In a world filled with violence and hate, division and injustices consistently dominate society. The more such hate is solidified, the more humanity ends up fighting against itself, hindering its full potential. What is good and true must be promoted, hatred must be resisted, and injustices must be rectified, if there is to be any future for humanity. While this is not exclusive to Christianity, Christianity certainly finds these concerns to be central to the way Christians are to engage the world. They are called to be salt of the earth, working to bring peace, harmony, and justice to the world. The peace which Christians promote is not just any kind of peace, and certainly not the artificial cessation of hostilities while injustices remain; rather, they must promote a just peace, one which has people become more merciful and loving to one another, relating to each other in a personal instead of a legalistic fashion: “God’s justice is not blind, impersonal, mechanical, retributive. It is rather gentle, forgiving, reconciling and above all loving. God’s justice is his grace and forgiveness.” [1] Love, not hate, must be the way forward:
Sacred love is the mother of (spiritual) well-being and immaculate chastity; it prompts and encourages the pursuit of virtue and every good deed. Love is the source of all good things; those who are holy drink from it. It is the pledge of all the blessings and the great gifts distributed by God. Love is the flow of Christ’s beneficence; it adorns his boundless grace; it dissipates strife and grants peace; it illuminates the mind and the members (of the body). [2]
If we look at the growing division in society around us today, it is not difficult to discern where that division is coming from: the rich and powerful, who use their wealth and power to exploit society, cause others to suffer grave injustices. The rich keep stealing from the poor; the powerful keep pressing down on society, and various groups of people, such as immigrants, are chosen to serve as a scapegoat, with the hope that society will turn on the scapegoat instead of those truly causing it harm.
Authentic Christian teaching will have none of this; Christianity, following Christ, teaches the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, pointing out that the way of peace and reconciliation must begin by helping those who suffer the most from the powers that be, with their elevation and reintegration into society, even as those who have exploited them are to make reparations for what they have done. All of this must be done following with and using mercy and grace, for without them, justice becomes cold and calculating until the same old injustices return (with only different people in charge of them, and different people suffering them). This is why Jesus tells us to love our enemies, because he knows love will help bring about full reconciliation. It is better to have an enemy change and become a friend than it is to fight them without end. If we do not seek such peace, we will begin to justify various evils we do to those who we fight, leading us to call various evils, good:
It is really quite clear that those who seek evil for the just person are not the only ones who speak vanity, but so does everyone who strives to bring evil upon anyone else. For he who seeks to do evil is not speaking the things that are according to God. And this is why we ought rather to seek what is good. If we could only return good for evil even toward those who hate us, either persuading our enemies what the good is or working to call their defiant souls back to harmony and peace, we might then become the children of the “Father who is in heaven, who commands his sun to rise upon the good and the bad and who rains upon the just and the unjust.”[3]
Injustices must not be ignored. Evil must be called out and put to an end. Those who have done some evil must do what they can to rectify the harm they have caused. Society which promotes evil must itself repent and make reparations. But it must be understood, just as it is easier to break something than it is to fix it, those who have done such evil will find much of what they have done cannot be fixed by themselves. We are in this together, and so, we must share the burden together; we can and must work for the common good. This follows the way Christians understand how their sins are forgiven: they are given grace, grace which will perfect them, but only if they cooperate and work with it. Without grace, they would not be able to overcome all the evil they have done, leaving them, therefore, unable to transcend the consequences of their actions. Justice is necessary, but it must be a just mercy.
It is also important that Christians, as they seek to bring peace to the world, as they try to help the society they live in to work for justice, to look within themselves and establish an internal peace, for without it, they will not be able to have the tools they need to bring a better harmony to the world. They must remove from themselves what would lead them to contribute more pain and sorrow in the world, that is, their own selfishness, for it is such selfishness, such egotism, that becomes a source for the fractures which destroy society:
When the enslaving ego is vanquished and the conflicting inner desires are harmonized, God is mirrored in the soul, and we become our real selves, free and refreshed. Once peace engulfs our senses, and the light of God moves into the recesses of our being, our uniqueness is released, and we can stand alone and defy all the forces which seek to submerge us.[4]
In a world of violence and oppression, Christians are called to become peacemakers who mediate grace to the world. They are to listen to the Sermon on the Mount, to understand that the blessings in it, such as the blessings to the poor, the meek, the persecuted and imprisoned, can and will be shared with a society which works on behalf of the vulnerable. Finally, they will promote love, love of their neighbor, and therefore, for the common good, recognizing that society will be better and just, far more capable of promoting and sustaining harmony, when the common good, and not the private good, lies at the foundation of its political endeavors, as Roger Bacon surmised:
But public good takes precedence of private good, as Aristotle says in the first book of the Metaphysics. But the part preceding contains the public good ; this part urges upon men private good. For love is the greatest virtue, and is ordained for the common good, and peace and justice are its companions, virtues which transcend the morals of individuals. For man is a social animal and it is in accordance with his own nature, as Avicenna says in the fifth book on the Soul, that he should not live alone like a beast which in its life suffices itself alone. Therefore the laws regulating men with regard to the last topic are more important. [5]
[1] Duncan B. Forrester, “Social justice and welfare” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics. Ed. Robin Gill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 200.
[2] Moralia et Ascetica Armeniaca: The Oft-Repeated Discourses. Trans. Abraham Terian (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2021), 169 [Discourse 11].
[3] Origen, Homilies on Psalms 36-38. Trans. Michael Heintz (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2023), 192 [Homily 2, Psalm 37 [38]].
[4] Archbishop Joseph Raya, The Abundance of Love: The Incarnation and Byzantine Tradition (Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1989; 3rd ed.: 2016), 114-5.
[5] Roger Bacon, Opus Majus. Part II. trans. Robert Belle Burke (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928), 663.
Stay in touch! Like A Little Bit of Nothing on Facebook.
If you liked what you read, please consider sharing it with your friends and family!
N.B.: While I read comments to moderate them, I rarely respond to them. If I don’t respond to your comment directly, don’t assume I am unthankful for it. I appreciate it. But I want readers to feel free to ask questions, and hopefully, dialogue with each other. I have shared what I wanted to say, though some responses will get a brief reply by me, or, if I find it interesting and something I can engage fully, as the foundation for another post. I have had many posts inspired or improved upon thanks to my readers.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In