WOW! This is part of a blog Regie Hamm wrote. It spoke volumes to me....
Two weeks ago my children were playing quietly in my son’s room. I sat down on the couch after the kinetic pace of breakfast, cleanup, changes, etc., took a deep breath and said to myself "ahhh, peace". After a while they were a bit too quiet (any parent knows that’s the first sign of disaster) so I rushed back to see why. I was suddenly horrified to find that they had broken a lamp and were blissfully playing in shards of glass. My daughter (who is impervious to pain) had cut her knee deeply and was bleeding profusely. My 16-month-old son was miraculously unscathed but happily up to his elbows in his new found treasure and was livid when I pulled him out of it. I sprang into action like lightening, adrenal glands in full function, securing children away from the damage, attending to injury and cleaning up glass, blood and debris. Then I very sternly told my children "no no" and disciplined them for their actions. Not because I was angry or wished them any ill will but because I love them more than my own life and never want to see them hurt. I could’ve sat on the couch, let them play in the glass and had "peace" for a moment, but "love" wouldn’t allow it. Instead, I upset my perfect morning and dove into the details of the danger.
Peace is a buzz word we use without thinking. We sign emails with it. We flash peace signs. We pray for it. We march for it. Peace seems to be what we all want. The problem with just having peace is that it can exist in the presence of a lie. Love, however, cannot. This was illuminated to me one evening while having a conversation with a young Buddhist in Beijing China. He was telling me how his entire country practiced the principles of peace and harmonious living. He then went on to say that his sister was being physically abused by his brother-in-law but his "peaceful" principles restrained him from intervening. He said "they are both on their own journey and must be allowed to stay on that journey without interruption - that’s the way of peace". I told him that if my sister were being beaten by her husband, I would take him into the woods and break every bone in his body - that’s the way of love. To his credit, he got the joke and we actually had a laugh over it but I was only half joking. The peaceful principles of China also allow for a hundred million orphans to be abandoned ...love adopts them. Peace allows women to be treated as second class citizens ...love speaks out against that. Peace blindly obeys. Love stands in front of a tank.
It is a supernatural irony and a total contradiction, but sometimes love demands war. Peace certainly never does and is simply the resolution, but love occasionally does because it demands truth. When peace exists in the absence of truth it exists in the absence of love. Love is truth. God is love. The absence of truth or love is the absence of God. I know this all sounds like mumbo jumbo but consider the American Civil War. Peace could’ve certainly been maintained by not freeing slaves or upsetting the status quo, but the country was festering in abomination because slavery kept us in the absence of truth. War, while unspeakably brutal, brought us closer (in a larger sense) to truth ...love ...God. His truth was indeed marching on.
Hypothetically speaking of course....
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