
If craving peace is just a holiday sentiment, what do we humankinds crave the rest of the year?
Would anyone propose “Conflict” as the answer?
Imagine…the alarm goes off as the sun peeps through the shades. Your feet hit the floor, you stand up and exclaim, I can’t wait to have an argument today. It’s about time I told my boss what I really think of him. Maybe today’s the lucky day!
I do not think so. People may dread, fear, or avoid conflict. Others may respond poorly to conflict and be rude or argumentative. Still, I believe the majority would say that conflict enters an unwelcome guest in their home. However, they lack the skills to resolve it and keep it out in the future.
Parents attempt to teach children to share, not to hit or fight, and to say “I’m sorry” whether they mean it or not. However, children learn intuitively by example (their observations of how adults conduct themselves during disagreements). So, any negative conflict responses learned will carry forward into their adult world where conflict will again become an unwelcome guest.
If then, we dislike interpersonal conflict and wish it weren’t in our home, does that mean that we instead crave peace?
My observations confirm our human bent for conflict amid a growing need to cultivate a taste for peace. Perhaps, we merely wish for peace and for the argument to stop. We hope to see the conflict vaporize into the air and leave us undisturbed.
Our skewed views of peace
Do we crave peace when nothing is bothering us and when no one is making demands of us? No, we just enjoy the relaxation.
We may crave peace when others make uncomfortable requests from us that interrupt our schedule, our plans.
We crave ‘peace and quiet’ when our children annoy us with the questions, will not follow orders, or remember instructions. Does a parent exist who has not said: I just wish I could have some ‘peace and quiet’? But is the ‘peace and quiet’ wish, a need for annoyance to stop (sensory rest), or a real craving for peace?
Perhaps we long for rest or for freedom to do as we please but misname it peace.
When we are in a conflict that we know we cannot win, then we crave an intervention of peace.
Do we see Peace as a commodity to be traded at the negotiation table?
Yes, we want hostilities to end but we are not prepared for the cost of negotiating peace.
We are less enamored with a conflict resolution agreement that requires a change of behavior on our part or loss of a perceived right.
A nation may desire a peace accord to end the loss incurred by fighting, but they resist signing off on a deal that gives them less than they went to war to gain or recapture.
When we feel entitled to what we have, we usually battle to defend and retain it.
The wish for conflict to end – to go away – sounds like the unspoken ‘vaporize and leave me alone’ wish.
We fail to crave for peace until our life is interrupted
and a relationship is lying in pieces at our feet.
The answer to my question gets much clearer when I turn my search to the pages of my Bible.
Conclusion: The way of peace they have not known.
From a Christian perspective, peace forms the cornerstone of our faith. The God of the Bible is the ‘God of Peace’ and Jesus, the ‘Prince of Peace.’ The founder of our faith is peace and became our peace.
We may wish for rest and peace but only obtain it when we discover the source of peace.
The Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, records this indictment against the people of Judah and Jerusalem, but it continues to describe humankind today aptly. “The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths; they have made their roads crooked; no one who treads on them knows peace” (Jer. 59.8 ESV).
If we and the rest of the world do not crave peace,
what will motivate us to pursue peace?
How then, will we pursue conflict resolution in our relationship if we as humankinds have no bent for peace?
Centuries later, the gospel of Luke records Zechariah’s prophecy at the birth of his son (known to us as John the Baptist, the prophesied forerunner of Christ). Quoting from several Old Testament sources during his prophecy, he concludes with the promise God was fulfilling: “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1.70 ESV)
The over-arching theme of peace
The theme of light and peace continue weaving through the New Testament narratives. Paul writes in his letter to the believers at Rome and quotes from multiple Old Testament passages, including Luke and Psalms. Romans, chapter three, reads like God’s indictment in Isaiah: “…none is righteous, no, not one…no one understands; no one seeks for God…all have turned aside; together they have become worthless;…and the way of peace they have not known.” Paul will not leave us in despair. If we read on to chapter 5, we hear his victory cheer in verse one:
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I would not do this passage justice if I do not include the next four verses:
“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5.2-5 ESV)
Our shame is removed
God does not leave us in shame after his indictment of humankind. His plan to create peace with man is woven from cover to cover of the Bible. Jesus would come, take our punishment, and pay for our peace with God.
Peace with God is not a negotiated settlement.
It required a costly battle to the death over evil,
and a victory over death through his resurrection.
Jesus was not speaking from the comfort of a Galilean hillside by the lake when he spoke these deeply comforting words. In the Upper Room at the Last Supper (just hours before his torturous suffering began) Jesus says to the disciples,
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14.27 ESV)
