Today, I am told is International Peace Day. My daughter, Jan Fuller, senior chaplain at Elon University, has raised this question: “What can I do today to promote peace?” So I am thinking.
The reason we never make peace, I think, is that we wait until violence breaks out and then we think about it, so it is always too late. We consider it because we have been attacked. We decide that we have to defend ourselves. This is true in the international scene, and it is true in our personal lives.
So my first thought is that I must think ahead. There is already war in numerous parts of the world, the Middle East, Africa. There is already personal conflict in our everyday lives. These situations exist, because of problems we did not bother to solve when they first surfaced. What to do now is a very difficult issue and perhaps is different in each case. So I am not going to talk about Syria or Iraq or Yemen of the Central African Republic. I am not going to talk about anybody’s family feud. I am looking ahead, thinking of my grandchildren and great grandchildren and the world they will live in. I fear for them. I want to anticipate the issues that will corrupt their world, because I want them to find the peace that we have not found.
I know a few of the causes of human conflict:
Oppression
Deprivation
Exclusion
If we could eliminate these we might be able to pass to them a peaceful world.
Oppression
There are people groups who live day after day under the control of other groups. The second class citizens, the voiceless, the people behind walls, the conquered and controlled, the hopeless. Their streets are occupied by enemy armies, year after year, their property subject to forceful seizure, their livelihoods disappearing, their homes demolished, their trees cut down. In their lives international law is insignificant; they know that the world will do nothing. Resistance has become a criminal offense.
This is oppression. War will be the natural result. If not now, later, whenever it becomes possible.
If we want to avoid war, we have to recognize oppression and do something about it. Justice is the great preventer of war.
Deprivation
There are many people in our world who lack sufficient food and clean water to support their lives. They watch their children die of malnutrition. Some even live in squalor, surrounded by wealth. Once when traveling, I became stuck in an African city by some kind of workers’ strike and spent 24 hours, at the expense of an airline, in the most luxurious hotel I have ever seen on the inside. It was surrounded by abject poverty. I thought to myself, There will be a war here. And within a year there was rebellion and violence in that city.
As I see the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer all over the world, as I see us exploiting the world’s natural resources to support a privileged lifestyle and the climate being destroyed, I so fear for the future. At a time when I will be gone, people precious to me will suffer.
Climate change is real. Already we have drought in California, with both forests and towns going up in flames. Maybe it is only a cycle, but can we survive the cycle? Farmers in the bread basket of America cannot water their crops. And guess what! The rain we have prayed for will cause floods. Arguments about what to do are creating conflicts between communities. Accusations fill the air. This is a warning of things to come.
Unless we make some big changes and quickly, our immediate descendants, the children we love, will face wars over natural resources: water, food, and breathable air. Solving problems now will prevent strife in the future. Generosity and fairness are antidotes to the poison of violence.
Exclusion
And there are people who are simply excluded. The object of prejudice. The disrespected. The odd. The wallflower at the party. The kid who can’t make the team. The invisible. The fearful. Sometimes this is a whole people group. An unwanted race. A minority living under an autocratic regime. Refugees looking for a country. The untouchable caste. The sinners.
Nothing is so frustrating and destructive of the soul as being simply excluded, not a part of anything, denied community. Anger is a natural result.
Exclusion turns neighbor against neighbor, the haves against the have-nots, the intellectuals against the working class, race against race, citizen against immigrant. And violence easily results.
Potential wars can be averted by learning to want the unwanted, finding in our hearts love for the strangers, by being hospitable and inclusive.
These are my thoughts on the International Day of Peace.