A Warring World’s Remedy: The Tragedy and Triumph of Peace

The United States was no longer at war, but it didn’t feel like it. Red or blue, a sense of injustice prevailed across the electorate. National unity flagged. Protests persisted on college campuses. A war, thousands of miles away, captivated and divided a global audience. A new (and unexpected) president sat in the Oval Office on the heels of a polarizing ‘scandal.’ Was this—is this—peace?

Like ours, 1975 was an exhausting year appended to an exhausting decade. Its poetry was clothed in the guitar-heavy, synthesizer-laden arrangements of bands, who processed the ‘Somber 70s.’ Their ballads were the vanguard of the ‘Counterculture.’ One song exemplified the mood of the time [1]. The Eagles’ I Wish You Peace began with the line, “I wish you peace when the cold winds blow” [2]. In a series of dire couplets, the band captured the spirit of the age. They sang wishes of  “peace when times are hard…And when storms are high, and your, your dreams are low.” 

The timing of the song’s release was curious. U.S. troops were finally home. The Vietnam War’s twenty-year saga had finally ended earlier that year. The Civil Rights Movement had recently delivered historic gains for people of color. If ever there had been peace in the last decade, it might have been then. Yet, fragments of human peace—like Henry Kissinger’s “salted peanuts”—beget cravings for more [3]. Thus, the aching at which the Eagles’ benedictory pleas were aimed was for a more complete and enduring peace. 

Intentional or not, embedded in the Eagles’ song is an implicit recognition of the fundamental brokenness of human peace. The tragedy of peace begins with its definition. It assumes an enmity to begin with. “Peace” implies bloodied friction or fraught relationship. It is the photo-negative to war, conflict, and strife. If peace were humanity’s natural state, we would not need to name it; some variation of the word “normal” would suffice. It does not. 

Consider the English etymology for “peace.” Derived from ‘pes’ or ‘pais’ (and from the Latin pax before that), its earliest use denoted “freedom from civil disorder” [4]. The Greek word for peace, eirḗnē (εἰρήνη), was similarly associated with the “cessation of hostilities” [5]. However, beyond civil tranquility, εἰρήνη also seems to be linguistically linked with another word: eírō (εἴρω), meaning to join, bind, or fasten. If fractured things are at the heart of peace, this is its best summation. Peace mends ruptured relations. It is why—from the Semitic salaam (سلام) and shalom (שָׁלוֹם) to the Korean annyeonghaseyo (안녕하세요) and Hawaiian aloha—humans have greeted one another with shades of ‘peace be upon you’ for centuries. We desire to be in right relationship with one another. 

Even so, desire chafes against practice. Take the most pragmatic expression of human peace: the negotiated settlement, the peace deal. Peace sounds nice to almost everyone until it requires something of almost anyone. And it always demands concessions [6]. In peacecraft, optimal outcomes are almost never equal outcomes. Peace is costly, and someone always loses. 

Then there is the lack of staying power. Human peace expires. Humans have warred from the start. Tenuous peaces have been war’s bandages, ripped off and re-sutured at imperial and communal whims alike. It is why Thomas Hobbes (in De Cive) called humanity’s natural state “war of all against all” [7] and why political scientists study the “commitment problem” [8]. Thus, the fundamental question of peacebuilding becomes: ‘how long shall this last?’

Much ink has been spilled to abridge the costs and extend the longevity of peace. Treaties, intergovernmental bodies, and international doctrines were forged. Many argued the obsolescence of Hobbesian international anarchy. The work of progress was done. Human governance and institutions were essentially perfected. We, “the last men,” were at the “end of history,” Francis Fukuyama argued at the turn of the twenty-first century [9]. Peace was now the norm, violence, the exception. Some, like Kenneth Waltz, credited nuclear weapons [10]. Disciples of Immanuel Kant charged democracy [11]. 

Yet, such bluster notwithstanding, the most recent analyses discern that conflict has far from flatlined. A smattering of think tanks pin our age as the most violent in recent memory [12]. But their reports merely gloss the realities humans from Sudan to Xinjiang—and beyond—are living daily [13]. One scholar described our world’s lot as a breakdown of the easy-to-say, harder-to-maintain allegiance to “never again” [14]. 

