There can be nothing original as we all use words someone else created. Take for instance the peace sign. As we haughtily profess that we only believe in peace (regardless of the many benefits of war in which we indulge...oil). I am sure that everyone else reading this will already have encountered the staggering truth I stumbled across today. The peace sign originated as the victory sign during WWII. Seriously? I am admittedly too young to understand what a cultural phenomenon the peace sign became in the anti-war climate of the 60's, but it seems overwhelmingly pitiful that the iconic gesture of defiant peace embraced in the 1960's was only 20 years earlier used as a gesture of wartime solidarity.
Maybe, just maybe, the sentiments are not so different...by whatever means, give us our peace back. Still it makes all of our pacifism sound a bit hollow.
Christ seems to be a rather rattling leader to follow. I am convinced that my vision is unclear. We are born with such violence, it is hard to imagine that we could possibly live without violence. Maybe our call to die to self is revealing. While our births are universally violent, the slipping from life to death, even from violent means, is so diaphanous that it, at times, defies recognition. Can we really choose a gentler way? A way of grace that soothes our violent nature and allows us to live into the joy of life that we saw in Christ. And if we do, what will happen to our world?
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