Does Peace Come From Ruling Or Serving?

Matthew 20:20-28 tells an all too human story in the Gospels. The mother of two of Jesus' disciples came to him asking for a particular honor for her sons; she wanted her sons to have the seats of honor in Jesus' kingdom. After Jesus answered her, the others became angry. It was then that Jesus identified key factors to spreading both peace and conflict.

Jesus said that we should not "lord it over" others as the Gentiles do but instead, we should become like him. He said that:

"the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

The contrast that Jesus draws is stark. While those who were then counted as outside of God's community of people sought honor by dominating others, the King of Kings came to give the ultimate service for all.

While we could charge people to follow Jesus' words and example here, perhaps we should first employ these verses as a barometer. That is we can tell those who are serving themselves from those who are following Jesus by checking to see if they are ruling over rather than serving others. So is the US serving Iraq or themselves when our oil companies are negotiating for no-bid contracts? And they are doing so because our gov't, having failed to move the Iraqi Parliament to privatize Iraqi oil reserves, influenced the Iraqi Oil Minister to privatize the same reserves so that they can be controlled by foreign companies.

How does this lesson relate to peace? Control and domination bring unnecessary conflict. We know this because we know how we respond to control. And yet, when it comes to our country's foreign policies, this lesson often remains unlearned. This is because since we have idealized, or idolized, our country, we interpret resistance to our nation's control as hating our freedoms, and in a sense, that is correct. People from other countries hate our assumed freedom to rule over them as we are doing in Iraq. Of course, those who insist on worshiping at the alter of American patriotism insist that others need our direction for their own good.

Such patriots show that they are either reading impaired with regards to the Bible or are following what Jesus described was the example of the godless--remember that they sought greatness by becoming tyrants. Of course, tyrant is a strong word to those seeking control; but to those who are being dominated, it is apropos.

Do we really want peace? Then we should insist that our country's foreign policies serve rather than control others. In this, we would be following Jesus. This will not eliminate all of our conflicts but it will decrease the number of our enemies because we will no longer be fighting those who resist our control. And who knows, maybe setting such an example of service would catch on which would make us leaders, by example that is.

When Taking The First Step To Peace, Follow Jesus

A long, long time ago, there was an epic battle between Good and Evil. Good was more powerful and thus it had a choice. Good could have resorted to using force to annihilate evil but decided not to. Rather, Good decided to live in peace with Evil. Good didn't want to appease Evil but Good didn't want to destroy Evil either. So what did Good do?

Romans 5:6-10 tells us how Good won without appeasing evil. In particular, verse 10 tells us that while we were Good's enemies, Good reconciled us by having his Son die for us. So what we have today are followers of Good who were once evil.

The problem that is occurring is that Good's followers are not treating others as they have been treated. Rather than trying to be reconciled with those who have proclaimed themselves to be their enemies, Good's followers have decided that they must use all of their strength to destroy evil. As a result, Good's followers, and the rest of us, are now engaged in two wars and will possibly be fighting a third one. And how do they defend their behavior? These followers claim that, like a leopard's spots, evil cannot change.

But despite these actions by Good's followers, Good's example of how to win over enemies still stands. And so the question becomes why don't Good's followers follow Good's example? The answer might be that doing so would be too costly. For example, in describing Good's Son and what he would have to go through, part of Isaiah 53: 4 says:

"Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows he carried;"

Feeling the pain of others was the first installment that Good's Son had to pay so that Evil could be changed and reconciled. And perhaps in this world where we learn to crave comfort and enjoy escaping, following the example that Good's Son provided has become too costly. So instead of being bothered by the troubles of others, we prefer to believe that Evil cannot change and thus our only solution is to eliminate it by force. But in so doing, we forget how we have been both treated and changed.

It is not that we can change everyone who is evil, but we will never know who can be changed and thus saved without treating others as we have been treated. To care for others as we have been cared for, we must start with understanding what they are going through and being disturbed by what they suffer.

Revolution Today Or Death Tomorrow

Calling all Mathematicians! The following problem is the most important Math problem to solve today. The train of the lessons learned from history is leaving from the East traveling West at so many miles per hour. On the same track, the train of an ever advancing and adulterous technology is leaving from the West traveling East at so many miles per hour. When will these two trains meet? The answer to this question tells us how long we have left on this earth.

From the East starts the train of the lessons learned from History. What are those lessons? Actually, there is only one lesson and that is, as others have said, we have not learned from history. What haven't we learned? Despite the horrors of war, we have not learned how to live without it.

