War of the Worlds: How the peace of Christ differs from a truce in hell
Why is justice without love always a dictatorship? How do we tell God’s peace from the “peace of the graveyard”? And why do drones take off not from military bases, but from our own hearts?
“Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world gives, give I unto you.” (Jn. 14:27)
These words were spoken as the darkness over Jerusalem thickened, when the footsteps of Judas – together with an armed detachment – were already approaching Gethsemane. In these words lies the central ontological conflict of history. The Divine Logos, having become man, draws an unbridgeable line between the realities of two antagonistic worlds.
Modern scribes and Pharisees, never having managed to bring either themselves or others to the peace of Christ, have begun adorning the world of the antichrist with the trappings of sanctity, urging people to fight for it with weapons in hand.
But how do we distinguish the peace Christ gives from that other “world,” about which the Savior, the apostles, and the holy fathers warned us so often?
The temptation of a “Christian Empire”
At the very beginning of His earthly path, the Lord – being tempted by the devil in the wilderness – rejected “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” The devil showed Him even those kingdoms crowned with crosses atop church domes – those glorious empires that proudly bore the name “Christian.”
But the Son of God knew: the kingdom of Caesar will never acknowledge Him as its King. It will use His name as its weapon, as a tool, as a slogan – but never as the Truth.
The kingdom of this world tolerates Christianity only when Christianity serves not Christ, but Caesar.
Only under such obedience will it offer Christians privileges and favors. Any totalitarian state wants to be a church itself – to govern human souls, to dominate their conscience, thoughts, faith, life, convictions. And the “clergy” of such a state have but one task – to convince their flock that this is the “will of God.”
Peter’s sword and Christ’s Cup
The difference between the two worlds was traced by the Savior in Gethsemane. The apostle Peter, driven by the idea of earthly justice, seizes a sword to defend his Master. A noble impulse by human standards – to strike at evil in order to defend good.
But Christ tells him: “Put your sword back into its sheath.” And He heals the servant whom Peter had wounded.
The first path is to strike evil in the name of good – the path of endless war, for evil cannot be conquered by evil.
The second path is the path of Christ – to drink the cup, to heal the enemy, to overcome evil from within.
In the former case, a person needs the force of weapons.
In the latter – the force of faith.
To acquire the peace of Christ, a person must pass through self-emptying. He must renounce his egoistic “truth,” cease to judge, and begin to repent. Spiritual growth begins where the search for the guilty ends.
The illusion of justice
The warring worlds of men offer their own versions of a “just peace.” But what is peace to them? Above all, it is the absence of war through the suppression of the enemy.
Man reasons like this: “For peace to come, evil must be punished, and justice restored.”
People want to build a kingdom of justice and order using the methods of “the prince of this world.”
But attempting to establish a “just peace” or build a “Christian state on earth” by means of weapons, violence, and terror is like trying to cure cancer with makeup. The disease nests within – in the very nature of humankind, wounded by the Fall.
Thus every revolution and every war “for truth and justice” ends merely with the replacement of tyrants and the birth of new cycles of violence.
The Gospel reveals a tragic truth – justice without love is always cruelty, dictatorship, and totalitarianism.
A world built on human truth alone is always built on blood. Pax Romana was the greatest achievement of ancient order – and yet it was precisely this “Roman peace” that crucified Christ. The Roman world is the limit of the world’s possibilities – the icon of all the worlds being offered to us today.
The peace of the graveyard
The whole history of humankind is an attempt to build a “just kingdom” on a foundation of bones.
Man thirsts for justice – but human justice is always a sword.
We believe that if violence is “righteous,” it will produce silence. But this is a lie of Satan – as ancient as the blood of Abel.
Peace won by force is not peace – it is only a pause between wars.
It is the peace of a cemetery, where it is quiet only because no one remains to cry out. Such peace is fragile as glass. One spark – and the vaunted “world order” shatters, revealing the beastly snarl of chaos.
Earthly justice does not heal the wound of existence – it only bandages it with filthy rags of mutual hatred.
Silence at the depths of the ocean
The peace of God is not a socio-political category – it is a state of being. It is not a truce with circumstances – it is victory over them through the transfiguration of the spirit.
Christ does not bring peace by removing Roman legions, nor by overthrowing Pilate or Herod. He brings peace by entering the heart of a person and uniting him with the Father.
