"'Yes we will have peace,' he said now in a clear voice, 'we will have peace, when you and all your works have perished - and the works of your dark master to whom you would deliver us. When you hang from a gibbet at your window for the sport of your own crows, I will have peace with you and Orthanc.'" King Theodon to Saruman(The Lord of the Rings).
Peace, as I am fond of saying, is not the absence of war but the opposite of it. Sometimes the only path to it is through conflict. But what should my role as a Christian be in that? The seventh beatitude says "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God". I doubt somehow that Jesus had in mind the kind of peace-making that Theodon is talking about. Or the cynical attitude that led to the name Peacemaker being given to a handgun or a ballistic missile.
In Finding Sanctuary, Christopher Jamieson says this:
People have to build peace in relationships and they do so by creating relationships founded on fairness and respect. [...] Yet the greatest test of building peace is how we react to unfair treatment at the hands of others. We need to respond to such treatment not only fairly but also compassionately; only then do we really build peace. Hating our enemies, for example, does not build peace. We must resist injustice, but the high calling of peace-building invites us not to hate those who perpetrate it.
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