(221) S10E6: Steps Towards Peace
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. In the last episode, we went through second Chronicles chapters 15 through 16 and pulled out six things that Judah did to bring about Shalom. I really wanted an episode where I at least talked a bit about some steps that we can do and take in our own lives in order to spread Shalom and live more Shalomful lives. And I realized after that last episode that using that as a guide could be pretty useful. So we identified six key elements that were brought together that brought about the Shalom.
Craig:Listen listening to the prophets or to a prophet, I suppose, but for us listening to prophets, putting away idols, restoring proper worship, inclusion, including, other people into this project of peace, emphasize, a commitment from the heart, like a real true commitment to to God and to to democratize leadership. So we will start with listening to the prophets. Now I'm going to read a quote here that is I I heavily edited it, and it's actually spliced from two different letters or messages criticizing America. So let's start with that. The British handed over Palestine with America's help and support to the Jews who have occupied it for more than fifty years, years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction, and devastation.
Craig:The the creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and America is the leader of its criminals. Under America's supervision, consent, and orders, the governments of many countries which act as America's agents attack the Middle Eastern people on a daily basis. They steal their wealth and oil at poultry prices because of their international influence and military threats. American forces occupy Middle Eastern countries. They spread their military bases throughout them.
Craig:They corrupt Middle Eastern lands, and they besiege their sanctities and ensure the continuity of their pillaging of their treasures. They have starved of Muslims of Iraq where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1,500,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of American sanctions, and yet America did not show concern. And it seems that the path to stop the hegemony of capitalism is to carry out a real radical change that will help the American people liberate, not to liberate foreign countries from their leaders, but to liberate the White House so that Barack Obama will be liberated and with him, everyone else from the hegemony of these corporations. So when I hear a lot of these words, I have to say that quite a bit is on target.
Craig:It's true. America has devastated the Middle East with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction, and devastation. America has stolen wealth and oil from the Middle Eastern countries because of their influence, and they have been the cause directly and indirectly of thousands of Middle Eastern children every day without any apparent concern or sorrow. Also, America is in many ways captive to the kings of corporations. The person who wrote these things, Osama bin Laden.
Craig:It's from two letters, as I said. Most of it is from the message that he gave just after Al Qaeda had orchestrated the September eleventh attacks, and another was unreleased, but it was found shortly after his death. Now to be clear, there was a whole lot in those messages that was complete rubbish. For instance, he supported his killing of 3,000 American civilians by saying that these civilians used their self proclaimed freedom to elect the leaders who committed those atrocities that he had mentioned. So these citizens, that they were just as liable as to be attacked.
Craig:They were just as guilty as as the leaders. Now that's nonsense. And there's a strong anti Semitic strain in his letter and all sorts of other glaring problems. I'm no fan of Bin Laden, but that doesn't mean that I can't see the truth in his words as well. And it certainly doesn't mean that God can't use him for his own purposes in some way.
Craig:We see this throughout the Old Testament. He worked through the pagan Balaam and even his donkey when Balaam didn't hear him. Yahweh uses enemy nations, pagan and well known for their atrocities they committed to punish and ultimately bring some sense into Israel. I'm not suggesting god commanded Al Qaeda to attack the World Trade Center. He didn't.
Craig:But suppose we had heeded some of what our enemy had told us. What if we hadn't immediately rejected all criticism because of the pain we felt because of him? What if we had critically sifted through his message and searched ourselves to make sure it actually was nothing more than the delusions of an evil man who America rather than just assuming that. What if we were truly curious about what led to such a deep hatred? What would have happened had we recognized the horrors that were being brought about by our policies and made appropriate changes?
Craig:While it's impossible to say exactly what would have happened had we done any of those things, we do know what did happen following our reaction. Instead of humbly listening to an enemy's criticism, we gave him the middle finger. We cursed him, not under our breath, but as loud as we could and wherever we would be heard. And the result, our government took advantage of our blind hatred, attacked a different country, which resulted in an eight year war, which reignited a few years later, and that cost about $1,700,000,000,000, over sixty thousand soldier deaths, and over one hundred thousand civilian deaths. It led to large amounts of oil being spilled, massive amounts of carbon emissions being released into the air, and some of that spilled oil went to bodies of water, which killed thousands of, animals.
