A Time for Peace
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

"Peace in our time" doesn't have much marketing appeal in our time. Those who would stand for peace are deemed to be anachronistic hippies, unpatriotic pinkos, or Chamberlain maids. The drums of war beat louder all about us. Politically as I write we are preparing to beat Saddam's swords into oil derricks. On the church front, at least in the tiny little fiefdom of the Currently and Maybe Formerly Truly Reformed, we have fired so many warning salvos across each other's bows that it sounds like the 1812 Overture out there. On both fronts gauntlets have been dropped, faces have been slapped, and now we're busy naming our seconds, and choosing our weapons. Am I then not a prophet in a skirt, crying out "'Peace, peace' where there is no peace?"

May it never be. Rather, the peace we are called, to, and for which we are calling is a peace forged by war, and the war that we are called to is a war waged by peace. That is, if we would wage the right wars in the right ways, we would be a people of peace. Remember, after all, that the Captain of the Lord's Hosts is also the Prince of Peace.

Consider first the war with Iraq. I don't know why the heathen are bellowing for war. I'm not sure I particularly care. What concerns me is why the servants of the King have joined the bellicose crowd. Evangelical Christians support this war, as far as I can tell, for one of two reasons. The first is simply this. W. is one of ours, and if he says "Go" then we cheer. We have turned "My country, right or wrong" into "My war, drunk or sober." The second is this- Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. Therefore we have to kill him before he kills us. Now, I am no pacifist. In these very pages I have argued for the wisdom of going into Afghanistan, of taking out the Al Queda. But isn't there a problem with this line of reasoning, that we must take out those with weapons of mass destruction, at least among Christians? Is it an axiomatic truth that all nations with weapons of mass destruc- tion must be destroyed? If so, we ought to be on the top of the list. No nation has more weapons of mass destruction than our own.

This itchy trigger finger is evidence of a heart with no peace. That is, we obviously don't believe God. He has laid down for us a perfectly simple, coherent foreign policy, right in Genesis 9- "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man" (vs. 6). God doesn't tell us to wait until we see the whites of their eyes. He doesn't tell us to wait until the inspectors finish their work. He doesn't tell us to wait until the Security Counsel votes. He tells us to wait until a man sheds the blood of a man. (And thus, if Iraq is truly complicit in September 11th, then we should fire back.) We are not enough at peace with the prospect of dying to obey the simple commands of God. We think we have to protect ourselves, and can't let a little thing like the law of God stand in our way.

The same is true in our little theology war. On the one side we have some who either couldn't or wouldn't honor their fathers enough to gently explain where they had missed the covenantal boat and fallen into the baptistry, and instead dropped rhetorical napalm. On the other side are some who couldn't or wouldn't gently explain where their brothers had wandered off the reservation, and so dropped the ecclesiastical h-bomb. And then the tanks began to roll across the informa- tion super-highway, and peace dissipates with the mist.

In both circumstances there is the panic that demands that something be done, and now. Because there is no peace there is no careful, dispassionate thought on what the something is that ought to be done. "Don't bother me with the law of God" we seem to reason, "I'm busy trying to build the kingdom." Sadly, too often the kingdom is either confused with these United States, or with our own personal fiefdom. We rise up to defend the honor of God, in our own honor.

Think of it in football terms. What you want on the field is what they call "controlled fury." Without the fury, you are simply standing on the battlefield, a target. Without the control, however, you are a swath of destruction, aimed in no particular direction. If we would be sound soldiers of the King, we would always fight according to His law. We would make no pragmatic alliances. We would harm no non-combatants. Our fury would be terrible, where it is rightly directed. It would, however, always be controlled. (Consider, for instance, that our two most recent enemies, the Afghani's and the Iraqi's are both the very people we propped up when they were going after our earlier enemies. When we lose control in waging war, we find that no matter how vicious we may have been, we will only have to war again.)

