The Battle for Peace – Sunday, October 24, 1982
O, would that we had perfect peace. “Peace is a good so great,” wrote Augustine, “that…there is no word we hear with such pleasure or find…more thoroughly gratifying.”1 Indeed, we believe the hearts of all civilized people yearn for peace.
Yet, if peace is so beautiful, and so sought after why is it so elusive? There have been 141 wars just since World War II and more conflicts than we can count since the coming of Christ, the Prince of Peace. What keeps us from achieving peace on Earth?
Such a question is not easily answered but there are two aspects we might well consider.
First, we must appreciate that winning the peace is at least as great a battle as winning the war. Second, we must identify the battleground on which the struggle for peace is to be fought and won.
John Milton wrote to Lord General Cromwell more than three centuries ago that, “Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.”3 The great poet was right. Peace must be sought and struggled for. It does not just flow over us like a healing oil at the end of a war. Indeed, one war is apt to generate another unless definite steps are taken to preserve peace and justice.
The bitter international rivalry following World War I, the harsh rule of the carpetbaggers in the American South after the Civil War, the constant turmoil of nations in South America, Africa and the Mid-East and elsewhere remind us with every day’s headlines that war breeds war, not peace.
Our second principle reminds us that we identify the battleground. Peace is not won on bomb-furrowed fields, boiling seas or in thundering skies. It is not really achieved even at the negotiating table.
No, the vital struggle for peace is fought within the quiet confines of the human heart. It is there we must achieve a love for one another, and unless we do, any other effort at peace is like attempting to cap a volcano: it is only a question of time until war erupts again. Until we gain peace within ourselves, we will never have peace among ourselves.
Far from being a passive program, the battle for peace is perhaps the most strenuous struggle we as individuals can participate in. But it is a battle of the finest kind. The final victory for each of us will be triumph over selfishness and bigotry within ourselves; in the world it could be the dawning of the age which mankind has longed for and looked forward to for as long as we have record. The time when, as the ancient Prophet Isaiah wrote, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”4
1 Augustine, City of God, XIX, quoted in Great Treasury of Western Thought, Adler and Van Doren, eds, RR Bowker, New York 1977. p. 951.
2 Niel A Maxwell. Address at Semi-Annual Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, October 3, 1982.
3 John Milton. “Letter to the Lord General Cromwell,” May 1652. quoted in Great Treasury of Western Thought. p 953
4 Old Testament, Isaiah 2:4
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October 24, 1982
Broadcast Number 2,775