Redefining Peace

A few years ago, I started listening to a podcast called “Revisionist History” hosted by Malcolm Gladwell. Immediately, I was hooked. The premise intrigued me: Each episode, Gladwell investigates a topic, person, event, or idea and asks whether or not history got the story right. He offers a revision of history— a reinterpretation of something that previously felt familiar and known. He looks at Elvis Presley and wonders whether we truly understand the depth and despair of the man behind the mic. He examines “the world’s most controversial semicolon” from a line from the Constitution, calling its long-decided meaning into question. He even challenges the human mind, casting doubt on a person’s ability to recall accurately life’s most important events.

Recently, I had my own moment of revisionist history. In preparing to write this article I was challenged to reconsider the meaning of a word I thought needed no further examination: peace.

Peace, Revised

I’m sure we all differ slightly in what comes to mind when we think about peace. For me, one of the first things that pops into my mind is the song “War” by Edwin Starr. Although I’m a millennial, I listened almost exclusively to music from the sixties and seventies in my teens and early twenties—and this song was a favorite. If you don’t know it, it’s an in-your-face protest song that boldly questions what war is good for. (“Absolutely nothing”, Starr would maintain.)

It’s no surprise then that when I think of peace its antithesis comes to mind. Peace has long been understood as the opposite or absence of war. A time with no political or social tension, when people and nations feel safe, secure, and steady. Even the biblical words for peace shalom (Hebrew) and eirene (Greek) reflect similar ideas of welfare, national tranquility, and harmony between individuals and people groups. And this was the same type of peace Jesus’ audience would have longed for. The first-century Jews that Jesus lived among and spoke to existed under Roman rule, anxiously anticipating the arrival of the Messiah who they assumed would deliver them from foreign occupation. Their hope was for a leader who would usher in political peace and deliver them to true freedom.

But what I’ve come to understand is that the New Testament offers a revision of this definition of peace—one that does not exclude national or personal welfare, but expands far beyond it.

But what I’ve come to understand is that the New Testament offers a revision of this definition of peace—one that does not exclude national or personal welfare, but expands far beyond it.

Peace-ish Peace

Martin Luther King, Jr understood deeply this expanded understanding of peace. In his moving “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King makes a sharp distinction between two types of peace as he defends the idea that a level of civil disobedience and protest is necessary to combat injustice. He then laments what he calls the greatest stumbling block for the civil rights movement: “the white moderate”—the one “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice.” With this contrast between “positive” and “negative” peace, King wisely identifies that civil order is not the same as peace. A life without tension (or the illusion of it) does not necessarily make it peaceful.

This “negative peace” King refers to is what I like to call “peace-ish peace”—a peace that can look like peace and sound like peace, but is far from “positive” or true peace. It’s an existence that might be free of war, tension, or conflict, but is only that. This type of peace doesn’t push for resolution, forgiveness, and justice. It’s a peace defined by what is absent, not what is present.

Maybe you’ve experienced a peace like this—a peace-ish peace. It’s when a situation might look fine and peaceful on the outside, but inside you’re anxious and on edge. Like when someone attempts to “keep the peace” to avoid conflict, punishment, or consquences. This might smooth things out, but the underlying issues remain. Peace-ish peace can also be the result of unresolved conflict labeled as resolved, like when someone apologizes more to get out of trouble than to truly repair the relationship. Peace-ish peace offers surface resolutions, but true peace is felt in our hearts, minds, and guts. True peace looks and sounds, but also feels, restorative.

Peace-ish peace offers surface resolutions, but true peace is felt in our hearts, minds, and guts. True peace looks and sounds, but also feels, restorative.

I experienced peace-ish peace during a difficult work conflict several years ago. I was part of a team that became deeply affected by a conflict between two higher-ups. As part of the peace-making process, my team was invited to participate in some reconciliation conversations. I was eager to witness a peace-making process between two leaders and ready to learn from the experience.

