THROUGH UNTRUE
Today’s gospel reading narrates: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you’” (John 20:19-20).
Even as they heard this consoling message, the disciples’ hearts were likely brimming with fear and anxiety. The crucifixion of Jesus had traumatized them, shattering their dream of a messiah who would liberate them from all suffering. They must have wondered: “Will we really have peace?”
This question mirrors our own today. While we believe in Jesus’s gift of peace, many events in the world cause us to feel sad, anxious, and fearful. We are tempted to ask: “When will we ever see the fulfillment of Jesus’s promise?”
A few years ago, Håvard Hegre, a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo, predicted that “by 2050, the world would be a more peaceful place due to many converging factors, among which is the fact that war has become financially pointless.”
Reading that, I cannot help but raise my eyebrows and ask: “Seriously?” Will there be peace simply because war has become financially pointless? A glance at the lucrative and flourishing weapons industry seems to contradict that.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the total arms sales among the world’s 100 largest defense contractors topped USD 398 billion in 2017. Of this, 57 percent was in the United States, which is home to five of the 10 largest defense contractors in the world.
The United States and other arms-producing countries would scoff at the suggestion of "beating their swords into plowshares" to achieve world peace. One reason they cite to justify the production of weapons is to deter terrorist attacks.
But looking back, despite the massive airstrikes and mobilization of American ground troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other war-torn countries, terrorism has not been eradicated. Even in Mindanao, with their high-tech surveillance systems and war machinery, U.S. forces failed to eliminate the ragtag Abu Sayyaf group. Instead of disappearing, terrorism has persisted and mutated in various ways.
As the biggest producers and vendors of weapons, the superpowers understand that the lucrative arms trade will continue to flourish only if there is war or the threat of war. Where will the employees of their vast military complexes go? Where will they dump their excess ammunition if there is no war elsewhere?
No wonder, our western-influenced media relentlessly broadcast trouble in the West China Sea, making us think that war is an ominous probability. They thus convince us to buy weapons to defend ourselves from China’s alleged aggression.
The opposite of peace is not war, but fear. Fear causes anxiety, which creates mental, physical, and spiritual disorder in our lives. St. Augustine’s definition of peace is very reassuring. He wrote, “Peace is the tranquility of order.”
Fear causes disorder in our lives because it distorts our focus. The first step to overcoming fear is to put our lives in order, arranging our priorities and devoting our time and effort to what is most important and valuable. Wars do not begin at sea or on battlefields; they start in our minds and hearts as we grapple with prioritizing values, principles, and beliefs that compete for our allegiance.
Interestingly, when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on the apostles, He said: “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven; whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20:22-23). Sin is a disorder, a disruption of our priorities. It is by waging war against this that we experience real peace.