Making peace in the year of Clinton versus Trump

I will vote for the next president of the United States. Deciding this is easy.

This time, because of who is running, I may even campaign for a candidate. Deciding to do this is hard.

What is a struggle is finding a way to be a peacemaker in a time of war.

Jesus Christ said: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Gospel of Matthew 5.9).

I wonder if we could say this another way and it still be true: “Do you want to know how to identify people whose DNA matches God’s? Look for the people who are out there making peace. ‘Like father/like son’ and ‘like mother/like daughter,’ as they say.”

I wonder if I could take it even further and the meaning still be true: “God is not looking for a good fight. God is not making war. Humanity is building one hell of an arsenal. Human beings seem to really like their big guns. God has no such arsenal. God doesn’t like guns and doesn’t keep them around the house. God is not brooding and building in bitterness, just looking for a reason to unleash ‘shock and awe’ upon the people and planet. God is not a conquering general, a military strategist, or a warrior as you suppose. You humans made all that shit up about God because you would rather have a god in your own image. You want blood and you want war and you want your own kind of justice. Therefore you made a god for yourselves who is as angry and vengeful and violent as you want to be and you called him God. And I’m here as the flesh and blood son of God to tell you the truth: She is nothing like you and nothing like you supposed her to be. God is a lover, not a fighter. A pacifist, if you will. A practitioner of nonviolence. You want proof? Look at how God deals with the injustice and violence in the world: ‘As a lamb to the slaughter.’ My cross, my death, and my resurrection from the dead are all the evidence you need that God makes peace. Even what you suppose to be hell is actually the threat of heaven to those who are so bent on exploitation and violence. Does the word ‘pacifist’ insult you? Does ‘nonviolence’ make God seem weak? You don’t know God as well as you think. You’re not children yet.”

And this is my dilemma. Politics is war. The threat of war (“Hey, America, vote for me and we’ll go out and kick some ass together!”) is effective for getting people to vote for you in this country.

Because America is a violent, violent, violent nation. A candidate who promises big armies and big guns and lots of “just” violence is going to get votes. And it’s no surprise that in a country that loves war as much as ours does, that violent rhetoric is effective for getting votes for otherwise “peaceful” things like health care, infrastructure, social services, etc. Candidates cast these things as war and the votes come.

So my dilemma as an apprentice and student of Jesus Christ is to participate in civics without promoting discord and strife and war. In an election that looks like it will be a bloodless (I hope) civil war and in which I am likely to “take a side,” how can I function as a consensus-builder and peacemaker? Especially when so many of my fellow Americans (especially my Christian kin) will actually want a good fight?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Have to find a way.