Craig:And it also led to radioactive contamination of the soil, which has rendered huge amounts of farmland barren. In addition to killing countless animals and destroying their habitats, the oars also brought over 45 species of plants to extinction. Perhaps we should have paid closer attention to his message after all. Not given in, not praised him, but changed our path so his criticisms failed to be true rather than blindfolding ourselves and leaning even farther into those sins. Set in our rage, wars raged, death counts rose, and the earth spat us out.
Craig:Knowing who is a true prophet and what are true messages from God is, albeit, tricky, and I would in no way consider Osama bin Laden a true prophet. But if a prophetic word but if a prophetic word is worth listening to, then it's then it's addressing our lives with criticism. Otherwise, what's the point? It's just preaching to the choir at that point. Few rulers in the Old Testament would have recognized the prophets as anything other than enemies of some sort.
Craig:While enemies are more likely to give an unfair bias against you, they are also more likely to tell you your flaws than a friend is. And for that reason, they can be very important. None of us are living in or perpetuating perfect states of shalom, which means all of us lives lifestyles which need to be adjusted. We must always be on the lookout for these areas we need improvement in, places where we need to change. Even Osama bin Laden could have helped us had we heeded his message.
Craig:His approach was horrific, and he certainly would not have liked many of my approaches to solving the problems he addressed. He seems like he was a very hateful man, but god is not limited by that. He used ungodly nations to punish and bring Israel back many times. If he can speak through a donkey to a devonor who is trying to curse Israel, then I'd say we better not limit from whom god can speak to us. Had we listened to his message despite his hatred, we could have worked had we listened to his message despite his hatred, we could have worked to change some of the areas we need most changing.
Craig:By ignoring him, we were led even farther away from Shalom. More likely than foreign terrorists, though, we will hear prophets in more friendly spheres, though we should still expect them to make us feel uncomfortable. We cannot discount a voice simply because they offend us, disagree with us, or aren't coming from a Christian. Once again, the message is probably not worth much if it doesn't make us squirm. One more recent example is the Black Lives Matter movement.
Craig:It has been such a great prophetic voice. It's painful because it requires very difficult change and requires many of us to recognize that we are more responsible for forces which continue to subject others to racism than we'd really like to know about. I know of criticisms of Black Lives Matter of their being a terrorist group, being against traditional family, being pagan and anti Christian. If you feel you should not join in them, then don't. Personally, I don't associate myself too closely with any movement, but I don't completely write off their messages either.
Craig:But don't completely write off their messages either. We need to be willing and even eager to hear difficult things directed at us so we can change to become better. We need to assess things critically and should not associate too lightly with any organization, but we also need to listen and critically evaluate our stances as well as be willing to make the necessary changes that we all need to make. When we read about prophets in the bible, it's so easy to scoff the leaders for not following their message. We should be careful not to throw the first stone, though.
Craig:Listening to a critical voice is difficult, and it's easy to justify not doing so. It will probably set you against the grain of those around you. As we see in second Chronicles and all throughout the Bible, though, God very often speaks through prophets, and our shalom is often dependent first on our heeding their advice. Alright. Number two, putting away idols.
Craig:In order to do this, we will need deep and continual reflection of ourselves. Advice in this regard can be found in huge amounts of Christian literature in all denominations. The tricky part, though, isn't just overcoming these idols, but recognizing which idols we worship. I am going to mention two classic devotions that are ancient but largely forgotten and even scoffed at, especially within Protestantism. The first is fasting.
Craig:Fasting is a good way to both discover and work on overcoming your idols. I fast once a week as a reminder of my values. It helps me to depend less on material comfort and rely more on God. This is good broadly speaking, but also loosens chains of materialism in my life in specific ways. As I deny my body comfort and replace it with commitment and prayer, I discover areas of my life that have taken captive that I never noticed before.
Craig:Additionally, through this fasting, I've already begun work on breaking free from that captivity. Breaking that captivity, of course, does not come about through hard work, but through God's grace, which I'm able to turn towards now that I've recognized where it is that I'm not relying on him. In fact, I'd say one of my biggest idols is comfort itself, and fasting is a direct action against obeying that master in order to obey the master. Sabbath is another practice largely lost that I found beneficial in breaking free from idols, certainly in my own life. I am very goal and task oriented.
Craig:I definitely keep myself busy. For the past, oh, six or seven months or so, though, I have been observing a Sabbath. I do absolutely none of my projects on that day. It really pains me at times because I lose an entire day of work, and I refuse to work any harder on other days to make up for this lost day or to fret about any project on my Sabbath or really give it any mind space at all. Pops into my mind, sometimes a little bit of an anxiety goes in.
