Article August 31, 1987 Issue

Where does peace begin?

Healing conflicts in our own lives isn't irrelevant to the healing of world conflicts.

Gloria Weidmann

Doesn't peace begin in the heart of each one of us? When the desire for peace becomes the practice of peace in our own lives in our own corner of the world, we are helping to spread the light of peace throughout the earth. That this recipe for peace is so seldom followed is evidenced by the ongoing and seemingly unremitting conflicts between individuals and nations. Why can't people get along with each other? A Christian teacher of the early Church asked this question of his fellow believers, and his answer in the book of James is as relevant as ever. "From whence come wars and fightings among you?" he asks. "Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?"^{James 4:1.}

Lust has been described as inordinate desire. "I want" or even "I don't want" can be the assertion of human will and a basic element in any conflict. Self-will has many faces. For example, the face of anger often hides disappointed self-will. Hatred, envy, greed, covetousness, aggressiveness, often mask lustful self-will. Even procrastination may stem from a self-will that asserts itself not as "I want" but as "I don't want," therefore "I won't." Under such influence, one readily finds reasons to delay or put off right action for an indefinite period of time. We can also see that "I can't" often actually means, "I won't."

Lasting peace, then, can come only from the commitment to renounce those elements in human consciousness that contribute to conflict, the "lusts" that the author of James was referring to. The first step is to recognize that the exercise of self-will has no redeeming value. But this recognition, of itself, does not have the power to root out of consciousness the lusts of the human heart. Something more is needed: the understanding and recognition that there is only one will, in reality—the will or law of God.

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