Comments for What price peace? at http://www.pres-outlook.org , comment 1 to 2 out of 2 comments http://www.pres-outlook.org Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:28:51 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.pres-outlook.org/reports-a-resources3/presbyterian-heritage-articles3/9690-what-price-peace-.html#comment-5248 Bill, I think what you say can also be applied to interpersonal relationships. It's very unhealthy to aim for peace at any cost, because suppressing the ideas and concerns of one party (even suppressing ourselves), really does violence to that person -- as well as to the world, as whatever that person had to say that might have been part of the solution to many problems, won't be heard. As a mother, I know that sometimes we have to intervene, possibly even forcibly, when one child is unfairly treating the other. I guess the difference is that I love and am closely-bonded with both my children, whereas, sadly, sometimes people of different cultures and belief systems see one another as the enemy -- and don't see how we are all one family. I admire Abraham Lincoln, because I believe that he never lost sight of our common humanity, both North and South. - Susan Stevens Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:23:25 +0100 http://www.pres-outlook.org/reports-a-resources3/presbyterian-heritage-articles3/9690-what-price-peace-.html#comment-5238 I get the impression that Bill Tammeus prefers that Jesus be a follower of Reinhold Niebuhr rather than the other way around. Niebuhr, after all, was a realist about the human condition. I am not sure that Niebuhr thought that Jesus was as realistic and he was. Granted, there are some who think that if we would just follow Jesus, the Prince of Peace, that peace on earth would ensue. I am a Christian pacifist but I am not one who thinks that  pacifism will bring peace on earth. That would be, as Niebuhr said, a “perfectionist illusion.” Neither, do I subscribe to the idolatry of peace at any price nor do I subscribe to the notion that humanity is, short of heaven, perfectible. To confuse Christian pacifism with either of those alternatives is, at best, inaccurate. I am a pacifist because I am a Christian who strives to follow Jesus. Perhaps that is to be redundant so put differently, I am a pacifist because I am a Christian. The task of the church is to call people to follow Jesus, who gives us peace not as the world gives. The way the world gives peace is not peace at all. The way the world gives peace is the illusory way of Niebuhr, and now, alas, President Obama. Tammeus says, “Well, sometimes peace is not the immediate answer.” Well, put that way, I am not at all sure what the question is. If the question is, how shall the church follow Jesus in the immediate moment, then the answer with respect to warfare is for the church to put up the sword, the bomb, the bullet, and whatever else the world would use to kill or annihilate evil or the evildoer. If there is a problem of idolatry for some forms of pacifism, there is also a problem of idolatry for just war theorists. That is the idolatry of the preservation of the state. Neil D. Cowling Westland, Mich.     - Neil D. Cowling Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:54:25 +0100