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I am nearing the end of Ken Follett's new novel, Circle of Days. It is historical fiction, as most of his writing is, exploring how Stonehenge came to be. Along the way, it narrates the lives of the Neolithic peoples credited with Stonehenge’s creation. In his mind, people are separated into three groups: farmers, herders, and woodsmen. They have a simple yet functional system of communication and trade, and have learned creative ways to keep bloodlines healthy for people and livestock so that incest is not a problem. I was, frankly, amazed that Neolithic people would have such great insight about genetics and the intricate language skills to rival our own. I'd love to know how Mr. Follett researched the breadth and depth of their thinking and vocabulary! (That was sarcasm, of course.)
The fun of historical fiction is that we get to fill in the gaps and get creative to determine how we got to an endpoint that we know. In this case, we know that Stonehenge exists, and we know that somebody put it there. I'm sure this book uses some of the best hypotheses from historians, but at the end of the day, we are all just guessing about some of it. In the same way, I'm sure that Follett has taken what we think we know about peoples of those days and created a storyline close enough to our modern understanding that modern readers will spend $35 on a hardback copy of his book. I understand that Neolithic people had the capacity for somewhat detailed language, for example, but they are much more relatable when they speak just like us. I have enjoyed this book regardless of the liberties involved with such writing.
One of the things that plays out in the book is the reality of violence between people who end up disagreeing with one another, particularly over land, harvest, animals, and access to things like water. In that sense, Follett does not have to guess about how people may have behaved in the Neolithic era. Humans have been consistent in this regard, even as our language and cultures have changed and shifted from generation to generation. We fought with each other when we were hunter-gatherers and still do it now, as we share high-rise condos. War-making is one of the facets of human society that has long been a reality, and will probably continue long into our future.
The news this week that a first step towards a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is more than welcome, as we reached the two-year mark from the day Israel suffered a tremendous blow in that terrible terrorist assault. It will be a laudable achievement for our President and this administration should the ceasefire continue and lead to a peaceful resolution of such a bloody and terrible conflict. We know that is not the only conflict raging in our world, and we hope and pray that there will be movement among other people engaged in bloody combat. We sincerely pray for peace on earth.
In his sermon on Sunday, Bishop Charles talked about war in his fine sermon, with the metaphor of football as a touchstone. He remarked that we were even experiencing war in some of our cities. While I understand his meaning in that context, I struggle to agree without caveat. The trouble we're having in our cities isn't war (according to long-held definitions), but protest and related violence. The two are not synonyms. It won’t be war until and unless warriors show up and draw battle lines (which I think was the Bishop’s reference, as we see and label situations as war).
As unsettling as violence in some cities may be when it takes place, we should be cautious about describing such things as “war.” That label presents a host of challenges, some spiritual in nature. War has never been purely a political theater, but one for theologians and people of faith to wrestle with. This, too, has been the truth of our spiritual realities as human beings for as long as we have taken up arms against one another. We struggle to make sense of the tendency towards war and the call of Christ to make peace. I also understand the dual viewpoints and political tendencies that make it easy for some to downplay problems in inner cities while others describe them with overblown hyperbole. Count it among the long list of things that propaganda confuses for partisan expediency.
Regardless of what we want to call it, I worry about using the language of war to describe what is happening in our cities. It concerns me because once war is declared, someone is declared an enemy. An enemy of war doesn’t deserve to prevail, and we tend to see a greater tolerance for violence and tragedy and the death that quickly follows as we wage war. We are exceptionally tolerant when “the other side” does most of the dying. It also blurs the line that has existed for so very long between what is military and what is civilian in our culture. Our professional military corps has taken its constitutional role very seriously to avoid circumstances in which it might take up arms against fellow American citizens. Recent suggestions that active military could be sent into the alleged war zones of some of our cities for practice and preparation for what we might otherwise call “a real war” is doubly concerning. It risks embodying simply hyperbole and creating something new. We don’t want politicized practice war to become a real war.
Jesus doesn’t want us to create new enemies and draw battle lines with some of our fellow children of God on the other side. We face off against our enemies with the intent to destroy and conquer – often regardless of cost. Is that really what we want? I don’t want to see communities frozen by fear of violence, and I also don’t want to see us treat each other as enemy combatants. There is a middle ground and other creative solutions that I hope will ultimately provide the road map for peacemaking and community building. We can bring order to chaos without a domestic warrior mentality.
Neolithic or modern, human beings have always tended towards violence, and we have a certain amount of tolerance for it, as I rambled about some weeks ago. However, our tendency to make war is not an innate human capacity that cannot be overcome. We are also peacemakers, particularly those who follow the one who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” We need the peacemaker mentality to find our way through these days as we hold people accountable while loving those we are hellbent on making our enemies. This does not mean that we never tolerate violence and war, nor does it mean that there is no accountability for those who break the sacred trust of community, domestic or global. Warfare is most certainly a last resort; however, it is used when nothing else will work. Short of truly being at the end of a list of options, we do not ever want to take the path of war because war is evil except in extreme and limited circumstances, and even then, it’s merely a necessary evil. It’s always evil. We’ve seen what those extreme circumstances are in the field of history. We’re light years away from those contexts on our shores, even if it feels like, and even if we’re told how bad things are – they’re not that bad.
We will see what we want on this issue, as we do with many things. I hope and pray that we will also see, or at least be willing to look for, signs that things are also good; and that our neighbors have good in them, too. Instead of only seeing bad things, we can see a larger context and use a wider lens. I hope we will find ways to live together, whether we’re herders, farmers, or woodsmen. As the world has learned repeatedly, after forgetting it repeatedly, we fare better when we work together for the benefit of all. The way of peace is a long path to take, and it is a hard path to take. It is frustrating, and it requires humility. It also requires trusting in God’s goodness and the goodness that lives in all of us. The Circle of Days is a good novel, as fictional as it may be. I wonder what our era will leave behind and what future generations will say about it thousands of years from now. Will we be remembered for promulgating innate human violence, or will the stories and novels of tomorrow describe how we finally came to understand how to live together in peace?
