When Righteousness and Peace Finally Kiss Each Other

I’m over at Stand Firm Today. Enjoy!

Well, I was settling in for a nice, peaceful before dawn blog when I came across this tweet on Twitter (link lost because it’s too early in the morning):

Can we venerate St Nicholas for reasons other than his alleged violence against Arius this year? I’m tired and would like a break from people celebrating violence.

Many people got on to congratulate the tweeter for her lovely and brave sentiment, commiserating with each other on the horrors of violence, and how St. Nicholas did so many other nice things, like giving gifts and being kind to the poor. Then the great Twitter stream rolled on in another direction and I was left only with this morning’s lections, which contain this curious line:

 righteousness and peace kiss each other

It quite struck me for the simple fact that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that bleak Eddie Izzard video—the one where he’s dressed in black with long, drab, blond hair. The only flash of color is the hot pink of his pointy, perfectly manicured nails. Eddie Izzard wants us to get rid of all the violence by just all agreeing to treat each other as we’d like to be treated. The trouble is, according to him, half of humanity won’t do that. So that’s too bad. But we should all try anyway. Peace and righteousness—the two high ideals of this age, are constantly being admonished to kiss and make up. Stop your warfare, we say, as if we’re God chiding all of humanity.

Unfortunately, righteousness is, by its very nature, divisive. The whole point of righteousness is that it isn’t wrong, it isn’t corruptible, it isn’t bad or ugly. Therefore, in the swirl of human ruin, everywhere it goes it does not manage to cuddle up to make nice with the dregs of human pride or sin.

This is why the person accepting people’s offerings in the temple all day long, by the time he finally was able to let the knife fall and go home to his dinner, would have wandered away in an aura of blood. To get to have peace with a righteous God, so much innocent life had to flow down over that altar, down into the brook below so that it turned red. The embrace came at—at least in Twitter terms—a terrifying amount of death.

Peace, that glorious and desirable end, is only able to kiss righteousness under a mantle of blood. You might try to have peace without righteousness, making do with your own crooked way, but true goodness will have to divide itself from you. The division will feel violent, but that’s because embracing something sinful and wrong is a wicked thing to do.

In the shadow of God’s own righteousness, we have lots of “righteous” feelings one way or another. Take the tweet about St. Nicholas’ “alleged violence against Arius” that is the subject of so many of my favorite memes apportioned for today. The purpose of the tweet is not really to bring peace on earth…read the rest here!