However, even with the help of a mediator, the result was far from restorative. Instead, the mediator skirted around the deep hurts of the people involved. The real, core issues were never addressed. Instead, surface resolutions were made: Try your best to avoid each other; be respectful in shared spaces; let “little hurts” go. In essence, the mediator attempted to heal the brokenness by applying bandaids where surgery was required.

The result was that the wound got infected. The peace-ish peace solution looked like peace but didn’t feel that way for anyone involved. Sure, no arguments were breaking out in front of the teams anymore and the teams had the illusion of running orderly, but beneath the surface remained festering wounds that required tending to. This had painful, lasting consequences that eventually led to a split in the organization. We needed positive peace.

The Most Disruptive Peace

The type of peace I experienced during that work conflict was a facade—avoidance masquerading as peace. True peace does not avoid—it disrupts. This is the peace King is referring to when he calls for “positive peace.” He urges those who will listen to desire more than a false sense of steadiness and security. True peace doesn’t ignore the unrest and strain we feel all around us—or silence it for the sake of order. Instead, true peace enters the conflict head-on, understanding that it can only exist when we acknowledge and step into sin, injustice, pain, and brokenness.

True peace does not avoid—it disrupts.

And that’s because the truest form of peace is incarnational. During Advent, we are reminded of how God didn’t just start over with humanity after the Fall for the sake of order. Instead, God invades his broken creation and takes on human flesh (John 1:4). Through the birth of a tiny baby, we witness peace at its most invasive, most disruptive. But Jesus didn’t come into the world to smooth things over or offer surface resolutions. He did the opposite. He disrupted the idea of power and glory by being born lowly and in a feeding trough (Luke 2:7). He disrupted the social orders by befriending social outcasts and calling tax collectors to be part of his most intimate group of friends (Luke 7:36-50; Matthew 9:10). And he disrupted the Jewish people’s understanding of the Messiah by submitting himself to Roman capital punishment—death by crucifixion.

But Jesus’ greatest act of peaceful disruption would be his resurrection, when he not only confronts the sin, pain, and injustice of creation head-on but exhibits his power over it. Through his resurrection Jesus reconciles the most important relationship of all: God and us. In this, he offers true peace regardless of our lived experience, regardless of the state of our lives, nation, and world. And not only that, God calls us to be partners—co-disruptors who bring love, wisdom, justice, and grace into all sectors of life and become peacemakers alongside Christ himself (Colossians 3:17; Hebrews 12:14; James 3:18).

Passing the Peace

My husband and I are Anglican church planters and as such our service follows a liturgy. Immediately after a time of confession, we are called to “pass the peace.” This liturgical moment is twofold. First, it reminds us to extend to others the peace that is now available to us in Jesus. We confess our sins to God and remember his limitless grace and experience true, reconciling peace that we then offer to those around us.

But secondly, this moment is a space where reconciliation and repair with others happen. It’s not by coincidence that after we confess and experience the peace of reconciliation with God that we are then urged to go reconcile with others. And true to this new understanding of peace, it’s quite disruptive. It happens in the middle of the service, which would make anyone feel very awkward. But this timing reminds us that we should not put off being at peace with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are not invited to make peace when it’s convenient or most comfortable for us. True peace is disruptive and therefore often uncomfortable and inconvenient. We should seek to restore peace as quickly as possible—even in the middle of a Church service.

We are not invited to make peace when it’s convenient or most comfortable for us. True peace is disruptive and therefore often uncomfortable and inconvenient.

So here’s some Advent encouragement: Get disruptive. This could look like choosing to step into and repair a relationship built on peace-ish peace, even if it’s inconvenient. It could also look like resisting smoothing something over that needs to be lovingly and honestly addressed. Whatever you decide, my hope is that the peace extended is the peace gifted to us in Christ: a peace that surpasses all understanding. And so, as we say in the final lines of the Anglican liturgy, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”