Today’s guest post is from frequent reader and commenter Todd Smithson.
My reading of the New Testament in 2023 along with some deep challenges in my personal life, resulted in me seeing a version of Jesus that more closely resembled Buddha than the Mormon prophet. In John 14:27 Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
There goes Jesus being Jesus again. As usual, he is proposing a radical if not seeming impossibility. Yeah right, no troubled heart or fearful mind. I want to ask Jesus if he was using hyperbole or if he meant exactly what he said. Jesus makes clear that he is offering a different kind of peace though, not the way it’s usually described, but a new way. He’s making a distinction in how we understand and therefore attempt to achieve peace. In true Jesus form, he’s challenging our concept of peace, suggesting that our ways are not his ways, that the peace you seek will never be found where you are
looking.
What is the distinction? How do we mortals set out to accomplish peace and how does God bring about peace? Well, it seems odd that I’m about to attempt to define “peace” how God would when I am just a mere mortal, but here we go.
Where we seek peace by destruction and avoidance, he seeks it through transformation. (not withstanding the many Old Testament stories that look otherwise), which I believe are more projections of men using God as a prop in their quest to
conquer. Everything we see with poet Jesus is paradoxical; down is up and up is down, finding yourself is losing yourself, and the greatest power is restraint, not force.
Peace is a different kind of response to conflict. It seeks to turn gridlock into goodness, instead of disagreement into apocalypse. Peace seeks justice, not eradication of opposition. It seeks compromise over imposition. Peace sees opposition as necessary and therefore listens intently with the understanding that wholeness is found by integrating opposites, not by destroying them.
Conflict is not the problem, our response to conflict is the problem. Our ways of bringing about peace assume that domination, revolution, isolation and purification can be used to eradicate the other. This misunderstanding results in a
response that only perpetuates evil in the name of eliminating it. Because, in our limited rational minds, we define peace as the absence of conflict, we often employ tactics that more closely resemble evil than justice.
We typically have two primary strategies for handling conflict, neither accomplish true peace, only counterfeits accomplished by fight or flight. On one side, peace goes to the one with bigger guns, and the other, flight, results in suppression of the truth, which builds resentment.
Peace is like a river, Isaiah says. It’s tempting to read this verse as a judgement against life’s many vulnerabilities that feel like anything but peace. This however would be dismissive of the real life scriptural and personal accounts that are filled with suffering and affliction amidst seemingly valiant commandment keeping.
You see, I had one of those nights last night that Simon and Garfunkel describe in their famous song “The sound of silence”, “Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again”, tossing and turning, and wrestling with the bogeyman that comes to visit when it’s silent and the lights go out. The worries of life, one after another visited my mind last night, and try as I might they found a way to stay far longer than I wanted.
Reading and discussing things from a book, even the kinds that come from scripture, can quickly illuminate that maps and roads are very, very different. The best that I can read from Isaiah’s beautiful poetry here is what I think Jesus is always trying to show us, a different way to live, where peace, like a river will not be the absence of conflict, obstacles, or worries and stresses, but will flow over them, as it does the many rocks and crooks concealed by the river. The river also always has an origin and a destination–it’s created by the evaporation of the salt water, condensed in the heavens, and then returned in its pure, fresh water form to mountain peaks where it commences its journey back to the sea, where it began.
Job and his friends held a convicted belief found in the tidy law written in Deuteronomy. The law states, if you obey, you are blessed, and if you break the law, you are cursed (punished). The book of Job comes along like a quality defense attorney, saying, hold on a minute, pump the brakes. Maps are just maps, but they are not real experience. Adam Miller writes in his book, Letters to a young Mormon; “From the near side of trying, it may look like things have been pretty well mapped out for you. Just stick to the plan. Memorize your articles of faith, get your merit badges signed off, get good grades, go on a mission, go to the temple, have a family, keep the commandments, etc. There may be a few details here and there to handle, but nothing major. You’ve got a map, you just have to follow it.
