The International Day of Peace (21 September) and the International Day of Non-Violence (2 October) are timely in a world full of stories of war and rumours of war, of violence turned recklessly against civilians, and of the formation of different blocs united in mutual suspicion. They underline the message in Bishops’ Social Justice Statement, which was released in August – ‘Truth and Peace: A Gospel Word in a Violent World’.
Most Australians have mercifully been spared from war in our own land. Many people, however, have come to Australia after fleeing the violence of war in their own lands. They and their families have experienced the indiscriminate violence caused by bombs, shells and mines, the personalised violence of rape and bullets, and the tearing apart of family, village, culture and future hopes. Such experience and its effects can affect their lives and those of their descendants, as they have affected the lives of Indigenous Australians after the colonial invasion. The suicides among Australians who have fought in war, too, testify to its destructive effects.
WE MUST SEEK PEACE
In such a world we must remind ourselves constantly that in war everybody loses and peace will come only if we seek it. In Jesus’ preaching, to be a peacemaker was not a soft option. It meant turning the other cheek if struck, returning good for evil, walking an extra mile if asked, and finally risking and accepting death inflicted by the intolerance of others. Nor is peacemaking to be taken for granted in our own day. Mahatma Gandhi, whose example is the focus of Non-Violence Day, led a cause for which people accepted jailing in their search for a just world.
The faithfulness of such conscientious objectors in time of war as Franz Jägerstätter, who accepted death at the hands of the Nazi regime rather than fight, also awes us. It continues to inspire pacifist Christian groups which oppose the possession and readiness to make use of nuclear weapons. And yet most people, including Christians, believe that it is better to fight people intent on doing us harm than to let them have their way with us.
Whether or not we believe that violence can never rightly be met with violence, the International Day of Non-Violence and the lives of people who practise non-violence in demanding ways do make us reflect on the place that violence has in our personal lives and in our society.
EFFECTS OF VIOLENCE
In recent times we have become more aware of how violence can affect people. We have learned how childhood beatings have continued to traumatise people in their later life, and have often led people to be similarly violent. We also recognise the extent of domestic violence directed against women and the damage it causes to body and to spirit. We now understand better, too, the effects of images of masculinity that identify strength and self-assertion with physical violence.
World peace begins at home in the quiet strengths within our personal relationships. They are such things as patience, readiness to forgive and respect for others. They are the soil in which peace can grow.
Note: A Hidden Life, a film about Franz Jägerstätter, written and directed by Terrence Malick, is available to stream from Disney.