Introduction
We have now spent three weeks looking at the theme of "peace" in worship:
- Peace with God
- Peace with your neighbour
- Peace with oneself
Somehow these three themes are connected. When you are aware that God has forgiven your sins, when you have really understood and internalised that, then you are also much more gracious with your neighbour and you are much more willing to forgive and that promotes peace with your neighbour.
And if you have this awareness that you are only a human being who makes mistakes from time to time, even stupid mistakes, and you know that you are still loved, then you are also much more at peace with yourself and can deal with your own shortcomings much better.
And one is naturally much more forgiving of one's neighbour's shortcomings.
Perhaps these three points can even be seen as building on each other:
- Peace with God as a prerequisite for peace with oneself.
- Peace with oneself as a prerequisite for peace with one's neighbour.
- Peace with one's neighbour, as a prerequisite for a community, a society worth living in, for political peace and much more.
And the theme today is: behaviour that leads to peace.
I think most of the time the opposite comes to mind. Behaviour that leads to discord.
I once had a colleague at work who made himself unpopular everywhere in record time and that also caused discord. I don't know if he did it on purpose, but the complaints piled up.
He always reminded me of the little Roman from the Asterix booklet "Quarrel about Asterix". I had Latin at school and therefore had to read Asterix to support my school education, of course.
This little Roman was an agent who had the mission of sowing discord between the Gauls. All he had to do was be present and people would start arguing. In this Asterix book, the speech bubbles were always drawn in green during such quarrels, so you could follow the development of the quarrel quite well.
The comparison with my former work colleague doesn't quite fit, because he rather united the others against himself, but in both cases it somehow went by itself.
Behaviour that leads to discord can be found in the Bible from the very beginning. It already starts in the Garden of Eden. The woman seduces the man to the forbidden fruit, the man blames the woman and God, and the result is a life that is not necessarily characterised by peace.
In Genesis 1:16b; NEÜ God says to the woman:
The Hebrew word for "desire" here actually means the effort to possess someone. "Desire" or "longing", as it is called in other translations, is somewhat ambiguous. It could also be understood as adoring, but it is more than that. The woman wants to possess the man for herself and the man wants to rule over the woman. Here the discord is already in the seed of the relationship.
Love actually means wanting the best for the other person, but that doesn't really fit in with possessing or ruling.
Possessing and ruling sounds more like being against each other than being with each other, like discord or like victory-peace. The strongest wins.
But if one loves the other and really wants the best for him, then the two will also be the best for each other and then a living peace will enter the relationship.
And I believe that in general peace is a mission for us, these three levels of peace peace with God, peace with oneself and peace with one's neighbour are a mission for us.
I would now like to look at two levels where peace and discord are at stake and would like to use some examples from the Bible.
Let's start with the
Factual issues
This seems to be relatively unproblematic because one can objectively decide what is good or less good. But how do you deal with different opinions and criticism?
I read from Exodus 18:13-27, where Moses was visited by his father-in-law Jethro. They had spent the day before together. Moses told what they had experienced with God and Jethro was happy about it.
I find this procedure here very instructive. Jitro asks, he wants to understand the procedure before he judges it and gives advice. He asks for an explanation of what Moses is doing and why he is doing it.
And after the explanation, however, he dares and passes judgement on this approach. "You're not doing a very good job.
You can react differently here. We've always done it that way, there's no other way. You've been here one day and you think you can do better?
Moses has really worn himself out in his office for so long and then someone comes along and says that's wrong?
We know about Moses that he was a very humble, modest man (Deuteronomy 12:3). He continues to listen. And Jitro's advice is very sensible. Moses is relieved, more people are involved. The leadership of the people goes from being a one-man show to a team task. The whole daily routine becomes more efficient and better.
Moses has to take on other tasks as a result. He must learn to delegate, he must learn to trust people, to develop them and also to be able to assess them. How do you know if someone is capable and reliable?
What I also find very remarkable about Jitro's proposal is the subordinate clause "if God commands you". Jitro, too, is aware that he is not the only one with wisdom. As good as the proposal is in his eyes and I think in ours, he too could be wrong and he is aware of that. Maybe God had something else in mind after all.
You know what it's like. Someone has a great idea and is then totally offended when the other person still doesn't implement it.
In such factual matters, how to choose right structures, how to do a task properly, etc, humility is always appropriate. An outsider may have the right ideas to move forward, but not necessarily.
This humility, this awareness that the other person might have a better perspective, that provides peace in times of perhaps necessary change. The other person could be right.
When it comes to purely factual issues, such as organisational questions or even, for example, technical issues, different opinions and ideas and how to deal with them are one thing.
It is more difficult in ethical questions or in questions of faith. In such cases, objectivity is more difficult.
There is an example from Acts 10 and 11.
To explain the following incident, it is important to know that at that time Jews were not allowed to have fellowship with non-Jews due to religious regulations, e.g. eating together was forbidden.
This view seems somewhat strange to us, especially since we are not Jews ourselves. But the Jews understood it that way and considered it right.
And the apostle Peter, by the way, had also seen it that way at first, but God showed him through an experience beforehand that it was not right to think that way. He had a vision where he was shown animals that a Jew was not allowed to eat, and in this vision God commanded him to eat these animals. Three times this happened. And then messengers from Cornelius the Roman came by to get him and God told Peter to go with these Romans.
