Blessed are the "Peacemakers"

There's hardly anything more disruptive to the ebb and flow of our lives than difficulties. You've met difficulties, I'm sure, anything from the traumatic where a physician's diagnosis alters the course of your life to an unruly neighbor that keeps you up late at night...or perhaps it's the fellow that remains just within ear shot tapping a relentless beat with his pencil against a metal desk.

There's any number of ways you could deal with it, but the end result that we seek is typically peace...that or pretend we're simply at the mercy of a careless universe that is treating us with impartial malevolence...just a series of chaotic, uncontrolled events that we encounter much like a domino meets another by tipping forward. Unavoidable, really. Don't take it personally. Shrug it off or shake your fist with empty vindictiveness.

Shaking our fists is clearly futile, and not biblical in the least if the object of our wrath is what we glibly describe as "chance". Often, we find that it is best to make peace with the situation, to submit to the circumstance. I wonder, however, if this is what Scripture depicts as peacemaking? The original mandate in Genesis was to take dominion of the earth, to exert an authority conferred by God, especially as it relates to the Imago Dei.

We're not so arrogant anymore, thank heavens. We are not only ready to submit ourselves to a universe ruled by "chance", but also to capitulate to the thinking and culture of the world. When we embrace standards espoused by a culture that embraces chance, we are adopting a "cultus". That is, to say, we're guilty of syncretism (at best) or of leaving the true Faith. It is quite comfortable to accept worldly thinking when it entails such comforts. Our country was founded on Christian principles, after all...right? We're certainly not adopting the ways of Baal's followers...no, we're too enlightened for that. There is no battle, right?

Look around and you'll see Christianity is full of peacemakers. Whether it's Brian McLaren making peace with sodomites or Rob Bell in one of his NOOMA videos denouncing a man preaching God's Word because the man was talking about God's judgement on sin...those means don't work, we must do what "works", after all. Mr. Blow Horn man, won't you please put your Bible down and step off your pedestal for a moment...there's people walking past, you're disturbing the peace.

We satisfy ourselves with the comforts we have and we don't want to step on the toes of those friendly unbelievers that we don't make eye contact with at Star Bucks while we order our mocha frappacinos that chase away the cold from the lack of love in our "faith". The world's at peace...shhhh! You'll wake someone with that blow horn, shut up for the love of....love of what? I dunno, just don't say those words, and not that way. Let's get some coffee.

This isn't new, this has been the tendency of God's people throughout history. In fact, this is what it was like a generation or so after God's people took over the Promised Land. Suddenly, the valiant warring and destruction...the putting of cities "under the ban" (i.e. destroying all life and property) fell by the wayside...Israel became peacemakers.

God prophesied this would happen, that His people would become peacemakers, that they would enter into agreements not sanctioned by God, and this necessarily meant they would chase after other gods.

Judges 2:1-3
1 Then the Angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said: “I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you. 2 And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed My voice. Why have you done this? 3 Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare to you.’”

But God did not merely leave the nations around His people to torment them...He wanted to teach them how to make peace:

Judges 3:1-2

1 Now these are the nations which the LORD left, that He might test Israel by them, that is, all who had not known any of the wars in Canaan 2 (this was only so that the generations of the children of Israel might be taught to know war, at least those who had not formerly known it)