Craig:Oh, what about this? Oh, I could be getting farther here, and I just push it aside. It's Sabbath. That's not what I'm doing today. And at first, I sort of dreaded Sabbath because I felt like I was falling behind and wasting my time, But I rather enjoy it now, and I'm coming to look forward to it more and more.
Craig:Now I wanna be clear that my Sabbath days are not quiet days spent in solitude and reading scriptures and praying. I spent them with my wife and three young children. They're wild. They are hectic often. But because I have set aside physically and mentally all my other tasks, I'm able to focus 100% on them.
Craig:This helps me keep my priorities straight throughout the week too, because now I've intentionally made my schedule inefficient, which has allowed me to stop being so productive focused all the time. This was a huge idol to me in several ways, and it kept me from engaging fully with people. It increased my anxiety, kept me constantly distracted. And since beginning this Sabbath practice, I I felt the opposite of all those things. I enjoy being with people so much more.
Craig:I listen more. I I think I can help them more, and my anxiety is dissipating. Number three, restoration of proper worship. This section will be a bit sparse. This isn't for lack of importance but of experience.
Craig:Experience on my own part and my knowledge of other people's experiences. So I don't want to talk too much about it. I don't want to speak beyond my ability to do so. My experiences of corporate worship though has been relatively bland. I don't say this too sharply, but it has largely felt like a bunch of individuals worshiping separately together, if that makes any sense, rather than as one united body.
Craig:But let's take a look real quickly here at the liturgy and some of the very early church. This is from the DDK, which was written in the second century. It's one of the very earliest Christian writings that we have actually. Each Lord's Day of the Lord, once you are gathered together, break bread and do the Eucharist, having first confessed your faults so that your sacrifice may be pure. And having any quarrel with another, let that one not gather with you until they are reconciled so that your sacrifice may not be defiled.
Craig:Reconciliation was a prerequisite for participating in the Eucharist, which was the heart of their worship. This, of course, comes from Jesus himself when he says things like, so if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First, be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. And, of course, in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our debts as we have forgiven others. Yet so many of us go into worship services without knowing the names of almost any of the others in the pews.
Craig:We often have negative views of others and sometimes active disputes going on. We need to depart from this lukewarm worship where we have an outward form of worship all the while staying divided from each other. Before worship, we need to focus on forgiveness, not so much God's forgiveness of us as our forgiveness towards others. Now this might start with recognizing God's forgiveness towards us, But often we stop there. We need to push on there.
Craig:We need to push beyond that because not all problems are going to be resolved in a day, But feelings of hatred or condemnation must be placed at the altar if we are to worship in truth and spirit. For truth says that we are all God's children, and the spirit is united. Then as we pray and sing and partake in whichever rituals, we are doing so as one body, one spirit. As we leave, we will be further united to each other through the spirit. As we do this, we are creating an alternative to the world's way of dealing with pain.
Craig:Others can find refuge here as we serve as hubs of healing and forgiveness. But as we reorient ourselves toward God, we need to recognize that this must entail reorienting ourselves away from Empire. In the preface to a book called Liturgies from Below, Sudipta Singh writes: worshiping God is itself an act of rebellion as empire demands to be worshiped alone. How many of our worship services feel like this, though? As we open our arms and worship, we need to be aware that we are worshiping the god of Exodus.
Craig:He opposes empires and sets people free. We will stand against the oppression and solitude given by the world and offer one of acceptance, forgiveness, and community. K. The next element here, inclusion. I have a few things I'd like to mention here for inclusion.
Craig:Most are related to loving the enemy. Last episode, I spoke briefly on different churches and denominations working together, so I won't speak of that here, although that's surely one of the most powerful things we can do. Not only will uniting denominations be good for the people within the church, but it will grow the church into a powerful force of unity, which can then topple opposing structures of of oppression. In order to spread Shalom, we will need to learn to break down the walls between us and our enemies. So I have a few things here, small things.
Craig:But sometimes that small thing is powerful, and sometimes we need to start this small before any of the big things will give way. So one wonderful way to do this is to just continually stretch the boundary line of your neighborhood. Watch foreign movies. Movies aren't real life, but ingesting art from people is a good way of understanding their values and ways of thinking. Reading books and poetry is incredibly beneficial as well.