Once you get to work, you’ll be unnerved by the distance between the neat map in your hand and the rough terrain at your feet. Fighting to coordinate the two, you’ll be tempted to throw the whole thing over or, by way of compromise, to sit down and gossip about how great the map is. This latter kind of admiration is often mistaken for a religious life. Perhaps it is religious, but it is no life. Even sound maps are just maps. They are no substitute for real roads. The gap between theory and practice is often biggest with the simplest things.”
In my everyday life, fallen and forgetful, I feel the weight of time. Time is heavy and demanding. I rush from place to place. I forget where I am and what matters. I feel guilty about the past. I’m bored by the present. I’m stressed about the future. There’s never enough time. It’s hard to sleep at night. Anger and regret are close at hand. Life is slipping away. But Christ is offering something else. Not just rest in the next life, but rest as a way of life. The effect of this rest is immediate and bodily. In Christ, the pounding in my head goes quiet. The knots in my neck loosen. My teeth stop grinding and my fists unclench. And, even while I’m busy at work, I can feel, deep in my gut, a poised, powerful, radiating silence.
- How is peace like a river to you?
- What practices have been useful in providing peace amidst life’s storms?
- How do you think the Church could offer peace to exiting members instead of
blame?
Wheat & Tares 
If peace is like a river, it’s hard to see the end or the beginning of it. A river, like a highway, can only be seen in one place at a time. Sure a map may show either in its entirety, but in real life, you can only see so far. In light of that, peace has to start with yourself which is much easier said than done. There are so many disrupters to peace. The disrupters can be personal mental and physical problems or they may be problems in our family or community. Still overcoming the problems basically starts with the individual, sometimes helped by others who care. So, the place to start is with your self, then your family, and finally using faith working with your community and even those not a part of your community knowing that the river/highway does end somewhere and we are all connected.
This is a worthy post, which deserves thoughtful consideration and comment.
First, the time has come to finally put the Old Testament fable of Job to rest. No reasonable person can accept the premise that God and Satan are sitting around chatting like two buddies at the local honky tonk while God gets goaded into placing a wager on someone’s response to devastating tragedy. And while Job gets praised for finding peace, the reader must ignore that fact that his children suffered very unpeaceful deaths as part of game.
As for how the Church could help members find peace, it could make them Mormons again. For when they were Mormons, the members were part of a community with a tradition of caring for each other as friends. With the destruction of the Mormon sense of community has come a s name of isolation in which members must deal with life’s tragedies on their own.
As for peace being like a river, the immoral words of Joseph de Maistre in 1811 say it best: “We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity.”
There is much to ponder on in this post. I wish that we could hear more thoughtful things in church settings. In your post when you asked if Jesus was using Hyperbole or not, he could be using a subtle form of hyperbole to make his point. In the other gospel accounts Jesus did use hyperbole to get his point across to listeners who seemed not get the points he was trying make. I appreciate the points that the previous commentors are making. they made their point in a better way than I would been able to make them.
I have been doing a lot of work to build a “home full of peace” (it’s part of creating my life in peaceful ways so I get through the midlife crisis phase sooner) so there were a lot of statements that resonated with me in this post.
I think that the concept of being “Peace is tied to Justice” is more accurately described as “Peace is tied to individuals being treated justly” – which is a lot harder to define – let alone create.
“Just treatment” may include identifying and extending sensory accommodations, time accommodations, attention accommodations, developmental phase accommodations, etc. and spending money/other resources in unequal amounts in order to “create and maintain the (non-scorched earth version of) peace”.
Todd Smithson: this is a beautifully written post. Thank you. It is just what I needed today in my anxiety-ridden grapple with more than I can continue to carry.
You asked: “How do you think the Church could offer peace to exiting members instead of blame?” I’ll leave that to other commenters. I would like to see how the Church could offer more peace to existing members now, in this life, while we are hyper focused on map or path following. Maps are essential, yes, but what good are they if we are not changed by the journey?
Todd, this is a very thought-provoking post, beautifully written.
