Want Peace?

Do you want Peace?

Yes? Prepare to submit.

No? Eventually, you will submit to someone more powerful than you.

Be it by choice or by domination, to achieve peace, submission is inevitable.

Submission has such an uneasy connotation. Sacrifice and compromise may be easier words to bear. Yet, anything short of submission is not a deep enough commitment to bring Peace that is more than absence of violence.

Domination is the road to the absence of violence. It is easy to see the pictures of domination: the bully vs the oppressed, the corrupt vs the decent, or the powerful vs the different. Domination is excellent at suppressing violence. Tyrants gage their power by how little trouble they encounter. Avoiding the wrath of a tyrant is hardly living in peace.

Can Peace be realized if you expect more of another than you expect of yourself? Peace cannot require sacrifice by one but not by another. Peace cannot endure in endless nuance and specificity of detail. Peace requires elasticity within a pliable yet immutable boundary.

Ideally, Peace is an atmosphere in which well-being thrives. It needs only the Truth to breathe. Its sustenance is truth-telling—all of it, every side of it—the good, the bad, the hurtful—so that trust can exist. Truth emanates both trust and peace. We humans so often, too often, refuse pieces of Truth like a toddler refusing vegetables and take trust off the menu. Peace, however, rarely survives where trust doesn’t precede it.

Do you want peace? Can we choose to submit to the Truth? That would mean ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’ are figments of our experiences and desires. The Truth cannot be owned. The Truth is unable to target, to tempt, to favor, to conceal—those are our attempts ‘own’ the Truth. The Truth has no stake in whether you like it or not. In many cases, you know it is the Truth because you don’t like it. The Truth is the quickest and easiest way to achieve Peace. It is a long, arduous road.

The Truth is that we have already submitted, you and I. Oh yes, we all have a god, like it or not—whether we realize it or not—even if it is our self. We have set some thing, some person, some idea-ology upon the throne of our hearts which fills our beings and so, our lives. And, yes, we eventually sacrifice to that which occupies our hearts.

I have chosen Christ Jesus to sit upon the throne of my heart—and He graciously returns after each time I realize that I have supplanted Him with my self. Peace is part and parcel of my submission to Christ, my King. I live that submission by loving my neighbor (liking them is optional).

Do you want Peace?