Opinion: Perspectives from readers

They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.—Jeremiah 6:14 and 8:11

German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who understood the subject of peace as well as anyone, wrote: “The followers of Christ have been called to peace. And they must not only have peace but also make it. His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. In so doing they overcome evil with good and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate.”

Subsequently, John Howard Yoder added that a church is a peace church if it exhibits “a social style characterized by the creation of a new community and the rejection of violence of any kind,” which is “the theme of the New Testament proclamation from beginning to end, from the right to the left. The cross of Christ is the model of Christian social efficacy, the power of God for those who believe.”

To look at the question: Is the Mennonite church a peace church? There are two questions to be answered: (1) Precisely how is peace to be defined? (2) What are the facts and evidence? Is peace to be defined as the absence of war? The absence of violence? Tranquility? Silence? Going along to get along? What do the Scriptures say? Let’s take a close look.

The greatest of the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah, repeatedly addressed the question What is peace? It is Isaiah who uses the phrase “prince of peace.” And he lays it all on the line in chapters 32 and 42. He goes directly after social policy and injustice. Isaiah 32:17 says that justice will bring about peace. To Isaiah, justice equals peace, and peace equals justice. No justice, no peace. No peace, no justice. And there you have it, a succinct, solid biblical definition of peace by the Old Testament peace prophet.

In his editorial of April 2010 (“At Peace with War”), Everett J. Thomas lists five reasons some Mennonites appear to be at peace with war. All true. Underlying each of those listed reasons is one terrifying, hard-core evil. The human face of that evil is shown on page 8 of the June 2010 issue in the short item about Pablo Picasso’s famous painting “Guernica,” the Nazi bombing of Basque civilians during the Spanish Civil War. There have always been civilian casualties during wars, but Guernica established something different—war specifically on defenseless civilians. Eventually all the major so-called “civilized” nations bought into that, though they say what they can to deny it.

What came out of that monstrous evil at Guernica was multiplied thousands of times over with the Nazi bombings of England, the allied bombing of Dresden, and on and on and on. The most evil of genies had been let out of the bottle. It now goes by many names: group punishment, collective punishment, collateral damage and other euphemisms for injustice, murder, massacres and sheer evil. Punishment for punishment’s sake. Punishing just to be punishing. Injustice without alloy. The dehumanizing of humanity.

All prison systems deliberately practice collective punishment—Stalin and Hitler simply promoted extreme examples. Gaza today is not an exception; it is the rule. It is a matter of looking carefully and seeing clearly. What Hitler and Stalin perfected is now as common as dirt.

The first order of things is to name the problem. To date, no religious faith has taken on this enormous subject for what it is. Although some, including Mennonites, have done so piecemeal; e.g. Gaza, racial profiling, immigration, criminal injustice dysfunctions, wars, bombings, torture, massacres and more.

It is an enormous subject and cuts to the quick. Collective punishment is in fact motivated by the belief that innocence is irrelevant. But when and where innocence is irrelevant, then nothing is relevant, if you think about it. Everything and everyone has become amoral.

Since the Mennonite church has longstanding credentials as a peace church and has from time to time taken on specific problems of obvious injustice, why not name and take on the entire problem at its root, once and for all? No one else is doing that.

For those who believe in the two kingdoms, and I am one, the apostle Paul was not bashful about telling earthly authorities when they were dead wrong and sticking to his (verbal) guns. See Acts 16:35-40.

Robert J. Zani is a prisoner and long-time reader of The Mennonite in Tennessee Colony, Texas.