“Peace like a river”. Rivers are dynamic, moving, different in different seasons, generally going to same way but depending on how high the water level is, there will be eddies, sometimes the banks may overflow. As a recovering perfectionist, I used to think peace would come from having everything under control. Predictable, unchanging, expected. Instead, I’ve adapted to peace like a river — the general riverbed is there, the water is there, but things like speed, depth, floating debris, and other river variations are also there. It’s still the river. Finding the constant underneath all the variation has helped me find peace.
Todd,
Wonderful post and discussion.
JCS,
Job isn’t history, it is work of literature intent on drawing out the very questions we are discussing. Jonah, Esther, and other works should also be considered fictional…. Also, the silly “happy” ending of Job was not part of the original. It was probably added centuries later by some idiot who couldn’t grasp the philosophical nature of this work.
I think one message of Job is: life is not fair. Good people get hurt. Bad people get ahead. Blaming yourself for bad things or taking credit for good things can be self-indulgent. So always just focus on what you can control (which is really quite little) and just try to be good and kind because that’s who you are, not because you get some material reward in this life for it. It really is quite a Buddhist or Stoic work. Obviously that silly ending obscures this discussion.
Thank you all for your thoughtful responses.
Janey – you said “I used to think peace would come from having everything under control”. This sounds all too close to home. The story of the rich young ruler has become one of my favorites to think about. It continues to provide layers and more layers of ideas about human nature and the ways we operate that sabotage the very thing we are looking for. For me, one of its meanings is exactly how you framed peace in your comment, its learning to let go of my peace being connected to material conditions. Jesus, to the rich young ruler, is stating a radical idea, sure, but really just the obvious problem he has with thinking that this way of life, which Jesus calls Eternal, is a function of achievement and acquisition. Jesus is merely telling him that real peace and freedom will come when you unclench your fist and let go of thinking Eternal life is “one more thing” away.
LHCA – First of all, I am deeply sorry to hear how heavy daily life feels for you. I too am still grappling with some very difficult professional challenges which at times fills me with crippling anxiety. Your comment about Maps caused me to remember a favorite quote from Dave Brisbin, “The hero is not the one who completes the journey, but the one whom the journey completes”. One of the dangers I see in organized religion, including our LDS tradition is the tendency to supplant the transformative with the performative. The doing becomes the end instead of the means and the spiritual life takes on a rather anxious self-obsession that becomes nothing short of exhausting. It’s not the doing that matters the most, it’s what the doing is doing to me.
Amy – I couldn’t agree with you more about Peace is about people being treated justly. The concept of Justice is our LDS vernacular, like all our other religious terms is trapped in a legalistic framework. Justice really has nothing to do with balancing the scales or paying some arbitrary price for a wrong committed. Justice is the active pursuit of alignment, of setting things right where they have become unequal. Hence, the emphasis in the simple Book of Mormon phrase, “And they dwelt in righteousness; and there were no poor among them”. The semi-colon is really important in this sentence because what comes after it describes what the author means by righteousness.
John Charity – Great comment, Love it. While I agree that the story of Job has some incredibly absurd aspects, I actually think it comes, as part of the wisdom literature, as a breath of fresh air. Coming off the extremely black and white and overly simplistic law books of Deuteronomy and Proverbs, where they create a version of God that has no chance of being consistent with reality. The Book of Job comes along and begins by almost playing up to the absurdity of the petty God they have dreamed up. The story of God taking a bet is completely backwards and antithetical to everything humans might imagine about deity, but I think that’s the point the Book of Job is making. Their rigid law-based system suggests a God that is based on merit, not Grace and positions God to be a petty parent that cares more about his power than he does the well-being of the child. The rest of the story of Job is 35 chapters of a belief crisis, where Job is building a case against God and demanding he show up and account for the injustices. As far as Job’s friends are concerned, the only explanation for Job’s suffering is that he has done something wicked. And for 35 chapters they go back and forth with Job exclaiming, I have done nothing wrong, and his friends saying, yes you did, no I didn’t, yes you did, for 35 chapters. The book of Job wrestles with one of our oldest philosophical questions, what do we do with suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? Job asks the very difficult questions real life demands us to ask, but religion often demonizes as unfaithful. The story turns faith on its head, suggesting that there is no system man can invent that will eliminate suffering, that faith has absolutely nothing to do with controlling a desired outcome, but instead with bearing the weight of unfairness and injustice and still trusting that something good can come of it.