And in the house of these Romans Peter now understands what it is all about (Acts 10:34,35; NEÜ):
These Romans then receive the Holy Spirit and are baptised.
This causes discord among Jewish Christians.
Acts 11, 1-3; NEÜ
Brief explanation: Proponents of circumcision is, of course, another word for Jews (some translations also say this directly) and uncircumcised people are non-Jews.
How does Peter react to these accusations?
In some other translations it says "then Peter reported exactly what had happened".
I think this first formulation is so great. It is a positive argument. Facts and arguments are broken down and presented in a way that the other person can understand.
One takes the time and explains and convinces the other.
Peter could also have said: Hey, I was travelling with Jesus, what do you want?
He does not do that. He gives a detailed account of his vision, of his being with the Romans and how these Romans received the Holy Spirit.
Peter convinced them, by facts and by his trustworthiness. Now everyone had peace about the fact that non-Jews can also come to know Jesus.
We find a similar situation further back in Acts, in chapter 15:
Then there is a discussion, the different points of view are presented. Peter tells again of his experience with the Romans around Cornelius, and Paul and Barnabas tell of countless conversions of non-Jews.
Ultimately, it ends in a very pragmatic decision.
The church elder James sums it up:
One could agree on a solution. And that was a difficult question. On the one hand, these four points were due to the fact that there were Jews in every city and they wanted to win them over. And these points were also prescribed in the Old Testament for non-Jews who wanted to live among Jews in Israel (Exodus 17.18), for these people circumcision was not prescribed at that time either. And so the Jews, who did not yet know Jesus, were not alienated too much. Therefore, it was a very pragmatic solution that led to peace.
Behaviour / Relationship
After the factual questions, we come to behaviour. This is a bit more difficult. We find many prophets in the Bible who denounced the behaviour of their fellow countrymen. Such people are usually not liked.
And these prophets were persecuted, chased away and sometimes murdered.
John the Baptist, who had publicly criticised the ruler Herod Antipas for his lifestyle, was also imprisoned and later murdered (Matthew 14).
But nobody does that any more. Who would blame Schröder for his five wives?
But let's take it down a notch. What is it like when someone else criticises my behaviour?
We find an approach in Matthew 18:15-17; NEÜ:
I think this is more about obvious misconduct. This is already indicated by the wording "confront him".
But also for behaviour in the grey area, or when one thinks that he is harming himself with this behaviour, one can at least partially apply v.15, a conversation in private.
How do you manage to criticise the other but still keep real peace with each other?
Just as Peter, as mentioned earlier, justified his behaviour by explaining it to the others piece by piece, we could also try to justify what we praise and what we criticise. To do this, however, we must also understand why the other person behaves the way he does. You have to try to look through the eyes of the other person.
But of course you have to be ready to be criticised yourself.
We also find countless references to this topic in Proverbs, e.g. Proverbs 12:1; NEÜ:
According to the Elberfelder Bible, "admonition" can also be translated as "rebuke". When I read something like this, I feel quite stupid.
And of course the tone makes the music (Proverbs 15:1; NEÜ):
or Proverbs 15:4; NL:
When it comes to our behaviour, we don't get anywhere with a purely objective view; it's about compassion, about understanding, about relationship.
In Galatians 6:1.2; NEÜ this is very beautifully formulated:
In the end, "understanding" means understanding the other person, seeing through his or her eyes.
And you always have to keep the story of the beam and the splinter in mind ;-)
Then perhaps we can also manage to rebuke each other in peace.
False peace
For the sake of completeness, I would like to point out that there can also be false peace. I don't actually have a concrete situation in mind, but it is somehow part of it.
There is a story in the Bible where a single prophet causes strife.
This is one of my favourite stories in the Bible:
Two allied kings wanted to go to war (1 Kings 22:10-23; NL):
It's nice when everyone is in agreement. No conflicts, no discord, everyone pulling together. But this prophet Micah was unfortunately a spoilsport.
That nutcase, you might think, but he was right. It turned out just as Micah had predicted.
I believe that a single troublemaker is usually not right, at least that is my experience, but it can happen and in this case the troublemaker stirred up the wrong peace.
Is one prepared to reflect on one's own behaviour and thinking? Even if one is part of the majority, such humility as Moses', which I described earlier, should be a model. The other person might be right.
That was just a special case that I added for the sake of completeness.
Summary
I come to the conclusion:
- We have been dealing with peace in the past weeks and I already believe that these topics build on each other:
- Peace with God as a prerequisite for peace with oneself.
- Peace with oneself as a prerequisite for peace with one's neighbour.
- Peace with one's neighbour, as a prerequisite for a community, a society worth living in, for political peace and much more.
- Unfortunately, strife is a constant companion (it already began in the first marriage in human history), so we must learn to create peace with our behaviour.
- In the case of differing opinions or justified criticism, humility helps to arrive at the best solution in peace. Maybe the other person is right, it's worth thinking about it. And Jitro's suggestion about restructuring was really good.
- Then we looked at the two cases where questions of faith were involved. A factual discussion, taking the others seriously, a constructive debate led to a good result in peace.
- And then we thought about how to deal with criticism, as the criticised and as the critic. The willingness to learn is important, a friendly tone and also understanding for the other, trying to see through the eyes of the other. And don't forget the splinter and the beam.
- And in rare cases, a peace is a false peace and the complainer is right.