Peace on Earth

Our dreams can be no higher than our language. How often we take beautiful God-filled words and make them so banal and so far short of the wonderful pictures God has painted for us.

Even many secularists will exchange Christmas cards carrying the phrase "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men" - the Christmas angelic proclamation to the shepherds. It should be enough of a clue that if secularists would use the word "peace" then something (the meat) of the depth of meaning God intended is missing. Yet, could there still be a hint or clue there?

Most people first think of the lack of war or an unconflicted state of mind as the meaning of "peace", yet we are confronted with perpetual war and almost constant conflict - unless we find internal escape from the world with the Buddhists or accept the unreality of reality with the Hindus. We are all painfully aware there is a problem, we only differ on where the real problem resides.

The unbelieving world sees the problem as a correctable, superficial human problem (obviously, with other people) that will yield to liberal doses of education, law, and "I'm OK, You're OK" psychotherapy. But God has defined the problem as a hereditary illness and brokenness within called rebellion against God that we all have willfully embraced. We have estranged ourselves from home, and, like the prodigal son in a far country, we all long for home and the missing relationship - even when we don't know where home is, we simply know there ought to be a home.

The external wars and conflicts are just extensions of the sickness and longings from within. For those willing to admit this source of the problem - me - God sent a Son to be born in a manger to make the only way to restore the wholeness between the Father and us, His children.

And so the angels proclaimed at the birth of Jesus, "Wholeness and restored relationship with the Father is available to all who will acknowledge the Giver and accept the Gift." Now, there can be Peace even when there is no external peace. In fact, without this internal "Peace on Earth", there is no hope of external "peace on earth" at all.

Savor the full beauty and wonder of that night long ago. See the Glorious picture of when our Peace came.

p.s. - Just viewed a video post by Greg Koukl (Stand to Reason) on this verse from Luke 2:14. He added one additional perspective - horizontal vs vertical. Secular application of "Peace" in this passage is horizontal, man to man, but the Biblical application is vertical, God to man. This is very similar to the common distortion of Mt 22:36-39 - "Love your neighbor as yourself." It appears the vertical relationship always precedes and informs the horizontal.

Love Your Neighbor or Hate Your Neighbor?

"Master, which is the great commandment in the law?  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. " Mt 22:36-39 (KJV). 

 Many are familiar with this passage. The latter half of Jesus' saying, "Love thy neighbor," is so non-threatening you find parallels in other religions and even secularists can nod in agreement. However, this completely misunderstands, trivializes, and tramples the meaning and impact of what is intended. 

I don't know of a higher or more exacting standard of love for our neighbor than in the Bible, but this high standard can't be understood apart from the whole of Jesus' statement. 

 First, there is a clear precedence, first and second, 1) Love God with your whole being and then 2) love your neighbor. This implies you cannot really do #2 without doing #1 first, just as you can't stretch a single into a double in baseball by running from home plate across the pitcher's mound to second base bypassing first base. 

 Then Jesus says the second is "like" the first. How are the first and second alike? Both use the same Greek word for love - agape. The highest example of agape is Jesus' giving Himself to die in our place on a cross that we might obtain God's mercy rather than the judgment we all deserve.  Agape is a love that sacrifices itself unto death.

That's the kind of "love" we are commanded to love our neighbor with. A high love indeed. Imagine what that would be like. But, unless we know that kind of agape love first expressed by God toward us, what example of love have we to share with our brothers?

 I have used the following to try to convey what I believe to be the enormous contrast between agape and the kind of love we settle for when we jump to #2 without knowing the love of #1: "Compared to God's love shown to us through the cross, the highest love of natural man is but a better hate" 

Without the high Biblical standard and with the dumbing down of love, there's little wonder there is real "hate" expressed in this world - even by some who can quote Mt 22:36-39. 

 Taking loving God FIRST out of the picture leaves a pathetic, cheap, imitation love. 

Do you love your neighbor or merely like/hate him?

Can Atheists be Good?

This is a perennial question - can an atheist be good? 

 My answer: they can only appear to do good things if we lower the standard for what we call "good." 

 Atheist, Christopher Hitchens, taunts Christians with the question, "Name one good thing a Christian can do that an atheist cannot." Atheists can commit their lives to helping the poor, needy, and downtrodden, even "surrender their body to be burned" for their fellow man (i.e. "be good"), but they cannot fulfill the highest moral imperative - worship God. Apart from the Agape love of the cross, the highest love of man is but a better hate - and not really "good" at all.