So goes the poem by Cecil Spring-Rice, 1918
I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no questions, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,[9]And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.
And it captures the irony, contradiction and hypocrisy at the heart of those who choose violence. There can only be peace amongst those for whom all paths are Peace. If any path leads to violence then you can have war.
If a flow diagram was written for the Peaceful Heart then there would be no way to get to violence.
Yet for a large part of Humanity they do not have this skill to find Peace and many paths lead to violence.
War obviously is the greatest failure of the heart that seeks peace. But what an absurdity that those who have partaken in war and have chosen violence are considered to have anything to do with Peace when they have had everything to do with unrest, violence, hurt and harm.
Now it is true the Path of Peace is made difficult. In times of War the violent will persecute the peaceful. Those who refuse to bear arms against their fellow man will be ousted from communities, will be disgraced by their countries and will probably be charged with criminal offences and find themselves in gaol. But Jesus taught us most graphically that to defeat the Devil we will often be treated as criminals and we must be prepared to die a criminal to really choose the path of Peace. It is ironically the weak ones who give in to peer pressure and collective expectations and pick up weapons when it is quite obvious that by doing so they are taking the path of violence and only contributing to the bloodshed and unrest.
It has been argued in the blog many times that violence does achieve a type of peace that I have called The Pax after the Pax Romana. There is now a Pax Americana. This is the peace that arises when you have a tyrant that is so strong that no one can rebel.
In nature animals competing for resources never fight unless they think they have a chance of winning. A very powerful Tyrant keeps the peace easily as no competitor will risk a fight. And in animals the equation is simple as battles are one-on-one. In humans calculating your chance is more complex as battles are co-operative affairs and as has been seen many times in history a smaller well organised force and defeat what looks like overwhelming odds. Also humans are prepared die for ideas which muddies the water in a way animals never have to confront.
But any silence achieved through this is not true Peace. When the Pax Tyranni fails then violence breaks out again. We saw that in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was "toppled" (literally as well as figuratively). This is not to say that violence was bubbling under the surface of Hussein's Iraq but it was to say that peace was not understood and when the conditions arose for violence people turned to violence automatically and unavoidably.
The truly peaceful NEVER chose violence under ANY circumstances. There is no excuse. Christians know this as Jesus never turned to violence even on The Cross. Yet even in the name of Christ many people have turned to violence demonstrating how little they really grasped the Path of Jesus. Some might argue that Jesus did display anger and violence for instance when he got angry with the money lenders in the temple shouting and over turning tables. Perhaps we can make a distinction here between getting angry and wishing to harm. We often do things when we are angry that we regret afterwards. The state of anger is a mystery. But violence and war is a way of life, it is far more than just a momentary loss of balance.
Its a huge irony for the religious that every single person who died in WW1 and WW2 with a gun in their hands and hatred for the Germans in their hearts will find themselves in Hell. Maybe they will be surprised at this, but if they look at what they really desired it will be clear to them. A truly peaceful person would never have hated for their foe in the first place, they would have turned the other cheek when wronged, and would have profound pity and compassion for all those on all sides so blinded by the devil that they seek to harm each other.
In WW2 not the Japanese nor the Italian but just the Germans have a particularly grave mark against their name which seems to justify violence against them. But we know that no-one fighting in WW2 actually knew or cared about the Death Camps. That all came to provenance after the war. But this detail is actually irrelevant for the person of peace. Even in the full knowledge of the Holocaust there is still no reason for violence. Peace is always unconditional. If you see someone committing violence you don't then start yourself. Chances are they are only committing violence themselves cos they saw someone else committing violence. Violence is an infection it must stop somewhere. And that somewhere is with the Army of Peace.
So how do you handle Genocides like the Holocaust? First to note that many genocides have gone unhandled: Armenian, Rwanda, American Indians to name just 3. But we can agree that all genocides should not take place, and yet must also agree that each peoples is capable of Geocide. It is not something that only Germans or Turkish or Americans do.
We know when genocide happens there are people who have not accepted the path of peace. There are many peaceful routes open to us. First might be to politically reject them and economically reject them. The Treaty of Versailles after WW1 was not in response to Genocide it was actually ultimately the cause of Genocide. Rather than punish the German people then, when they hadn't actually done anything wrong other than lose a war, they should have been punished after the creation of concentration camps to fuel their economy. But the West actually just escalated trade with Germany and fuelled the creation of Concentration Camps. I can write on and on about this. The roots of the Holocaust do not lie in Germany at all but in the actions of all the countries who set up the conditions. If people really wanted to stop Holocaust the opportunities were present endlessly and always Peacefully.
Ultimately there will always be people prepared to harm other people for whatever reason. And we can always set up Pax Tyranni to avoid the conditions where they might be violent. The Holocaust could have been easily averted with wise government from the Allies. Germans where not especially racist before the loss of WW1 and the Versailles agreement. But if we really wish to have a world of Peace we need start setting down the roots of true peace which means refusing anything to do with violence or people who are or espouse violence in any form.
This would mean in the West for example not paying taxes if they will be used on violent means, or at the very least applying political pressure on all those who believe that some paths should lead to violence.
We are a far from, perhaps even further from, true peace now than ever before. And the Pax Americana leads the violent into a belief that they are somehow miraculously peaceful these days while clearly haven't learnt nothing but a respect and love for war that we see during Remembrance Day. We should be ashamed of this scar on humanity and all those involved should bow their heads in shame and if anything try to distance themselves from involvement in this Darkest Hour of mankind's existence where 80 million lost their lives for nothing. There is nothing to show for their sacrifice and people still don't say never again even after all this suffering. It seems Mankind enjoys suffering and the more the better. But the Peaceful reject all this. May all her paths really be peace.