In 1907, Elihu Root—a former U.S. Secretary of State and Secretary of War—gave an explanation, prophetic if it weren’t timeless:

“Arbitrations and mediations, treaties and conventions, peace resolutions, declarations of principle, speeches and writings, are as naught unless they truly represent and find a response in the hearts and minds of the multitude of the men who make up the nations of the earth, whose desires and impulses determine the issues of peace and war. The end toward which this assemblage strives—the peace of the world—will be attained just as rapidly as the millions of the earth’s peoples learn to love peace and abhor war; to love justice and hate wrongdoing; to be considerate in judgment and kindly in feeling toward aliens as toward their own friends and neighbors; and to desire that their own countries shall regard the rights of others rather than be grasping and overreaching. The path to universal peace is not through reason or intellectual appreciation, but through the development of peace-loving and peace-keeping character among men…” [15]

In short, everyone must be bought in. To be more than a platitude, peace must be wedded to the character of humankind. Peace must be wanted by all, at all times, for all time—even at great cost. If such an enterprise were easy, Root’s directives would read as the treasure map to remedy each of history’s “wicked problems,” to use C. West Churchman’s term for seemingly unsolvable social issues like war [16]. ‘Just love peace and hate war!’ Or, as the Eagles wished their peace-hungry listeners: conjure the “strength to let love glow.” It certainly sounds nice. 

But peace is not that cheap. It demands an external fixative—a glue beyond itself—and an internal fidelity to right relationship. It demands sacrifice. For the Christian, peace is at the terminus of salvation’s arc. It describes the antidote to humanity’s greatest relational malaise. Right relationship with God was dashed by Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden. With sin’s unrighteous entry, the definition of peace became necessary, for suddenly, there was none. Eden’s aftermath betrayed a new innovation: war between humans and their Creator.

Humans chose worship of that which was not God. James 4:4 calls this worship of self and idols “enmity with God” [17]. It may be played out in the seemingly small-scale individual choices of lives lived quietly. But a splintered relationship with God can never be siloed. It will always have external—even international—reverberations. One commentator framed it this way: “Hence arise wars and fightings, even from this adulterous idolatrous love of the world, and serving of it; for what peace can there be among men, so long as there is enmity towards God?” [18] Indeed, after Eden and before heaven, ‘the peace of the world’ seems impossible. So, as Francis Schaeffer once asked, “how should we then live?” [19]

First, we should ponder peace. Peace is not the absence of suffering. It is its remedy. Peace is neither sunny days forever nor overcast perpetuity. Peace is not silence. It is a mother’s comfort at her baby’s cry. Peace is not solitude. It is the warm embrace of an old friend—years unseen. Peace is not the Shire without Mordor or Narnia without the Wicked Witch. It is Hobbiton’s salvation and Aslan’s victory. Peace is not even death. It is the final, posthumous rest wished for on tombstones. 

So, for those who recognize human immortality (ie. that the human trajectory leads to a binary—heaven or hell), perfect peace is found in a Savior who killed war with God. In his death, Jesus absorbed God’s just wrath on human sin and conquered death. The chasm between the divine and human—the holy and unholy—was breached.

While tribulation is still promised in this world, in Jesus there is peace where we need it most (John 16:33) [20]. God gave us peace with Himself by giving Himself. He bound our grievous wounds (Isaiah 30:26) [21]. Communion with Him is not only possible, but freely offered. Ephesians 2:14-16 reads: 

“For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility […] so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” [22]. 

Second, we should pray for peace. Prayer inhabits the gap between what we know to be true of God—what He has promised and done—and what we see in the world around us. There will be days that we do not feel peace. An old English minister once reminded his congregants, “A man may have peace that has no comfort” [23]. War will yet rage, sin will still be had, and the old hymn will ring true: “sorrows like sea billows roll” [24]. Yet, those—for whom Christ killed war with God—can cling to the three words which follow. “It is well.” The Christian’s lot is an endeavor of remembering that which was already done: Christ remedied relationship with God once and for all. Prayer, here, serves as a plea. It begs God to make the child’s memory easier. So, we are to pray, reminding ourselves as often as our joy ebbs and love grows cold.

Still, God’s creatures have not been called to hermitude. Schaeffer describes a plastic peace that “means just to be let alone, not to be troubled by the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city—to live one’s life with minimal possibilities of being personally disturbed” [25]. This, we must reject. As those around us rush to disengage from discomfiting news—or hurry to claim sides in conflicts near or far flung—the true peace-seeker should flee to the Father’s throne. Just as God commanded those in exile before us, we should pray for the place in which we are in exile (Jeremiah 29:7) [26], including for our enemies (Matthew 5:44, Proverbs 24:17) [27]. We should lament death, violence, and war as the ilk of sin. We should pray against them.

