trying to make peace without God

They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4)

I just wrote a post (the one just below) about trying to make peace come through our own efforts.

Then this comment came almost immediately:

“The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.” (from philoofalexandria.wordpress.com)

This fits in perfectly. You cannot make people become something by giving them the things other people have. The War on Poverty has been a dismal failure because it relies on giving people stuff so that they will be like their neighbors.

You cannot make people like other people by giving them what the other people have. They have what they have because they worked for it and earned it. To give what they have to someone doesn’t make that person like them, it makes that person dependent upon you to get it.

We can take all of the swords and spears and make them into farming implements, but that will not make the warriors farmers. They will only become farmers if the desire to be farmers is within them.

We can only have peace if the God of peace controls our lives and our culture. He will never control our culture here on earth as much as we might want him to. Jesus says in John 18:36, My kingdom is not of this world.  His kingdom is heavenly. The only way to have it is in the heavenly realm.

It is impossible to mandate the will of God. We cannot pass laws and make people Godly. We cannot require people to do things to become Godly. We cannot do anything to effect the will of God. It can only be effected by having his law and his will within our hearts.

We can want it. We can dream of it. We can work for peace and we should. It was Jesus who said blessed are the peacemakers. But we have to know that there will be no peace until Jesus comes again and puts the enemy, the devil, the antagonist under his feet.

Then and only then will their be peace. Because then and only then will it be in our hearts and in our minds.

Until then, we dream of the day when all war ceases and peace reigns. Until then, Matthew 24:6 says You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. They will happen because we are human and as such flawed.

But all the laws and peace accords in the world will not make what only the Kingdom of God can make.