Celebrating the freeing, supportive presence of God. So your experience of God may become your experience of life. It is wonderful what God can do!

“Inner Peace Precedes World Peace”

Third and Final in a Series: “Inner Peace, Outer Happiness”

October 8, 2006

Two weeks ago we were reminded that Jesus addressed the search for happiness and gave us the beatitudes for guidance. Among them is the one that says happiness can be found in being a peacemaker. We were also reminded that there is more happiness to be found in giving [to others] than in receiving [for ourselves].

Last week we were reminded that God loves the entire world including atheists and agnostics. Because of this profound and unconditional love, God offers everyone in the world a life with meaning, inner peace, and happiness.

As “open minded” and “open hearted” Methodist Christians, we believe that God attempts to communicate with all persons—not only those within the Christian church.¹ Therefore, we need to be listening for the spirit of God in all persons and even in rather unexpected places.

We looked at how much alike the words and concepts of Buddha resembled the teachings of Jesus. After all, God has been communicating with many persons throughout the ages with words of wisdom, salvation, inner peace, and happiness. That is why the major faiths resemble one another.

There are those who find their peace in the teachings of Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, Hinduism, Gnosticism and others. We believe that for us, Jesus, in his unique roll and relationship with God conveys the greatest accuracy in telling us about God and the meaning of, and purpose for, our lives. Though we listen for the truth of God wherever we might hear it, we mostly find that our inner peace comes from knowing the living presence of our Lord Jesus Christ as he comes to us through God’s Holy Spirit.

The question of the day is – Why is it that with so many people of faith practicing love and compassion toward their neighbors and enemies, the world is still in the turmoil of war?

The fact of the matter is this, when people of faith get their backs up against a wall and they are threatened and even attacked, they put “the other cheek” aside, and look high and low for a verse in their various holy scriptures to justify revenge and counter-attack. They conduct themselves as though victory in this world holds some eternal significance.

The second fact of the matter is that the various scriptures of our major faiths today each contain accounts by their writers that attribute wars and atrocities to the will of God. The writers wrote that it was God who brings an enemy to your doorstep because of misdeeds and unfaithfulness. Then it is God that wants repentance and change of heart. They write that it is then God who gives the victory to those who had sinned and repented. But the teachings of Jesus do not support this interpretation. Because of the literalistic interpretation of these passages, religious persons feel justified by the so-called “God of our Old Testament.” It is this very Old Testament scripture which is common to all three faiths—Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

Until the Old Testament is read totally in the light of Jesus’ teaching, there will always be people of faith who justify violence and war in the name of God. Over and over, Jesus uses the phrase, “you have heard it said … but I say unto you …” He was referring to the writers of the Old Testament who unknowingly combined their own opinions and interpretations with the truths that God had given them.

They should not be faulted because they did their best. But that was the whole purpose of Jesus coming to the world—to correct our misconceptions of God and to offer a better way than the previous insufficient one.²

Jesus also understood that the world could never truly experience world peace until the people of the world had a change of heart. This is where Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to see or understand the kingdom of God, he must be born “from above”³ (as our pew Bibles translate it) or “having our spirits come alive” as Wesley translates it or “born again” as the old King James Version translates it. However one translates it, the point being that all persons need to struggle to put the human desire for vengeance and retribution aside in favor of “turning the other cheek.” Or as St. Peter translates it, (put the human desire for vengeance and retribution aside and turn to) “the incorruptible and the eternal.”⁴

Again, this is why Jesus came into world, and why God has been speaking to many different peoples throughout the ages—so that we could understand our need to resist the evil which is a lack of compassion and mercy that gets played out in violence and war toward other people of God.

So why is it that people of faith have been responsible for some of the most horrific wars with one another? The answer is: misplaced commitment. Remember, it is to the religious leader of his day to whom Jesus says, “you must have a change of heart.”

Jesus came to tell us that inner peace and outer happiness results in world peace. There can be no world peace without the change of heart and attitude which causes the growth of inner peace.

As the world’s largest democratic nation, I believe God holds us additionally responsible for promoting peace, harmony, and understanding among all peoples. Why? Because the democratic people of faith have the responsibility of electing persons whose first priority should be the promotion of peace, harmony, and understanding among all peoples of the world.

Understanding one another contributes not only to world peace, but helps to enhance our inner peace and ultimate happiness with life. Historically, however, it is so much easier to muster the forces of war than to take major time and effort to understand one another.

God’s kingdom is a “peaceable kingdom” to use the term of a great artist. If peace and genuine understanding of one another is a primary desire of God, it behooves us to be about the business of peace and genuine understanding of one another both on a local level and on a national level.

As committed Christians we should each develop a dynamic interest in discovering why the fundamentalist Muslims “hate us and our way of life” to use the words of our President. As committed Christians we should also develop a dynamic interest in discovering why the fundamentalist Christians work so hard to make laws that restrict or hinder individual freedoms and some of the basic human and God-given rights to inner peace and happiness.

As committed Christians we must work hard to make the right conditions and the right laws so that happiness and inner peace can be available to all people everywhere. Our work begins at home, at school, at church, and at the voting booth.

Here are the two questions that will help us accomplish our work for the kingdom of God:

·                  “Will my words and actions help to promote or to hinder the inner peace and happiness of the persons affected by my words and actions?” (and)

·                  “Will my words and actions help to promote peace, harmony, and understanding among all people of good will?”

    I pray that God will be with you in your journey and in your work for his kingdom. And may you discover the true joy of our salvation. Amen.

¹ Doctrine of Prevenient Grace

² Writings of St. Paul in regard to:

   Grace Over Insufficient Law.

³ New Revised Standard Version

⁴ 1 Peter 1:23 (King James Version)