Craig:Learn a foreign language. Most don't have the time, commitment, energy, or resources to learn entirely new languages, but you'd be surprised at how easy it is to learn the basics of a language. And from there, you could say a few words to someone with a different first language. Even if it switches back to English after one or two exchanges, you've got a surprisingly long way in making a new friend. So many people from every part of the world can speak English that it doesn't really surprise or flatter us when someone learns it.
Craig:But in my experience, for speakers of most other languages, bothering to learn even a few words or phrases of their language is one of the quickest ways of opening friendly and trusting dialogue between the two of you. Another thing, pray for your enemies daily. Every single day. And I mean every day. Pray for at least one person or group you do not like or you fear, whether it's an individual, a nation, or a social group.
Craig:You don't need to pray for anything specific. It can often be better that you don't, So it just it doesn't turn into a time praying to make that everybody who disagrees with you change how they view things and agree with you. A prayer for their well-being, a prayer for closing the distance between you two, or even just telling God that you pray for them and sitting there for a while is all very good. It will slowly start to erode your hard heart. The last thing I want to mention for this I got from a childhood friend of mine.
Craig:He had a really cool practice that my wife and I planned on picking up. Once a month he would close his eyes and randomly point to a place on the map. Wherever his finger landed was the type of cuisine that they would eat for dinner the next week. His grandma would look up recipes from that country and he would do some of his own research. We came over one time for one of these dinners, and it was a blast.
Craig:My friend would read some of the facts about the country. And then as we ate, his grandma would tell us some things that she had learned about the cuisine that they typically eat this or, you know, this represents this. Just stuff like that. Now that may seem small and it could be, but if you wanted to, I really do believe it can become quite a powerful practice. It could it can be more than just tasting different foods.
Craig:Use this week of preparation to understand the people even if just a tiny bit. And as you continue this and learn about more and more countries, you'll remember them when something tragic happens there. Maybe it's an earthquake, maybe wars, maybe they were the aggressors, but you've already spent time familiarizing yourself with them, at least just a little bit, and they're less others than the news is trying to convey to you. So now it's easier for you to kneel down and pray for them. It's easier for you to see them as people.
Craig:You spent an entire week looking at them, enjoying their customs and their food. That doesn't absolve bad things that people do, but that can remind us that they're people just like us. They're living their cultures just like us. Next is emphasize commitment from the heart. As a way of emphasizing commitment from the heart, I'm going to I'm going to talk about having a personal rule.
Craig:This is becoming more popular, and there are several good books and websites out there to help you construct your own rule. I'll leave some resources in the episode notes. Just to be clear here, I'm using the term rule in the sense of a religious rule or religious order. It's a governing treaty for one's life. It can be for a community or an individual, and it isn't meant to be an impenetrably rigid system as much as a sort of metronome for your life.
Craig:You know, those metronomes that tick to keep you in time when you're playing music? Well, a metronome ticks in the background of a song, and in some ways, it's leading the music as it sets the pace. But there's also freedom within these tics. And a good rule followed appropriately gives stability, confidence, and freedom. There are any number of ways to construct a rule.
Craig:One way is to look through another established rule and adapt that. The rule of Saint Benedict is a wonderful example, though admittedly reading through a book which helps explain some of it can be beneficial for the first read. Just a heads up. So what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to give a basic structure of my rule rather than what I had originally planned on doing of giving you advice on how to make your own rule. I think it'll just be helpful to see something unique and you can look at those resources that I posted to see a little bit more specifics.
Craig:So my rule here, I like structure and I like lists. And so that's the form that mine takes. I originally started by listing things that I wanted to do each day, each week, each month, each quarter, but I fell away from that and I have a little bit more of a menu or excuse me, a manual for my life. So I have it on an app called Notion. It's just like a note keeping app.
Craig:And I have different categories here where I could look at if I wanna say, hey. How how do I manage my life in this situation? So I have one thing for mornings. So if I wanna look at my kind of daily routine, I look and I and I have some quotes. A lot of these are taken from different books and stuff.
Craig:Awake in the morning with your thoughts turned to God. Think. This might be your last day. Then I have another bullet point. Each morning before anything at all, kneel down and pray.
Craig:It's important to establish that following God takes priority over eating or any other aspect of life. And I have a few sub points of that. Of course, if you need to relieve yourself or something, that often makes it easier to truly pray and simply not rush through it. And I have another note. And, of course, don't neglect people such as your children or anybody else in order to pray.