Peace, however, comes not only from believing God with respect to His law, but with respect to history. That is, I can be at peace because I know I already have peace with the only one I ought fear, God. Jesus lived an obedient life in my place. Jesus died the death of my disobedience. And in that death I too died, for I am in union with Him. How can a dead man fear an enemy? This is precisely why, when God calls us to the battle, we battle so recklessly. The martyrs of the first century never spent a moment's time trying to strategize on how to avoid death. Rather they delighted in the honor of dying in the name of the King. It was the very peace on the faces of the victims of the empire that brought the empire to its knees. So it is in our day. Peace comes not only, however, from believing God with respect to His law, not only with believing Him with respect to what He has done, but perhaps even more than these, it flows out of believing Him with respect to His promises. If we really believed our end, how could we be anything but peaceful about our now? Joshua, after he had crossed over the Jordan river into a land flowing not only with milk and honey, but with mighty enemies, hears this from God, "See I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men" (6:2). We call this God's prophetic present. God speaks of a future event as a past event. God, contra the long-nosed Pinnockio, can do this because what He deter- mines to come to pass will indeed come to pass. God's future plan is as certain as the past.

Jesus has overcome the world. And neither extremist Muslim terrorists, nor moderate Muslim tin-horn dictators, nor extremist covenantalists, nor moderately covenantal ecclesias- tical martinets can undo that truth. In some of these circum- stances we must go to war. In some of them we must wait to see whether we will need to go to war. In some of them we may get to stay home. But in all these circumstances we are to be at peace. Never are we to be in a panic. Why don't we stop measuring our patriotism by how many divisions we are willing to send overseas, and how much we're willing to pay for gas in the short term, and how many W. stickers are on our car and instead measure it by how loyal we are to our King? Why don't we stop measuring how Reformed we are by how many dead theologians we can site (I've got Turretin, Calvin, Perkins and Van Englesma on my side, and all you have is Stoddard, Warfield and the lesser Hodges. I win.") and instead measure it by how much we believe in the sovereignty of God, how much peace we have in our hearts?

We lose our simplicity because we refuse to be as little chil- dren. (After all, who would want to be one of those? They can't even parse the metaphysics of communion bread.) We don't simply believe not only that our Father loves us, but that He is able to take care of us. We don't believe Him when He promises that all things, all things, from the horrors of war to the horrors of apostasy, all things work together for God for those who love Him (and not, by the way, merely those who will continue to love Him.) We are not simple because we are a complex of loyalties, adding to our heart's altar these United States, and perhaps even our favorite contemporary Christian writers. Let us serve the King, even unto our death, with peace in our hearts. This is the simple call of picking up our crosses daily. This is the peace that passes understanding.

Of course our failure here should neither surprise us, nor rob us of our peace. We fail here because we are like the world. We think things just happen, that somehow God was napping when the Great Satan came to power in Iraq. Like the world we think that when great minds disagree, when our loyalties are pulled, that God must likewise be confused. In short, we are not separate in that, like the world, we don't believe in the sovereignty of God.

We are like the world, not set apart, because we think only of winning. Our strategies are odes to pragmatism, our defenses of those strategies odes to rationalization. We cannot war at peace until we are peace with losing the battle.

We are also just like the world in that we too drink deeply from the folly of romanticism. To the romantic mindset, a day without turmoil is like a day without sunshine. We must have our agony to let us know we're not dead. Whether we rail against those who would show us a new perspective, or ask us to embrace a new paradigm, or rail against those who rail against such folk, we know we're alive because we can hear ourselves screaming. Only we paint it as if we are on the forefront, whichever side we're on, of a new Reformation. In like manner, if Saddam can be painted as the new Hitler, then doesn't that give us the opportunity to be the new greatest generation? Only this time no one goes that doesn't want to, and those that do go fight with joysticks rather than bayonets. As Douglas Wilson once wisely chided, we need to stop trying to make out our own day as the Iinchpin of history. It is thinly veiled pride.

Instead let us be deliberate not only about how we think about these things, but how much we think about these things. I am far more concerned with obsessed theology wonks who are sound than I am those who are mildly off base on a few issues. We must have proportion to our contortions. We must stick to remembering what we know, before we try to push the envelope on what else we might learn from what we know.

This is not a call to throw up the white flag. I'm arguing neither that there are no wars worth fighting, nor that wisdom always means seeking peace, no matter the cost. Rather I am trying to remind us that this is how we wage our war. We don't panic when the tide appears to turn. First, like Joshua's meeting with the Captain of the Lord's hosts, because we may be on the wrong side anyway. And second, because whichever side wins, wins because the Captain of the Lord's Hosts wants it that way. We are at peace not because we do not war, but because we cannot lose. Even when we lose, we win. May the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.