Joy Cusack - Staff

There were no nuclear weapons in Jesus’ time, but there were breakfasts! And if we were to host Jesus for breakfast and ask him how to have zero problems with our neighbors, he might focus on something like “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19, New Living Translation). Even though Jesus lived in a nonnuclear world, he was advocating a radical kind of defense, a spiritual weapon that is more powerful than anything mankind could ever come up with, either by splitting hairs at peace talks or splitting atoms at weapons plants. This absolutely supreme weapon is divine Love.

If our next breakfast guest were St. Paul (who also lived in a pre-nuke era), he would probably describe this weapon “of our warfare” as “not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.” He might tell us that it works by “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10:4, 5). His missive speaks not of missiles, but of humble prayer. Every thought that obeys Christ, that genuinely loves all humanity—including one’s immediate neighbors—as God’s innocent offspring, is a sure defense against any evil thought that would try to enter individual or collective consciousness and get a strong hold.