“Precisely because they have misled my people, saying, ‘Peace,’ when there is no peace, and because, when the people build a wall, these prophets smear it with whitewash, say to those who smear it with whitewash that it shall fall!” (Ezekiel 13:10-11, ESV)
“They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14 and 8:11, ESV)
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34, ESV)
In Jeremiah 6:14 and 8:11, God expresses His displeasure with the action of the prophets at the time who are telling the people that there is peace when there really is no peace. God calls this “healing the wound of His people lightly”, which I take to mean that the leaders are putting on temporary bandages instead of pursuing true repentance and healing that only God can provide. The leadership preferred false peace instead of God’s true peace. In Ezekiel 13:10, God refers to these same types of prophets again, saying that they have misled His people by claiming a “false peace”.
So…my question here is: Is the pursuit of peace really a good goal for us? It is my observation that many of us make peace the main priority, when God clearly did not in the times of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, nor did Jesus in the book of Matthew. Jesus was not about pursuing conflict, either, but much more focused on Truth, which often led to conflict. Peace, or harmony, certainly is not a bad thing to desire. However, we are deceived when we think we can produce such things outside of God’s Truth and Love, which I think was a point made in the stories surrounding the Scriptures I have quoted up above. What we wind up with when we make it all about keeping the peace is a “false peace”, derived by human effort.
One thing I am attempting to keep central to my thoughts in what I post here is the need to live by God’s Grace through Faith. Good things, or “fruit of the spirit”, come about through this very important way of living our lives. Any focus other than this will lead to us trying to act independently from God. In this case, we must trust Him in order to experience true peace. Our human efforts to produce anything good, including true peace, outside of living by faith will surely fail.
Let me try here to explain what I mean, in regards to the subject of peace. I know, largely due to my own experience and also with talking with many others who have experienced it, that we often make the pursuit of peace our priority, which negatively affects our relationships (including marriages, families, and local churches). The very act of making peace the goal opens me up to a host of manipulative options as to how I might attempt to acquire and maintain that “false peace”. Manipulation in any form is sourced from Satan because the act of manipulating reveals that I am trying to be in control of something instead of God. The goal of peace allows for covering up things instead of digging in and dealing with them. It allows for turning our heads when something is wrong. The resulting “harmony” is temporary at best, and void of any depth.
Forgive me ladies, as I speak more here concerning myself and my fellow men as an example, but we men certainly cannot live out of our God-given identities to lead our families, our churches, or anything when we settle for false peace. How can we pursue meaningful relationships with our wives and children through tough times when Truth and Love are not priorities and we are only concerned with keeping the peace (doing whatever it takes just to get by with having to deal with as little conflict as possible)? We wind up sitting back like Adam in the garden, doing nothing as Eve is tempted. We are unable to take a stand for anything when the very act of taking a stand might cause conflict, which prevents our goal of peace of being obtained. We sit back and allow bad things to happen without even a hint of a fight for what is good because that would rock the boat. And can we really love those who are being abused or victimized in some other way when we try to force some warped view of peace on them instead of protecting them?
True peace is only found through faith, which makes discovering and standing on Truth a priority and allowing God to provide the peace through it. Hiding or ignoring the Truth is deceitful, and all deception is sourced from our Enemy. Many times true peace occurs only after a trying time of sorting through what that Truth exposes in our hearts, as individuals and in our relationships. Of course, in relationships, Love must accompany this Truth or it is cold and callous, a clanging cymbal, so it isn’t pretty and never easily received. Therefore, this is not about the opposite end of the spectrum: being a jerk to others to get our point across. Living by God’s Grace through Faith is important, because this focus allows us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to keep Truth and Love knit together in our actions…something the pursuit of peace, in and of itself, does not allow. Living in Truth and Love does not produce a “light healing”, as does false peace like with the people in Jeremiah 6 and 8. It promotes the complete healing of wounded hearts and relationships. It leads to freedom, like Jesus said in John 8:31 (“The Truth shall make you free”).
The challenge I see for myself in this is that I tend to make my goal to find peace from controlling something in this world. This “something” can be a job, a hobby, others, money, or anything else I can find that I chase after with the hope of attaining and/or maintaining a feeling of peace. My pursuit causes only more anxiety. The deception here is deep, so it’s not always easy to see that I do this. Instead, I must bring myself back to what God always calls me back to: He is asking me to TRUST HIM. Trusting Him means living by grace through faith, walking in the spirit, living in Truth or whatever language you want to apply to the act of surrendering to and believing in Him right where I’m at. This includes trusting that His Grace is sufficient and that He will provide for my needs, no matter what fears may arise to try to distract me. When I trust Him, I find peace through Him at my very core, like Paul when he was in prison and somehow, at the same time, was praising the Lord. We, as Christians, have said the words “trust God” so many times, unfortunately in a way that makes it sound easy, but IT IS NOT EASY. It requires effort on my part to acknowledge my pursuit of a peace that is false, surrender my attempts at it, and trust Him to provide the real thing. As for applying faith to the relationships I have with others, I need not try to go around trying to force reconciliation (the act of forcing it is manipulative and results only in false peace at best). However, if I trust in Him I can do what I need to do, whether it is to humble myself, speak up, just shut up, forgive another, confront another in love, or just pray and hope for reconciliation. A faith-focus leads to definite true peace for me, and makes true reconciliation possible for broken relationships. I must take it to heart and remember the Truth that, although it may feel good in the present, false peace in relationships is as shallow and worthless as it is in my own heart. I need to forsake the preservation of empty or just downright fake relationships and risk pursuing the real thing with God and others.
I guess, in short, the real danger in pursuing peace occurs when we do it apart from trusting the Lord to provide it, trying to make it happen ourselves. We are easily tripped up in this, so we have to be diligent in bringing ourselves back to the main most important thing, asking ourselves, “Am I really trusting Him right now or trying to control this myself?”