Craig:Say a prayer as you engage them and find a moment to slip out and kneel in prayer as you're able. I need those. These are things that I've worked through in my life. I've been frustrated when people are around because I can't pray before. So as I recognize this, I I need to write this down for me.
Craig:And so I have a lot of these things. And sometimes they're more specific, almost rules. Like I said, each morning, bend down and pray. And sometimes they're they're guidelines. I have something for prayer, my general structure, how I want to go about it.
Craig:I talked about Sabbath and fasting earlier. Well, I have my ideas on that. K. I I have some of my thinking. Sometimes it's good to re go over that stuff.
Craig:I have a little section concerning electronics. I have in there, boredom is not a legitimate excuse to use electronics. I have another note. Not every moment needs to be taken up by an activity or even listening to music. Quiet time is important as well.
Craig:And I have a few rules. No phones during mealtimes. Only use sparingly and absolutely necessary when with the kids, set a reasonable limit per day and then I have a big list of things that I can set a reasonable limit to. I don't go through this list very often, but in writing this, I went through it at least that first time, which helped me organize it. And sometimes I go back and I adjust things and I change things.
Craig:On the one hand, this is not some sacred, unchangeable law. And in fact, it does need to change because my life and my understanding changes. But the change is slow, thoughtful, and deliberate because on the other hand, this is meant for stability. And if we're changing, you know, with any whim that we have, then it doesn't offer much stability there. Before I change things, if I notice something is going wrong or needs to be added, I wait.
Craig:I look. I pray. But this offers me, well, stability, but also here a real chance to look at myself and evaluate myself. I think that if churches were to help people construct and maintain their own rules, whether in smaller communities, whether in small groups or their own people, like, individually like I have, or if smaller communities had rules among themselves, which are crafted with prayer and openness, that we would see a huge rise in legitimate and intense devotion among ourselves. As of now, most of us just we're just sort of bumbling around with a vague idea of how we wish to behave, and we're much more subject to being led about by forces other than God and then crumbling to stand true when things get tough.
Craig:We might have a little quiet time in the morning or something. We might go to church once or twice a week. But having this rule helps us focus on structuring our entire life to aligning it with God in his will and how we believe he wants us leading it. And for the last item here, democratize leadership. Grassroots movements, of course, are an excellent example of this.
Craig:What I do briefly, though, here is approach it from the opposite direction than we usually do. We hear stuff like this and think, yeah. I'll get a voice instead of just being blindly led by some bossy leader. But if you're listening to this, then chances are that you'll more likely be in the place of a leader than you realize. And it's you who will need to slow down and listen and compromise.
Craig:So let's take an example we discussed last episode about churches helping each other. If a certain church which is well practiced in helping a certain poor community reaches out to another church which has never done that sort of thing, it would be tempting for church a to simply make all the rules and tell church b everything that needs to be done and how it is to be done. Surely, church a should have a strong and respected voice in this situation, but they also need to step aside and listen to the other church that they're helping. Church b has a lot to offer as well. But even more importantly, they both need to engage with and listen to the communities and people they are reaching out to.
Craig:Rather than being the saviors who come and rescue those needy people from their plight, we need to involve them in the conversation and work. Believe it or not, they know more than any outsider what they need and what would be appropriate ways of implementing these needs or implementing this relief. That doesn't mention that these richer or helping churches have nothing to offer besides resources, but when we go in there and assume we know what other people need best, we often miss the mark. And we may even implement things in ways that are unhelpful or even inappropriate for the community. Christians must be defined by their willingness to stoop, serve, and listen rather than deadly delegating even when they are in charge.
Craig:And that's all I have for today. It was a sort of random smattering of stuff I know, but I hope that either some of it is useful for you or that it inspires you to sit down and figure some things out to do for yourself. Using this little paradigm was extremely fruitful exercise for me. In fact, I originally wasn't I hadn't thought to use it. And so when it came to me to use it, it made everything so much easier and really gave me a direction and structure to to look at things.
Craig:I don't mean this to be the ultimate paradigm for understanding peace. It's just one example that I drew from scripture here, but it was very, very helpful. And I chose to mostly only discuss things that I'm already doing, but doing this really made me think deeper and more clearly about them and see how they all relate together. We all need to be more thoughtful and intentional. Even those of us who are more focused on the freedom of the spirit and kind of going with the flow, we need this introspection to stop and look.
Craig:We do need some structure in our lives, and we definitely need a critical lens looking in and viewing what we do well, what we need to do more. And that's all for now. So peace. And because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.
