Beat Your Swords into Plowshares

The season before and after Christmas which we call "holy" is dedicated to peace among all faiths. It is the season in which we especially pray and long for peace and reconciliation among people, for truces to be made between and among enemies. We as a country know that violence engenders more violence. Yet, our country continues to gravitate toward and choose the militaristic option rather than relentlessly seek out and practice some of the many nonviolent successful techniques applied to major conflicts throughout history. Many people think there is but one way to live in and deal with a violent culture i.e. to have enough weapons to scare or deter the "enemy" threatening us. That model plays out currently in the war between Russia and Ukraine when it seems to the general public that a total nonviolent strategy to end the war is insanity. So the stockpiles of nuclear weapons and assault weapons increase! Billions of dollars are used to increase, improve and test weapons rather than use the same monies to address our country's infrastructure i.e. the pressing needs of our people crying for food, health care and safe neighborhoods. Doesn't it seem reasonable—since nothing else really has maintained peace—that there MUST be better ways to deal with conflict than to fight it out? Surely nonviolence is the better way Martin Luther King maintained that Jesus, the nonviolent one, was a practical realist. Like Jesus, it was King's refusal to lash out violence in return for violence against him that continues to bring people of faith in our day to follow both of these great leaders. Violent responses on their part would have given their enemies permission to pitch more violence back on them and their followers. But, did Jesus' command REALLY mean no war, no violence ever when he said to Peter "Put your sword away, Peter. Those who use the sword will die by the sword." "Love your enemy. Do good to those who hate you!" Impractical Idealist? No! But he continues to be implicitly accused of that every time a Christian decides to take up a gun or do violence of any kind against another. Violence against another person destroys the soul of that person. To lash out, to call out ugly names, to reduce the dignity of the other person in any way is certainly not of God. A few of us from Pax Christi, a national peace organization that stands for total nonviolence, will be traveling to Washington D.C. Jan. 8 to say with our mouths and our feet that violence against the men still detained in Guantanamo is a moral wrong sponsored by the U.S. It is said that 80% of the 700+ men hauled to Guantanamo since 9/11 were prisoners bought for a bounty, then flown to Guantanamo with no good-byes to family, etc. There was no charge against them so most of these men never knew what they were being accused of. Please pray with us that we shall be heard when we make the plea to close Guantanamo forever. May God's kind blessings rest upon each of us during this Christmas season. To follow us: https://witnessagainsttorture.com/