Third, we should practice peace. Root’s imperatives—love, peace, meekness, kindness—easily map onto the biblical fruit of the spirit or Beatitudes (i.e. characteristics wrought of God’s work in the Christian’s heart). Peace is the natural work of the human reconciled to God. Obviously not all are called to pursue careers in diplomacy or defense policy. (Though, some should!) But how we respond to aggravations in our daily lives does merit reflection. Romans 12:18 exhorts Christians to “so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” [28]. At its heart is the necessary lived acknowledgement that peace is not a relational commodity reserved for Christians’ relations with other Christians. Followers of Christ should be at the vanguard of peace-bound relationships with all. 

Fourth and last, we should publish peace. If we really believe the truth we possess about God—and His lasting peace for a restless world—we should share it. Christians stake their lives upon God’s peace. That ‘it is well’ with our souls is what we rest in. If even an iota of such a comforting doctrine were true, what mix of hate or apathy must drive us to hide it from aching neighbors? To hunger after the proliferation of God’s peace to all humanity should be the pulse of the Christian. Isaiah 52:7 prefigures the Gospel—that Christ died for sinners, establishing ultimate peace—in a precious quintuplet just as true three thousand years ago, in 1975, or today:

“How beautiful upon the mountains

    are the feet of him who brings good news,

who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,

    who publishes salvation,

    who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” [29].

References

1. “‘I Wish You Peace’ by The Eagles,” The Friday Fix (blog), January 10, 2020, https://thefridayfix.home.blog/2020/01/10/i-wish-you-peace-by-the-eagles/.
2. “I Wish You Peace,” Genius, accessed November 20, 2024, https://genius.com/Eagles-i-wish-you-peace-lyrics.
3. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969– July 1970, eds. Edward C. Keefer and Carolyn Yee (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2006), Document 117.
4. “Translating Peace,” The Peace Museum, accessed November 20, 2024, https://www.peacemuseum.org.uk/translating-peace/.
5. John Bechtle, “Eirene: Peace in Chaos,” The Ezra Project, January 14, 2023, https://ezraproject.com/eirene-peace-in-chaos/.
6. Valerie Sticher, “Negotiating Peace with Your Enemy: The Problem of Costly Concessions,” Journal of Global Security Studies 6, no. 4 (December 1, 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogaa054.
7. Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, (Netherlands: Apud Ludovicum & Danielem Elzevirios, 1657), 15.
8. James D. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995): 379–414, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2706903.
9. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, (United Kingdom: Free Press, 2006).
10. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,” American Political Science Review 84, no. 3 (1990): 730-745.
11. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, (United States: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983).
12. “New Data Shows Record Number of Armed Conflicts,” Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), June 10, 2024, https://www.prio.org/news/3532.
13. “Highest Number of Countries Engaged in Conflict Since Second World War,” Institute for Economics & Peace, June 11, 2024, https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GPI-2024-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf.
14. “Why Is Violent Conflict Reaching Record Levels?: A Conversation With Comfort Ero,” Foreign Affairs, March 21, 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/why-violent-conflict-reaching-record-levels.
15. “The National Arbitration and Peace Congress at New York,” The American Journal of International Law 1, no. 3 (1907), 729, https://doi.org/10.2307/2186827.
16. C. W. Churchman, “Wicked Problems,” Management Science, 14 no. 4 (1967), B141–B142, https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.14.4.B141.
17. James 4:4, Bible, ESV.
18. Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume, (United States: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008).
19. Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. (United States: Crossway Books, 2005).
20. John 16:33, Bible, ESV.
21. Isaiah 30:26, Bible, ESV.
22. Ephesians 2:14-16, Bible, ESV.
23. William Bridge, A Lifting Up for the Downcast, (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2012).
24. Horatio Gates Spafford, “It is Well,” Hymnary.org, accessed November 20, 2024, https://hymnary.org/text/when_peace_like_a_river_attendeth_my_way.
25. See Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, 205.
26. Jeremiah 29:7, Bible, ESV.
27. Matthew 5:44 and Proverbs 24:17, Bible, ESV.
28. Romans 12:18, Bible, ESV.
29. Isaiah 52:7, Bible, ESV.