Raymond – Hyperbole was certainly one of Jesus’ favorite teaching tools.
Instereo – you always have very well thought comments. You make a critical, but almost impossible point for institutions to practice, which is, real change, real community is driven from the bottom up, not the top down. Like you said, it begins with each individual heart and follows a pattern of expansion as we learn to live in the spirit of Grace.
Old Man – The silly ending that was not part of the original speaks to our need as humans to control. It also reinforces a transactional relationship with God.
The book of Job, IMO is the “Ying” to the Deuteronomy “Yang”. It would be the perfect challenge to the prescriptive ladder climbing idea of “The Covenant Path”.
Without a defense attorney, the jury would never have a chance to discover the truth because they would only hear the filtered story from the Prosecution that would steer their decision exactly where that want it.
Todd,
I strongly agree. Years ago I took a course in ancient philosophy. It made me realize quite quickly that doctrinal knowledge was somewhat valuable, but self awareness and a developed philosophical approach was a pearl of great price. Sometimes we need to face what we don’t know or what we don’t understand. (That’s not something addressed frequently at church.). I refer specifically to the “mysteries” of life and how we approach or fail to approach the Divine. Doctrine often doesn’t help there.
I often see knee jerk responses from 21st century LDS when we encounter modern versions of Job. On one hand I see compassion, but the compassion is often limited to immediately alleviating the suffering. If relief is not immediate, we tend to tire of the person. The other response is the classic “blame the victim.” Either way, I wonder if we realize how we spend so much time impersonating Job’s friends rather than engaging in discipleship. But for so many advocating an overly simplistic version of the “covenant path”… Job’s friends is what you will become.
Thank you toddsmithson and everyone for your perspective.
I feel peace like a river in a church setting when I’m in the presence of those who are kind, who show patterns of integrity, emotional intelligence and tact, who listen intently, who have the capacity to sit in empathy and to creatively reason for themselves. Not everyone will put forth the effort to learn these skills, that’s a fact. Sometimes I have to guard my heart and disengage with those who ignore boundaries, victim blame or dismiss the reality of lived experiences. I feel peace like a river when I remember Jesus’ arms of mercy, grace and trust are extended to everyone. He needs me to then use my own arms for good, to stand up for those who are suffering and, quoting Amy, “treat individuals justly”, myself included, as He never fails to do. I work every day to carry my hard-won internal peace as I follow the river and try to remember not only the continual ‘living water” flowing above my life but the underlying peace beneath the boulders, fog and wild rapids. Often easier said than done, but I retain the courage to try.
“I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
I will not look upon them.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
24 But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy” would be Sartre and Camus’ approach to making peace in an apparently absurd and unjust existence. But rolling the stone uphill is the opposite image to peace like a river flowing downhill. Is there a way to let go of the stone, just let it roll down into the riverbed, and still find both peace and purpose?
I think I get closer to understanding peace when I imagine the metaphor of water flowing along its natural, downhill course. No exertion, no striving against nature, no excess planning given to the route, it takes its time. When rocks or hills show up, there is conflict but the water naturally flows over or around. There does seem to be some of the Dao and Buddha in Jesus. This idea is the essence of D&C 121, surely the most sublime revelation Joseph produced. Forcing our version of the divine into our own lives or others’, by “virtue of the priesthood” rather than by unfeigned love and kindness, we kick against the pricks, and Amen to our efforts that don’t align with the way God’s power and peace flow like water along channels of goodness while at the same time accepting and embracing the obstacles. “Without compulsory means,” is the great phrase there.
I experience a similar anxiety, most acutely at night, as the OP describes. My approach currently is to try to put down the struggle, at least in terms of mental energy. The boulder is there and my river is going to meet it with virtue. The river and boulder will both coexist, and the resulting wavy rapids will only make the scene more beautiful and interesting.
Wow! Someone voted down a quote from the BIBLE! I guess it wasn’t correctly translated.