Choosing Peace in a Broken World
Faith Matters resources to accompany your Come Follow Me study: July 20-26
Trusting in God will bring me peace.
Jesus’s way is the gospel of “love and peace, of patience and long-suffering, of forbearance and forgiveness, of kindness and good deeds, of charity” in a world that is often filled with hatred and war, impatience and victimization, and impulsiveness and resentment. Jesus’s way is proactive: He invites us to de-escalate conflict and move toward healing and reconciliation.
—Chad Ford, “The Peace We Need”
I can defend the truth, even when it’s unpopular.
Benjamin’s example also tells us that our preaching shouldn’t browbeat people into obedience. We should never assume it is enough to just teach the truth. We need to facilitate experiences that inspire gratitude for God. As John said, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). As a community of believers, we bear a special responsibility to make that love palpable for everyone within the walls of our churches, our homes, and in our communities. Commandments learned in an unloving or unjust or judgmental environment where our agency is not respected and we are not unconditionally loved can be a form of spiritual abuse. How many of God’s children have been lost because of the pride, arrogance, or controlling manipulations of unrighteous dominion? If any church community fails to demonstrate God’s unconditional love unambiguously, people will go elsewhere, to a place where they find love and acceptance. We simply cannot afford to obscure God’s mercy or his quickness to forgive by suggesting that God might love the strictly obedient just a little bit more than the rest of us.
—George B. Handley, “Obedience as Gratitude”
But often, the more universal teachings cause us to stay silent… “There’s another way to get there,” we tell ourselves. When teaching this principle to young people I’ve often drawn Pac-Man-style ghosts with missionary name tags to symbolize missionaries teaching the gospel in the Spirit World, subconsciously telling myself that someone can accept the gospel later. Not long ago, a stranger stopped to help me change a blown-out tire on the side of the road. As we made small talk and loosened lug nuts, he said he was about to read Jeremiah for his Bible study group. I easily could have asked him, “Would you like to know more about the premortal life hinted at in Jeremiah 1:5?” But I talked myself out of it, not wanting to impose my ideas on his faith, which obviously worked for him.
…Shouting for joy is the mode of a true disciple and missionary. It outshines fear-driven gimmicks and laissez-faire silence. It also gives us new reasons for sharing the gospel now, rather than trusting the divine plan to make the gospel available to someone later. In fact, the very truths that we sometimes use to excuse our silence may be the best reasons for sharing the gospel now.
—Bryan Gentry, “Do All Roads Lead to Winnemucca?”
In difficult times, I can turn to God and His prophets.
Our modern culture is saturated with zealotry. Think of the burgeoning genres of vigilante fiction or revenge thrillers in literature, television, and film; think of the polarized rhetoric of social media; think of the scorched-earth partisanship we see in today’s political theater, and the grotesque displays of bravado with actual weapons, real armed forces, and lives at stake. If we suppose God is pleased with such behavior, with such zealotry, then we may expect soon to find that we have no more need of the still small voice at all. Perhaps it has already ceased to strive with us, having found even less it could teach us than it taught Elijah.
In the Book of Mormon, we read of peoples like ourselves in need of repentance who experience fearsome manifestations of fires, earthquakes, and clouds of darkness, and after these “a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper” that “did pierce even to the very soul” (Helaman 5:30; and compare 3 Nephi 11:3–5). The voice, of course, is the voice of Christ, and at first it can be hard to understand. Why? Is it because Christ mumbles? Or is it because his is “not a harsh voice, neither . . . a loud voice”—the only kind of voice we now have ears to hear? Perhaps his voice will remain unintelligible or even unheard until we finally settle down and listen with renewed humility—with hearts and ears and eyes pointed “steadfastly towards heaven, from whence the sound [comes]” rather than in whatever other direction our polarized environment has dragged the needle of our inner compass.
President Dallin H. Oaks, in his first extended remarks after becoming the president of the Church, focused on the pointed message of his predecessor, Russell M. Nelson, becoming a second prophetic witness that “in coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.” President Oaks added his own warning: “You live in a season in which the adversary has become so effective at disguising truth that if you don’t have the Holy Ghost, you will be deceived. Many obstacles lie ahead. The distractions will be many.”
If the still small voice—the quiet “voice of perfect mildness”—is a sound we can only hear when we are listening, are we listening?
—Morgan Davis, “Zeal and the Still Small Voice”
The functions of prophet and priest may be distinct. But the purpose is ultimately the same: the transformation of humanity into a common people of God, people, prophets, priests and priestesses who both believe and do, both preach and minister. To overemphasize one is to neglect the other, and ultimately, to mistake the purpose of each.
—Matthew Bowman, “The Prophet and the Priest”
Pride leads to destruction.
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we covenant to live the laws of sacrifice and consecration. Being serious about these covenants leads us to practice sine proprio, progressing to the point where we are willing to let go of our white-knuckled grip on prosperity, power, what we deserve, and what we possess. We must be willing to “imagine a Zion society, wrestle with what that society consists of, and imagine how we could be part of that society.”
—Jenny Richards, “The Promised Land: A Cautionary Tale”
Neither we nor Jesus were born into a world of fairness, justice, or peace. Nevertheless, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, offers a way through the destructive conflicts that plagued his day and ours. Jesus responded to the conflict that engulfed his world in ways that would bring more than a temporary respite from the ravages of war and enmity. He taught that the root cause of conflict derived from the human heart. He was concerned that “because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold” (Matt. 24:11–12 NIV). Jesus was interested in ushering in a new kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. Yes, he would be a Messiah. Yes, he would offer liberation and salvation, not in the way we want, but in the way we need.
—Chad Ford, “The Peace We Need”
I can be a peacemaker.
Interfaith work, in an important way, is simply to stop pretending, and admit the interconnected state of affairs. And this coming together is less often like the conversions we hear at testimony meetings and much more like sharing a room with a brother. There will be disagreements and differences, even genetic differences, but also an inseparable, undeniable connection. So much of being a brother is getting past pride and jealousy so we can be a pillar when the world is crumbling, to share meals and conversations after a hard day, to have a place to spend holidays. Interfaith work, ultimately, is the work of bringing God’s family together as the family we actually are.
—Joshua Sabey, “Becoming God’s Family”
For many of us, the peace we want is passive. We want peace to be a state of being, a feeling; we want someone or something to change so that we experience peace. And we seek the kind of justice that avenges, punishes, and destroys.
But Jesus offers us an active peace rooted in how we see and act in the world. When we experience conflict, he calls on us to change. When he calls for justice, he calls for the type of justice that restores, reconciles, and makes us whole. It is in this frame of mind that I am brought to think about the paradox of a heavenly king finding warmth on his first night on Earth in a meager manger, in an otherwise little-known town.
…Jesus came into the world, not to give us the peace we want. Instead, he came to give us the peace we need.
—Chad Ford, “The Peace We Need”
