The Peace Beyond All Understanding, Part 1
Why it isn't what you think, and why people are leaving the faith because of that
“My peace I leave you, my peace I give you, not as the world gives…”
“I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
While I was attending a Catholic high school, I attended theology classes. In one of these classes, I was asked to prepare a brief “testimony” of why I was in the faith and why my faith was important to me for an assignment.
I remember talking to my mom about it, “I really have no idea what I should write for this thing.”
”Well” she said, “ just write about the peace you’ve found in living out your faith and having a prayer life.”
”But I have no peace.” I thought. I felt guilty about that, but it was true. Thanks to a particularly bad case of scruples, practicing the faith was a torturous experience for me. My thoughts were constantly occupied with evaluating my every thought and interaction, scanning it for any trace of impurity or sacrilege. Intrusive thoughts, many of them quite graphic, were a constant scourge and I’d started turning to self harm as an attempt to punish myself and manage them. I often looked at people who seemed “less into” their faith with envy. They seemed so much happier, and much less anxious. They seemed far more at peace than I was.
In the contemporary Christian conversation, the concept of “peace” is often synonymous with not living in a state of emotional or mental turmoil. It means “feeling at rest” or “untroubled.” One Christian video with 73 thousand views on YouTube explains it thus: “Peace makes us content and happy in all situations.” It’s understood to mean this sort of untouchable, complete serenity.
The assumption is that living a life of faith reduces the amount of turmoil. When we listen to Christian testimonies, there’s this certain understanding that once you’ve accepted Christ, there’s this sort of emotional and mental equilibrium that permanently descends. Your right arm could suddenly fall off, and you’d be able to watch it hit the ground with total unconcern, maybe even a bit of a serene smile, because you have a relationship with God.
This understanding of “peace” has been around for awhile. Take a look at this video of a conversation between Lonnie Frisbee, an up-and-coming popular Christian preacher, and Kathryn Kuhlman in the 1960s;
Kathryn: “And the things you once loved, you have no desire for at all, right?”
Lonnie: “Just went right out…”
Kathryn: “So the new birth experience IS real?”
Lonnie: “It sure is.”
Kathryn: “The most real thing in the world.”
Lonnie: “It’s really, really real.”
Type in “Christian conversion testimony” in the search bar on YouTube, and you’ll find multiple other accounts in the same vein. You'll also find courses with titles like, “Breaking Free of Shame”. The popular idea is that someone living in depression, despair, or some other persistent situation of tension and suffering can find Jesus and be lifted out of it. Their lives, their emotional equilibrium, is in a better place because Jesus saved them.
This isn’t even getting into the notorious tele-evangelists like Kenneth Copeland and Joel Olsten who have made entire careers out of promising people material success and happiness as the natural result of being Christian. Those preachers are often dismissed and ridiculed by serious Christians, and rightly so. Even the people who dismiss these snake oil salesmen, however, generally buy into the idea that a relationship with Christ will automatically grant the adherent at least a base level of serenity in the face of hardship.
What few people want to admit is that these stories, while often grace-filled and true, are, at best, a starting point. Lonnie Frisbee was someone through whom God worked but, despite his earlier assertions, the tension with sin in his life wasn’t something that was taken away. He ultimately joined the homosexual scene, contracted AIDS, and died more or less in disgrace. From the outside, it looked like the peace that he once claimed to enjoy was long gone.
What our current description of peace doesn’t bring into account is the fact that adopting a Christian lifestyle often means picking up, rather than laying down, a heavy cross and living in a deeply painful tension for the rest of your life. This certainly looks and feels nothing like the “peace” that so many claim we’ve been promised.
If you’re a committed Christian (in particular a Catholic), you are forbidden from using many mainstream acceptable remedies to some of life’s most difficult crosses. There are things you will suffer from, and suffer deeply, that your non-Christian peers (and even some of your Christian peers from a different tradition) can seemingly solve and move on from with barely a thought. Most importantly, you won’t be able to effortlessly smile serenely while it happens— it’s going to hurt, and you’re going to feel it.
There are people who have found far more “peace” in leaving the Christian faith than they ever had in being a part of it. I personally know people, all of whom started out as believing Christians and Catholics, who have entered into homosexual relationships, adopted the use of contraception, used IVF to bear their children, hired a surrogate to bear their children, have mutilated their bodies, who have had freely chosen abortions, who have abandoned their marriage partner via an affair, or who have just decided to stop going to mass and professing belief.
All of them felt a sense of relief after they did it, and a sense of “peace” and freedom. In some cases, they even became apparently better people who were able to more easily and charitably relate to those around them. There was a real burden and struggle that they weren’t carrying anymore by pursing these actions, and a real relief that comes from laying down a cross.
I think running headlong into this reality, the reality that being a Christian often means living in a seemingly permanent state of painful tension, is a large part of the reason so many people leave (the other is scandal, which is a topic for another post). They’re taught that through faith you’re given “peace”, but they see so many examples of people living a contented, “peaceful” life outside of Church teaching who would be apparently completely miserable were they living inside of it. And they see themselves, or people they love, suffering because of what the Church teaches.
In other words, a gospel based off of pleasure, even the apparently high and noble pleasure of peace with oneself, is one that ultimately doesn’t stand up to the reality of living in the world. We live in a primarily hedonistic society, and on the level of hedonism (again, even the “noble” hedonism of living a peaceful, self-satisfied life) the world has us beat hollow.
I think this is a reality that’s difficult for many Christians to accept. We all want so badly to believe in a simple truth, that we’re the ones who are truly happy, who have life figured out, and that everyone else is secretly miserable. Unfortunately, the truth isn’t nearly that clear cut. We cannot operate on a level expecting personal “peace” as popularly defined and expect our faith to survive.
The peace that Christ offers is not one that’s readily apparent. It’s something far more challenging to accept.
In part 2, I’ll tackle what I believe this “peace” actually is, and why I’ve chosen to stay in the faith.