What
is the relationship between peace and righteousness? What would be
different if those qualities dominated in your community's civic
life? In your church life? In your family life? (Serendipity Bible
10th Anniversary Edition, page 1045).
Once,
having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would
come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your
careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There
it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-1).
The
currently recognized version of the [Seven Deadly] sins are usually
given as wrath, greed, sloth [laziness, dejection], pride, lust,
envy, and gluttony. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins).
Often
when perfect peace is dreamed of it is seen as the absence all
energizing forces of life. Peace comes only after all life has been
drained from our veins. For practical purposes, it is necessary to
get beyond this notion. To do that a good place to begin is a listing
of the seven deadly sins and reviewing how they relate to the absence
of peace. For surely wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and
gluttony bring us endless turmoil individually and within social
groups. Righteousness can be seen as the effective way to outflank
these diseases that inflict interminable unease. One could spend a
good deal of time defining and amplifying what each of the deadly
sins actually represents. Let us cut to the chase and take it is as
given that each of them help realize the tempestuous stew we find
ourselves in when we live by them.
What
the deadly sins have in common is a grasping nature – a raging
desire to "get mine". It can be seen as mindless
selfishness, for even the most casual mapping out of the case
abundantly indicates the dead-end street this puts us on. Man is by
nature a social animal and this necessarily entails what must be
called a generous spirit. To the extent that there is any difference
at all between selfishness and self-interest, it can be seen that the
former is thoughtlessly rapacious while the second implies thoughtful
social accommodation and generosity. For endless bitter strife is
not good for mental or physical health either personally or for the
body politic.
There's
a difference between competing to offer the best of ourselves (a move
born of generosity) and competing to grasp the most for ourselves (a
move born of miserly aggrandizement). The first is friendly
competition, the second is selfish domination. For practical purposes
we can say that heaven on earth would be a place where competition
born of generosity predominates. This cannot mean a place where we
have to be essentially dishonest and pretend that nothing divides us
when it does. It is my firm belief, for example, that two people can
be righteous and still in good conscience disagree – both arguing
for the greater good. To put it another way, the mind of Christ is
not the sole property of any one political party. The day that peace
on earth requires essential dishonesty is the day I want no part of
it. Due to the inherent existence of multiple perspectives
(including diverse righteous ones), what is truly generous will
always be open to discussion and debate bringing conflict within
oneself as well as to the social group.
Print Page