From the West starts the train of technology. This train contains the know-how to make every tool that betters our lives. But this train also carries the WMDs that threaten our existence. It is obvious that technology is advancing because our toys, both tools and weapons, are more powerful. And though we often find comfort in our technological edge over our adversaries, we shouldn't. Why? We should be uncomfortable because our technology today can be someone else's technology tomorrow. That is the adulterous nature of technology.

The only chance we have of avoiding this cataclysmic train collision is to derail one of these trains. Which train should we derail? It cannot be the train of technology. The train of technology is transporting necessary cargo for our survival as well as destructive cargo. Also, past attempts to derail the WMD part of this train have proven to be counterproductive. For example, according to Richard Wilson, a former Chair of the Department of Physics at Harvard, Israel's 1981 bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak seemed to start Saddam's nuclear weapons program rather than halt it (http://www.physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/publications/OSIRAK(2)). Our invasion of Iraq is another example where an attempt to selectively derail the train of technology, it was claimed that Iraq was developing WDMs, was counterproductive because terrorism increased afterwards (http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_effect_1.html).

So our only hope for survival is to derail the train carrying the lessons learned from history. To do this, we will have to learn History's most important lesson that war does not work. We will have to do so quickly because these two trains could collide at any moment. So, what we really need is a revolution if we are to survive.

What must we change? We must eliminate those factors that start conflicts. The first thing we need to change is our addiction to groupism. Groupism is where we are more loyal to a group than to moral values. We can tell that our country is controlled by groupism when our government supports the same aggressive actions performed by our allies that it condemns when done by our adversaries. A variation of this form of groupism can be seen when Israelis are apathetic to the plight of the Palestinians and yet call for the death of Arabs after innocent Israelis are murdered. Palestinians return the favor when they vow vengeance after their own are killed while they rejoice when Israelis are killed.

Another sign that we are carrying out groupism is when our loyalty to a group limits our choices. Examples of this expression of groupism could be constantly seen in the Cold War when our nation would back all sorts of repressive regimes that were not communistic rather than find an alternative approach. Now groupism also applies to individuals. In 2004, I encountered numerous Kerry voters who agreed more with Nader than Kerry. So why didn't they vote for Nader? It was because they were Democrats. Sure they said that Nader didn't have a chance to win but Nader didn't have a chance to win because too few Democrats were going to break ranks to vote for someone else. This type of groupism shows a preference for power and control over values.

Defeating groupism will be difficult. Groups give us a sense security and significance. Not only that, many of us were raised on groupism. Groupism started for us with rooting for hometown and school sports teams and then it affects how we register to vote. A possible result of this is that we expect our government to rely on groupism too. But unless we are willing to limit our affection and allegiance to any group, our groupism will distract us from promoting equality and will push us into presuming we are superior. If we think we are superior, we will feel entitled and will try to dominate. The result of groupism is that its victims resist control and feel enraged when favoritism trumps fairness and justice.

We must also undo our addiction to materialism. At the worst, our materialism habit causes us to hoard resources and wealth. The more we accumulate for ourselves, the less there is for others. The less there is for others, the more we, or our mercenaries, must dominate so we can keep what we have because the result of our hoarding oppresses the have-nots.

At the least, our materialism becomes an escape from a disturbing world. That is our possessions provide a comfortable cocoon in which to live. When we live in that cocoon, we are shielded from the suffering of have-nots. At this point, a law of physics takes over. That law states that an object that lives in comfort, stays in comfort. People who do not live in comfort, however, are not bound by that law.

If we are to overcome this materialism, then we must prefer to accumulate connections with others to amassing riches. And the most meaningful connections we can accumulate are those that include people in need. In other words, we, as individuals and as a nation, need to put a higher priority on sharing than getting or controlling. If we do more than superficially share, we just might be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Finally, we must forsake the all or nothing thinking that says that one is either for us or against us. Though Bush made this approach popular, the origin of this all or nothing thinking goes back to the start of the Cold War. This all or nothing thinking trapped us into deciding to attack leftist regimes rather than work with them. Overthrowing Iran's Parliamentary government in 1953 because it was seen as moving towards Communism when it planned to nationalize oil resources caused a tragic chain reaction of events and failed decisions that we still are suffering through today. Instead of seeing nations or people as being polar opposites, we need to see that all of us are on different locations on the same continuum. The implication here is that we can better avoid or resolve conflicts when we recognize common concerns and values we have with adversaries.

Though we need a revolution today to prevent the two trains from colliding, we do not need a violent revolution that overthrows the government; violence is what we want to eliminate because it will be self-destructive. Rather, we need a revolution that calls on us to change as much as it demands that our government change. And though people will call this kind of revolution naive; if this revolution fails and the two trains meet, then life on earth as we know it will be called utopian.