Reality Check 101

During the week of April 10, China hosted a summit on global affairs. The attendees were Brazil, Russia, Indian, China and South Africa (BRICS). The Sanya summit was a multilayered affair and addressed a multitude of issues, all of which really came down to an age-old theme – peace and prosperity on a global scale.

The ideology and proposals, which came out of the BRICS’ Sanya meetings, were not new, but serve to illustrate how so much of the world understands peace and how it achieves it. For them, peace is a product of economic prosperity and political harmony. The idea is that having more creates happiness and political prowess guarantees security.

A paper published in 2004 by the International Peace Research Institute demonstrated the same thinking. In “Towards a Global Civil Peace”, the authors concluded, “Achieving global civil peace rests on both social justice (i.e. democracy) and economic well-being.” It was no surprise that the institute’s recommendations for success rested on better education, economic diversity, efficient bureaucracies and less corruption.

There are other approaches to peace building as well. Dialogue is appealing. Negotiate, deal and barter until someone compromises, gives in or gives up. In the mean time, evil prevails. Pacifism with or without protest might work. Refuse to be part of the conflict and/or be loud enough to disrupt the efforts of one side or the other, most of the time your own. In the mean time, evil prevails. Eastern mysticism would counsel antagonists to cultivate the divine in themselves. Recognize human goodness and grow into unity. In the mean time, evil prevails.

All these proposed solutions to wars and conflicts have one thing in common. They don’t work. They don’t work because they never solve the most basic problem, the natural human condition.

Humans are self-preserving by nature and therefore easily self-serving. Much of the time self-preservation, whether nationally or individually, is a good thing, much of the time it is not. Self-service motivates rulers and populations to demand more than what they have, whether wealth, territory or power, even when the objects of their desire will not cooperate or become victims.

Humans are also conflicted by nature. Left to themselves, they do not easily recognize evil or easily confront it. Too much of the time it is less painful for them to do evil and convince themselves that it is good or tolerate evil and call their apathy good. When rulers or populations remain conflicted, they are predisposed to act unjustly and to defend their injustices.

Finally, it is painfully obvious that humans are not divine, nor, in their natural state, do they have the ability to claim divine privileges. They do not always act intelligently or wisely and cannot know the motivations of one another’s hearts. Throughout history, mankind has demonstrated time and again the destructiveness of power wielded foolishly or maliciously.

Attaining global peace then, is both straightforward and humanly impossible. The billions of Earth’s inhabitants would have to uniformly live sacrificially for others’ best, perfectly recognize and reject evil without faltering and exercise their desires and abilities exactly as God Himself would.

Wars and conflicts will continue and increase as long as humans stay human. Global peace, quite literally, will be paradise on Earth but it will never be the product of human effort. In the interim, evil, that which grieves the love, holiness, justice and grace of God, must be resisted – even through the exercise of war if necessary.