NSoC 16: The Root of War Is Fear

See Notes on this series...

Fear and hatred lie at the source of all war, but not as conventional wisdom would suggest. It is not only the external hatred of others that fuels war but the internal hatred that we all have for ourselves. More serious is the self-hatred that is buried so deep it is not acknowledged. We see evil in others that we deny in ourselves, and we try to destroy them while justifying ourselves. Others "sin", we make "mistakes." We blame others to ease our guilt. We build ourselves up and tear others down. We become obsessed with eradicating evil by naming scapegoats for our guilt.

Merton suggests our "ethical and political problems" might be solved if we realized that all of us are wrong, in deed, intent, and response to evil. We stagnate because we fail to acknowledge that not all intentions of others are bad and not all of our own intentions are good. Our political system fails when we put all our eggs in the basket of one party or system.

Neither should we lean toward the everything-is-wrong camp, says Merton. We should accept the scriptural notion that we are of two natures and we should not emphasize one over the other.

How to deal with each other? Merton says we shouldn't force trust where none is trustworthy but we should commonly trust God, for only through him can we learn to love those who do evil. The fear at the root of war can only be repelled by love (humility, as he defined in an earlier chapter). He then rants against a nation which postmarks its stamps with "Pray for Peace" and then spends billions on armaments that could destroy the world. He says it is perfectly reasonable to pray for health while taking medicine, but to pray for peace while arming for war is akin to praying for health and then drinking poison.

He says he prays not only for change for "the Russians and the Chinese" but for himself and his nation to change as well. He says God doesn't answer our prayers for peace in the way we expect because we don't know what we are praying for. He says often God gives us the kinds of peace we ask for: peace to treat others as we wish without retribution, peace to consume at will without thought of the poor, peace from violence that might interfere with our standard of living.

He exhorts us to hate the attitude of the warmonger, not the warmonger himself. He says if we love peace we are to hate the injustice, tyranny, and greed that lives in us.

Quaff:
Clarence Darrow, the celebrated attorney of the early twentieth century, provided a defense of the infamous "perfect crime" murderers Leopold and Loeb by suggesting that they were products of their environments, not their own choices (see part of his argument here). This seems to support Merton's stance that "...we naturally tend to interpret our immoral act as an involuntary mistake..."

The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, and it means much more than the absence of war, as "peace" often contemporarily does. Shalom means wholeness, completeness, soundness. In our worship services on Sundays, we share the peace, exclaiming, "Peace be with you," or as Jesus would have said "shalom aliechem" (except he would have said it in Aramaic, but you get the idea). The Greek word for peace is eirene, and it is used in the New Testament to express that Jesus came into the world to bring spiritual peace with God.

Query:

• How do I keep from projecting my self-hatred upon others?
• How do I guard against their self-hatred aimed at me?
• How do I refrain from totally supporting or totally vilifying one political party when solutions are more than likely to be found in compromise with others? Is it too much to expect my fellow citizens and the politicians to do the same?
• Do I pray for God to change me as often as I ask him to change my enemies?