A "jihad" of prayer for peace

Spiritual resource to share: an earnest and tenacious peace

Jihad – literally means “exerted effort” or "to strive, to make a great and tenacious effort "

In October of 2001 in Germany, I was manning our publisher’s booth at the world’s largest publishing event. One of my first encounters was with a Muslim publisher who was quickly selling out of his copies of the Qur'an. We had an earnest, cordial and impassioned talk, agreeing together about the great need to understand one another and for peace. I made a gift of a copy of Science and Health to him which he gratefully accepted and he made a gift to me of the Qur'an, which I took with a grateful heart.

So began my journey to humbly understand more about Islam with the goal of more effectively praying about peace.

So, can a Christian effectively pray for peace for those of other faiths? Yes. Christ Jesus starts out his most significant prayer, called the Lord's Prayer with "Our Father, which art in heaven...." It starts with that all-inclusive word "Our".

Jesus' radical approach to love God and one another crossed limitations and prejudices against the disabled and disadvantaged, as well as religious, racial, gender and age boundaries. Unity, peace, healing, resurrection characterized Jesus' life which continues to bring us salvation today.

In Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy goes deep into Christ Jesus' work and pulls out the divine principles of his teaching, showing the underlying universal spiritual laws of his works, which she calls Christian Science. The works that Jesus did - to heal, reform and uplift thought - are possible today.

I was deeply moved when, at another publishing event, a Muslim came forward who had read Science and Health and said "This book could help unify nations in turmoil." (Yes, I said to him.)

So how have I been praying?
To target my prayer, I needed to go deeper to understand what war tries to do, and understand with more conviction the active transformative nature of peace.

War is hell. And hell is defined, in part as ".... remorse; hatred; revenge; sin; sickness; death; suffering and self-destruction; self-imposed agony….” What else would war do?

• It would limit intelligence, resources, compassion
• It would divide nations, make divisions within nations, within communities, families and within the self.
• It brings death, destruction, despair, and is fueled by power mongering.
  

So where is God in all of this? I had to ask myself, how big is my concept of God?
Is it big enough to cover the strife, the bloodshed, and the chaos? Is Love big enough to neutralize the hate? However overwhelming this all may seem, in Science and Health it says: “The greatest wrong is but a supposititious opposite of the highest right.”

If we are overwhelmed, remember that there is a bigger power (actually an absolute Power) that can overwhelm even this – with love, purity, and peace.

Remember, God is All. Not mostly all, not sharing its allness with another power (then it wouldn’t be All, would it?). But God is it. Love is it. To the chaos of strife, we have a way out. And it is all powerful.

If war is about limitation, then our remedy is to be open and expectant of breakthrough, of infinite possibilities, giving our consent to see new solutions. Even now, our recognition of the power of good and creative solutions can help silence despair, apathy or the thought of escalating and inevitable conflict.

If war is about divisions between nations, within nations, within communities, families and within the self ( soldiers with mental illnesses, etc.), our antidote is to strive for unity and peace within our own communities and families, and then pray with that same ideal for our nation, all nations; understand that the potential for peace is inherent in each of us. The Bible states: “The kingdom of God is within you.” The loudest chaos starts to lose its influence with our own prayer of "Peace, be still."

If war brings about depravity, death, destruction, despair, we counter that nightmare by waking up to the reality of Truth. Mary Baker Eddy writes,

Because Truth is infinite, error should be known as nothing. Because Truth is omnipotent in goodness, error, Truth's opposite, has no might. Evil is but the counterpoise of nothingness. The greatest wrong is but a supposititious opposite of the highest right. The confidence inspired by Science lies in the fact that Truth is real and error is unreal. Error is a coward before Truth. Divine Science insists that time will prove all this. Both truth and error have come nearer than ever before to the apprehension of mortals, and truth will become still clearer as error is self-estroyed.

To be expectant for the stirrings of peace to breakthrough the hypnotism of war, I found these ideas helpful:

• Be open to possibilities for breakthrough.
• Set your heart higher than the outcome of the war.
• There is no terror, no darkness that cannot be removed by the light.

So long as the arguments of war rest on human power and control, resources and entitlement, war will continue. We need a radically spiritual view – something above the physical – a metaphysical perspective. We start with God, our Father-Mother God – and we understand that we are made in His image and likeness.

The way to win a war is to go to the source of all harmony and love, that is God. Lean on God, yield to God’s power, surrender to God’s will - not on a sense of personal power, either good OR evil– only the power of God, the power of good.

“One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations.” It isn’t that we need others to believe in the way we believe, but that we need to understand God as infinite - -- bigger than any culture or denomination and the source of intelligent strength and care.

Only when we get a glimpse of this infinite source of tenderness and might, can we begin to sort out the issues of war.

When we pray for the end of war, we are praying to see the world as governed by God. To be able to see others as God sees them. Aligning our thought with the law of God, we take that one step that claims peace is possible, right here and right now.

Other helpful resources:

• Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths by Bruce Feiler
• Christian Science Journal, November 2006 issue on Religious Warfare - what's the answer? (Available at your local Christian Science Reading Room)

To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

(Photo by son, Gabe)