This peace is paradoxical. It can exist in the midst of war, in a prison cell, on a bed of agonizing illness. Martyrs in the coliseums sang psalms because their source of peace lay beyond the reach of talons and swords. Their peace was not external comfort, but inner wholeness.
The peace of Christ is attained not through conquering territories, but through conquering one’s own passions – it is the fruit of spiritual growth.
The Holy Fathers teach that external war is simply the projection of internal war. As long as a battle rages in the human heart – between pride and humility, lust and self-restraint, envy and love – cannons will thunder on earth. It is impossible to build a peaceful society out of unpeaceful people.
Christ brings a scandalously different reality. His peace is the stillness of the deep ocean.
On the surface a ten-point storm may be raging, shattering the ships of human destinies, sirens may howl, empires may collapse – yet at the depths, in the core of the spirit, reigns an absolute, unshakable silence.
Remember St. Stephen the Protomartyr. The crowd raged, stones flew, breaking his flesh. Around him were screams, hatred, faces contorted by “fighters for justice.”
And what did he see? He saw the heavens opened. In the center of a bloody chaos he alone stood in perfect peace. He did not curse – he prayed: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
That is the peace of Christ.
A peace that does not depend on the news cycle, that cannot be confiscated in a prison cell, bombed out, or shot through. Because its source is not on earth – it is in that secret place of the heart where a person touches God.
Drones launch from the heart
Acquiring a peaceful spirit is the hardest of labors. It is easier to take up a banner or a weapon than to crucify your pride every day, forgive your offender, refuse to repay evil for evil, and preserve prayerful stillness when everything around you screams.
Yet it is precisely this labor that, according to St. Seraphim of Sarov, saves thousands around us.
The tragedy of our time is not only that drones fly over our houses – but that drones fly out of our hearts.
The Holy Fathers teach us a terrifying truth: every external war is an abscess bursting from within humanity. We cannot stop the evil outside while remaining evil inside. We may pray for the cessation of fire, but if we continue to live by hatred, such prayer will not be heard.
Our problem is that we want comfort, not holiness. We demand from God: “Take the evildoers away from us!” But God responds: “I want to take the evil out of you.”
The peace of God is achieved not by diplomacy and not by the capitulation of the enemy – it is achieved through the Gethsemane of one’s own heart. It is the painful, bloody labor of crucifying one’s ego.
It is easy to hate an enemy – difficult to bless those who curse you.
Easy to demand justice – difficult to be the first to say “forgive me.”
Easy to fall into hysteria from fear – difficult to trust God when everything you love collapses.
The maternity ward of Eternity
God never promised us a comfortable sanatorium.
Earth is not a resort – it is the maternity ward of Eternity.
Sometimes the Lord permits the destruction of our earthly hopes so that we stop building our tower on sand and begin digging down to the bedrock.
It is frightening when your house burns – but far more frightening when your soul burns. God sometimes allows the external fire to touch us so that we awaken in horror and begin to save the one thing that does not burn – our immortal spirit.
True peace comes when a person, standing amid the ashes of this world, realizes: “Everything was taken from me – but Christ remains.”
Each of us chooses one of two swords. One – the sword of earthly justice, urging us to add our voice to the choir of hatred, seek the guilty, and demand vengeance. The other – the spiritual sword, which cuts off our own passions. The path of acquiring a peaceful spirit.
This is the path of prayer amid curses, love amid hostility. The path where you become a small lamp in a vast, cold, dark cavern filled with hatred. If the lamp of Christ’s peace burns in our heart, the darkness cannot engulf us. And perhaps, seeing our inexplicable, illogical, divine tranquility, someone may decide to lower his weapon.
“My peace I give unto you,” – says the Savior. He gives it not as a trophy of conquest, but as a cross on which fear is crucified and love rises.
We live in an age when “this world” is convulsing, trying to impose its justice by fire and sword. The temptation to join this struggle, to answer hatred with hatred, is greater than ever.
But the Christian is called to bear another peace – the stillness of Eternity, which no air-raid siren can drown out.
Our task is not to defeat the enemy physically – but to prevent evil from taking root within ourselves. True victory is when, in the midst of hell, you preserve within yourself the ability to bless, not curse. For only such peace will follow us into Eternity – where there is no politics, no wars, but only God, who is Love.
