The only way to peace?
One of the questions most people tussle with at some time or another is, how can they find their ‘fit’ with reality? How can they feel at home in the real world and be comfortable? In the end, how can they be at peace with their lot; with their daily challenges and their long-term future?
Some people find peace in self-satisfaction. But this is fragile, and in the end they, as we all do, face death, the great and final destroyer of any view of peace we might have. Oblivion, as many would view death, is not this sought-after peace!
This takes them to the dilemma that ‘religion’ is supposed to answer: where is peace available? Finding peace within our reality is, in the final analysis, to find peace with God. It is rightly a religious quest. But then the question comes back to Christians, ‘Why do you say Jesus of Nazareth is the only way to peace with God; after all, don’t all religions teach the same thing?’
This question is dealt with in the Apostle Paul’s analysis in his letter of about AD 58 to the Christians in Rome (Romans 1, particularly 1:24–25). He sets out the two basic religions—worship of the creation in various forms vs. worship of the Creator.
Each approaches such questions differently. One of them would answer that peace can only be found within the creation. This means, finally, that peace is located only in oneself, although dressed up as a ‘god’ of one sort or another. The great ironic contradiction here is that peace is sought from the very setting that is the source of un-peace!
The other answer Paul talks about lies outside the creation, with the Creator (1:16–17): the only One who has the full perspective and can answer this basic question of life accurately and finally.
Looking within the creation
The answer of those who are apart from God takes the creation, or ‘nature’ or ‘the universe’, as an end in itself and as all that there is. In this view, any ‘god’ is something or someone within the creation, part of the cosmos that we live within and are dependent upon.
But there’s something about this that doesn’t sit right. There is within us a yearning that seeks for something beyond the creation. Something not satisfied by the material cosmos that is always winding down—mute, impersonal matter and energy, utterly indifferent to the interests of people.
The Gospel—God’s gracious provision for how we may be reconciled to Him through faith—gives us the answer that takes us out of the creation. We are personal, and we reach beyond the mere material for personal connection. We know this with each other. We thrive on relationships. Good relationships make almost everything else comparatively insignificant.
We reach beyond the cosmos because there is no connection within it for the source of personhood, for relationship. It fails to satisfy.
The biblical answer is that our desire for relationship is derived from being made like our Creator: to reflect Him and know Him.
God in relationship is shown in the first few passages of the Bible (Genesis 1): God the Father willed (1:1), the Spirit tended (1:2), and we later read (John 1:1–3, 12–13) that it was the Word, God the Son, who brought forth the creation. All three acted together to complete the creation, while remaining separate from it and never merged with it.1
The highly contested ‘days of creation’ are God demonstrating His presence and action within the cosmos, showing He is here with us, while not of it. He is, rather, prior to the creation, which depends upon Him.
The days place God’s creating action in real time, the same real time that we are in. The days are not symbols, figurative or mere fiction, and nor are God’s acts. They are not the vague unplottable time of myth or fairytale; they are set out as real days of history. They provide the clue that God’s real action in creation is connected with our real experience of the creation, wherein we “live and move and have our being”, as Paul quotes the Greek philosopher-poet Epimenides (Acts 17:28).2 They bring a connection with God in the intimacy of our everyday experience of life.
In the cadence of days, all show completion. They overturn notions that place God within and of the cosmos, of which ‘theistic evolution’ is the prime example today. It has the effect of blending God with creation, as does any secondary ‘principle’ that displaces God’s creation-by-Word and blunts its power and God’s identity.
It is the Word wherein lie the answers for our questions, concerning both finding peace, and who our real God is. We know from John the Apostle’s account of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and work that He is the Word (John 1:1–5). That is, He is God Himself as well as being with God, in the complex mystery of the God who is three in one. He is, moreover, the Creator! Paul reflects this in his letter to the Colossian church: 1:16–17.
It follows that the only solution to us finding and having peace cannot be within the cosmos, where most people look and which is itself the place of discontent. Looking for peace within the creation is the hallmark of paganism. Modern paganism shows us its futility by resolving immediately into proud self-obsession or haughty moral preening, finally descending to a raw display of coercive power politically, economically and socially.3
The source of peace has to be in our basic connection with our Creator who is the origin of our personhood (Hebrews 11:3). Jesus of Nazareth in His time on Earth explained this, diagnosed the problem, and dealt with it as only the Creator could do (John 3:14–18).
He laid down His life and took it up again, demonstrating that He is God. And that He is the only one who can bring us, alienated by sin within this fallen world of suffering and dislocation, to peace. Peace with God and peace within ourselves.
It is only this solution that deals with reality as it is. It can only be understood in a creation made by the intention of the Creator; a creation that is not a mute arrangement of matter resulting from an impossible chain of accidental material events.
Christ, Jesus of Nazareth’s title, is the Creator; and only the Creator can bring peace to the creatures He made to enjoy Him forever. That is why there can be no alternative to Him.
References and notes
- See articles under Is one God really three persons? creation.com/god#trinity. Return to text.
- The details of the poet’s life (7th or 6th century BC) are obscure and tainted with mythical elements. The poem was referring to Zeus, which Paul applied to God as the one in whom we exist. Return to text.
- Jones, P., Pagans in the Pews, Baker Pub Group, 2001; Neopaganism inside the Church, youtu.be/QC4fO-Kzjck?t=40, accessed 16 Aug 2022. Return to text.
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