3 “If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, 4 I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall overlap the vintage, and the vintage shall overlap the sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full and live securely in your land. 6 And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land. [Leviticus 6:3-6, NRSV]
[L] Lion and lamb living in peace and friendship. [R] Pope Francis prays at the threshold of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Dec. 24, 2024.
The World Day of Peace is primarily a Catholic feast day dedicated to universal peace on the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. This feast day began in 1967 when Pope Paul VI announced that the world needs to be sensitized and oriented for peace and understanding. 1st January was appointed by the Church as a holy day to celebrate efforts for world peace. At the United Nations, 21st September is marked as the International Day of Peace, intended as a shared date for the world to build a culture of peace. Begun in 1981, a UN resolution declared it a day for “commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples”. With wars and geopolitical tension currently in evidence around the globe, these two Catholic and UN appointed dates harbor particular urgency and significance.
(1) Why is world peace so elusive?
As Christians, we first turn to the Bible and note some references where it points to human failures and weaknesses, including the failure to heed God’s commandments and the weakness in exalting self-interests to the neglect of love for God and neighbour.
- Human efforts to bring world peace have failed and will continue to fail. It seems all too clear that humans were not unconditionally created with the ability or the right to rule themselves, so that an enduring peace is beyond their clever devices in defiance of God (see Jeremiah 10:23).
- Politicians are untrustworthy, so that even those with the best motives, are unable to devise lasting solutions for the root causes of war (see Psalm 146:3-4).
- Pauline imminent eschatology suggests that we live in “the last days” of the present wicked world, a time when prevailing attitudes make peace difficult, for leaders are “belligerent, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride” (see 2 Timothy 3:1–4).
- St John, too, tells us that the Devil, God’s enemy, has been confined to the vicinity of the earth and motivates people to adopt his vicious spirit. As long as he is “the ruler of this world,” we can never live in peace (see John 12:12 &31).
- All these, and more, underscore the fundamental fact that Jesus is all about the kingdom of God. It is only God’s Kingdom, not any human politics, that will satisfy our desire for permanent world peace (see Psalm 145:16; Daniel 2:44).
(2) Powerful Nations Create World Violence Instead of World Peace
It is clear that the world is disgusted with the American double-standards.
What is not so clear is whether the Americans are so blind that they are actually oblivious of the world being pissed with them. Or, is it that their delusion over their invincible superpower is so corrosive that they just do not care? Whatever, the American hypocrisy is so blatant and disgusting that it has resulted in whatever it says being treated with suspicion and contempt by the rest of the world.
Bernie Sanders, an American MP, knows this well. He once said in the House:
- “Lots of folks come to the floor to talk about human rights and what’s going on throughput the world, but what I want to say to all those folks is, nobody is going to take anything you say with a grain of seriousness. You cannot condemn human rights around the world, and then turn a blind eye to what United States is now funding in Israel. People will laugh in your face! They will tell you, you’re concerned about China; you’re concerned about Russia; you’re concerned about Iran. Well, why are you funding the starvation of children in Gaza right now?”
WE would of course hasten to ask: And how much of their “concern” about China, Russia and Iran is coupled with American-manufactured misinformation?
Jeffrey Sachs, the famous economist from Columbia University, tells us why. Warning that Israel is pushing the US into a regional Middle-East war, Sachs draws attention to Netanyahu’s long-term sinister strategy. [1]
Sachs’ turn to scrutinize USA’s complicity and as war enabler reminds us of many other Americans who raise their voices against their own country’s crime against humanity in consistently neglecting its own Poor, even as it commits or enables genocides and crimes against humanity as in Israel. One such voice comes from Kwame Ture, an American author who condemns Zionism in both Israel and America. [2]
The need to free America from the “Israel Lobby” is a growing realization that has ignited the American imagination which, however, still sadly remains dormant and inoperative among American politicians, deeply mired as they are in money politics. [3]
Part of the problem lies in covering up the fact that the Israeli army’s true identity is a terrorist organization. [4] But when we listen to Christ Hedges, a renowned and fearless journalist, we will get the true picture of an army of the most ruthless and efficient killers on the planet that the Americans are funding. [5] As Samuel P. Huntington said in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
The rest of the world does not forget the costs of supporting genocide and colonialism. Painfully, Abir Kopty, a Palestinian journalist and writer based in Berlin, nails it:
- It is not just the oppression. It’s the willingness to twist every loop, every law, every rule to support Israel. It’s the unleashing of the racism and anti-immigrant, anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, anti-African discourse. It’s the willingness to crush your freedom of speech in order to protect Israel. It’s the will to give up all the values people have been lecturing to the world. It is also the will to expose completely and remove the facade of values and human rights and democracy and freedom of speech. Those regimes are willing to remove this facade and be exposed in full daylight in order to protect a colonial project that is called Israel.
- People here need to understand that. There is a price for supporting genocide, for supporting aggression, for continuous supporting and it’s not going to stop in Palestine or the Middle East or in Africa. And we’re talking here about just few countries versus the rest of the world. Sometimes we’re so angry and we say the world is dark, the world is bad, the world is like this and that. I say it all the time. Actually it’s not the world. The world is fine. There are millions and millions of people. There are numerous, hundreds of thousands of movements and institutions who are saying no, and this is the world. This is the world we want to build together. The few powers that are supporting the colonial project at any cost are not the world. [6]
Martin Luther King Jr. advocated standing for what’s right: “A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.”
At the annual General Assembly of the UN last September, the Barbadian Prime Minister, Mia Mottley noted the ‘poly-crises’ with which the world is confronted and called for an urgent reset against the logic of hatred in the world. We need a reset and we need to reset. [7]
(3) Scriptures and Pope Francis
These, and plenty more, remind us of the chilling words the Gospel of Matthew (23:27-28) cites from the One who is the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).
- 27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness. 28 So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. [Matthew 23:27-28]
World leaders may make nefarious deals and barter human lives for profit. Their war planes may bomb indiscriminately the innocent and the displaced who have nowhere to turn save to cry to God for justice. How will they weigh on God’s ultimate scales of justice?
Pope Francis, launching the Jubilee Year of Hope 2025, symbolically opened the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve, and called on individuals, nations and the global community to take a transformative step towards peace and reconciliation by walking through the “door of salvation” that is Jesus Christ. “Jesus is the door of peace,” he said from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica the following morning.
And while the world is darkened by war and violence, the Scriptures teach that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness never overcomes the light (John 1:5). Christians are people of hope. The Holy Father wants us to consciously walk our life journey as “pilgrims of hope, to silence the sound of arms and overcome divisions!”
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Endnotes:
[1] Jeffrey Sachs: The Nethanyahu’s secret plan that people aren’t aware of | Must Watch, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZatehkkXrcM
[2] “Zionism is a satanic movement,” at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h8VOcNzkkGY
[3] “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, co-authored by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
[4] A Youtube short video titled “Israeli Confession”. See also Stuart Rees, “Israel a terrorist state” at https://johnmenadue.com/israel-a-terrorist-state-images-and-evidence/; “Israel is rotten to its core” at https://johnmenadue.com/israel-is-rotten-to-its-core-barb-could-you-insert-the-photo-of-hertzog-signing-the-bomb-in-drafts-sickness/.
[5] Chris Hedges’ full speech on “The Genocide in Gaza” may be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly6lfhOxTe0&t=1004s.
[6] Abir Kopty, “The Global Impact of Supporting Genocide and Colonialism Exposed – Youtube”
[7] “Barbados PM Does Historic Humiliation of Israel & US at UN Live! – Youtube”
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Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, January 2025. All rights reserved.
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