What is a culture of peace? Is it simply the absence of conflict between people? Or is conflict merely the final violence – the symptom that there was never really peace to start with?
Peace and fear cannot live together, for where there is peace fear is unnecessary, and where there is fear there cannot be peace. So, is peace then also the absence of fear?
‘There is no fear in love,’ says 1 John 4 in verse 18. ‘Dear friends, let us love one another,’ says verse 7, ‘for love comes from God.’
And yet, as studies (and undoubtedly our own experience of the world) will tell us, our first response is often fear of one another, rather than love. Fear of those we don’t perceive to belong to the same ‘group’ as us. Fear of those who don’t seem to be quite the same as us.
Why do we respond to others in fear?
Some researchers have suggested this way of being might have developed as a protective strategy that helped keep our ancestors safe from danger and free from disease. However, as a result, the human brain seems to have become very efficient in making distinctions.
And, as we make these unconscious distinctions, we respond in fear and create or entrench division.
Added to this, research also suggests that because we tend to derive a sense of self from the groups we feel we belong to, it makes us feel better to view our own group (in whatever sense that may be – ethnicity, gender, school, profession, etc) as good and those outside of our ‘group’ as less good.
As flawed as this way of being is, and as contrary to our Christian faith, this seems to be how humans have learned to respond as a default setting.
Peace as the absence of fear of others
On the contrary, loving one another without fear is a radical choice.
In fact, 1 John 4 points out to us that the only reason we can be expected to manage it is through understanding that God, who is love, has loved us first. In doing so, he has equipped us to do this vital thing that sounds so wonderful (love the people around us) but often goes against every human instinct.
This is at the heart of peacebuilding. Loving one another rather than fearing each other.
Our fear tells us that perhaps there will not be enough for us, for our children, for our legacy, for our comfort. Our fear tells us that people who are not like us might not look after us, might not share resources with us, might not respect us, might even go out of their way to harm us. Our fear tells us that ‘other’ is dangerous.
