- Valson Thampu
We think of Jesus as the prince of peace. Not without reason; for he did bring the benediction of peace to humankind. But, there is a catch. It is not peace, as the world knows it. ‘My peace I give to you,’ he said; and added, ‘not as the world gives’ (Jn 14:27). Adding to our confusion, he said: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matt 10: 34). This ‘sword’ has raised the hackles of the Sangh Parivar. To them, it is the decisive proof that Jesus advocated a religion of violence and domination, against which all others need to stay anxiously vigilant. What historical sense are we to make of the ‘sword’ that Jesus brought? It should be obvious, prima facie, that this ‘sword’ is quite unlike the sword of man.
By common consent, war and peace characterise the historical condition of humankind. We dream of peace and prepare for war at the same time. Further, we are convinced that only war can make the world ‘safe for peace’. However, even after waging thousands of wars, the world remains woefully unsafe for peace. So?
Jesus was aware that peace would remain an ever-receding goal in the worldly scheme of things. Unlike the political pundits of the world, he deemed it axiomatic that war could not pave the way for peace. War issues from an incapacity encoded in the DNA of our species, notwithstanding the pious ‘prayers for world peace’ offered, even as we are unable to live peaceably with our neighbours and within our congregations. Jesus was also realistic enough to realize that human beings would rather trust the swords they forge than a principle that runs counter to the faith in violence to which they habituated.
The third thing Jesus realized was that the cause for this mammoth human tragedy was small and simple! Human beings do have, nor do they care to develop, the capacity to be good neighbours. All wars will end, and swords turned into ploughshares, if human beings treat their neighbours as themselves. That is to say, developing a capacity for true neighbourliness universally is as powerful a peace-weapon as the A-bomb is a war-weapon.
By the way, there are two contrary viewpoints about war. The first is that war denotes the diabolic in human nature. The more alienated from true godliness, the more disposed to violence and bloodshed individuals and nations tend to be. In this sense, war is a self-invited, or divinely ordained, scourge. There is nothing positive about it; even if peoples and nations have been reposing their faith in it from time immemorial.
As per the second viewpoint, war is a necessary condition for human progress. It is a mega manifestation of the Kantian ‘unsocial-sociability’ of our species. Human beings, Kant argued, can develop their extra-instinctual potentialities only through social tensions and traumas. In a perfectly peaceful society, the unique aptitudes and skills of individuals will remain stunted. Historically it is true that wars have served as catalysts for scientific-technological progress. The ongoing Ukraine-Russia war signals a major shift in the art of warfare, by showcasing the deadly impact of drones. The India-Pak war, short-lived though it was, has given us a passing glimpse of the multi-dimensional, AI-directed warfare that is poised to become the norm henceforth. The Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran war sequence marks a significant shift in war strategy. Unlike in former wars, in which the political-military elite remained safe, it is this very segment of war-entrepreneurs that has now become the first and foremost target. So, there is no doubt that wars drive changes. But that doesn’t mean that war-driven changes add to human welfare. Going by available evidence, it seems that the global shift is from welfare to warfare. Correspondingly, the lip-service paid to peace will also become more pious and pervasive.
Let us return to Jesus’s idea that ‘neighbour’ can serve as the seed of world peace. The practical implication of loving one’s neighbour is commitment to truth. The scope for untruth -which is the satanic weapon of mass destruction (WMD)- is nil in a situation of love-nourished neighbourliness. Violence or malevolence is possible only through untruth. Truth, as Gandhi maintained, is the essence of ahimsa or non-violence. In contrast, war and warmongering rely heavily on propaganda, which is the sophisticated art, as Shakespeare says, of ‘lying like truth’. The foundational truth is: “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1). On this earth, where we are pilgrims and sojourners, not free-holders, we are entitled only to sharing resources to meet needs. It is not given to anyone to monopolise resources or subjugate fellow human beings. The more you have, via rapacity, the poorer you are. You cease to be human, and you become a thief. It is not your neighbour that you rob, but God; for the earth and its resources belong to God.
The means that man employs to thrive by his depravity is power. This implies an outright rejection of love. So long as the world order remains hitched to the paradigm of power, wars will stay indispensable. It is against this depravity encoded in human nature that the ‘sword of Jesus’ is to be wielded. It is far-fetched to expect that the scribes of the Sangh Parivar would, or can, understand the difference between this sword and the sword they are familiar with.
But this secular-communal confusion is not the worst tragedy. The real tragedy is that Christians themselves remain confounded in this regard. The dues we owe to the Caesars of our world is the demonstration of the relevance of the sword of Jesus to the human need to live in peace and amity with all. The cutting-edge of Jesus’s sword is: love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you (Matt.5:44).
