Can peace be achieved?

Do you wish for world peace? Do pray for it? Do you hope that an iron-fisted dystopian government will rise out of the ashes of our current society to impose draconian laws that enforce peace at any cost?

I’m guessing that last one is not high on your wish list, but it is the general set up for many dystopian novels. Whether by force of arms, information control, or sequestered societies, dystopian governments maintain peace – but often at the cost of human life and freedom. Yet, they are willing to go to this extent if it means that world peace can be achieved.

This consistent theme speaks to a notion that is in the heart of every man, woman, and child, that in our innermost we are very uncomfortable with conflict. We might recognize the need for conflict at times as a means of resolving issues, but we still hate it. Few are the people who actually enjoy conflict, and often they receive the label of “antisocial” or “sociopath.” Fair labels or not, they highlight the simple truth: we desire peace with our fellow man.

The deeper desire than peace with our fellow man that lurks in every human heart is the desire for ultimate peace, lasting peace that goes beyond just myself and those I come in contact with, but extends to all and through all and ultimately to that being that so many refuse to acknowledge.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Divergent tracks with many other dystopian novels: Humanity seeks peace and tries to achieve it with a, shall we say, unique approach. The difference between Divergent and many other dystopias is that their structure is much more benign than others. No oppressive government holding people under its thumb. No autocratic rulers with over-aggressive peace-keeping shock troops. Just a social structure with factions that hold to specific ideals intended to establish and maintain peace.

Well, and a fence around the city clearly designed to keep people in. But in the interests of keeping this mostly spoiler free, we’ll stick to what you can only know from the first book

The goal of the society in Divergent is to achieve peace – true and lasting world peace. Not just peace one person to another, but an end to war and violence everywhere. Their hope is in their faction system, and the delicate balance they have achieved between the five factions.

The dream of world peace is short-lived in the world of Divergent, though. There were, from the start, tensions between the factions due to their differing ideologies, but they had managed to strike a balance that kept their society working. Each faction needed all the others to survive.

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Visions of world peace shattered in an evening of bloodshed.

This might be a surprising turn of events in the story if it were not so familiar to the human experience. While we greatly desire world peace, we are terrible at achieving it. In all of recorded history – just over 3,400 years, excepting what we have in Scripture – our world has known a mere 268 years of world peace, of course not consecutively. But I don’t need to look at history to know how hard peace is. I need look no further than my own life.

True confession – there is a person in my community I may never get along with. He was my neighbor, and we had an issue with each other at one point. I didn’t appreciate how he handled something, and we had words. Since then we have been barely cordial. He moved to a different part of town, but I still see him now and again. I often think, when I do, that I want to somehow make peace. But then, that was my goal the last time we spoke, and it did not end with peace as I had hoped.

This is the unfortunate nature of our relationships with other human beings. Things that put us at odds with each other can become such insurmountable obstacles, and often the foundation of these obstacles is our own pride and stubbornness. Being right, having our way, and vindicating ourselves is far more important to us all than we care to admit. We may want peace, but not only do we not know how to achieve it, we’re not willing to give up that which stands in the way of it. We are too devoted to our own selfishness and too ignorant of our own flaws.

The Erudite of Divergent wanted peace, but they wanted it on their terms. They wanted control of the society, and that meant controlling the faction that posed the greatest threat to their control. The Dauntless, bold and courageous to a fault, were certainly not about to surrender to the Erudite. And forget talking terms of peace – the philosophies undergirding their very way of life would never allow it. Control. Opposition. Ideology. Once again, all too familiar.

The secret to true and lasting peace cannot be found in us. The only hope we have for experiencing true peace is to first bring our brokenness into the light of the one who already sees us for all that we are. The amazing thing is that, knowing our nature, despite our nature, he seeks peace with us. But unlike our feeble attempt at peace, he doesn’t seek it with vapid philosophy and plaintive appeals to a “human goodness” that doesn’t exist.

Instead, he gave up everything to give us everything. He hung onto nothing, not even his divine glory and majesty – for who else could I be talking about than the Son of God himself? – but gave it all up to come down to us, to take all our selfishness, stubbornness, and inclination to war on himself, and to pay the price God sets on such sin – death, here and hereafter. He did this to satisfy his Father, to give us peace with God. “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” – 1 Corinthians 5:19.

And if we have peace with God, we have true and lasting peace. Whatever conflict we might still experience in life, we can rest secure in the peace we have with God, knowing that there will come a time when we will know peace for eternity. Not a vague and ephemeral dream that politicians and cultural engineers have to struggle and fail to find, but a sure promise from the all powerful maker of all things.

So while the characters of Divergent still search for peace, like us, they will never find it without Jesus. Any who seek peace need look only to him. The beauty of it all, though, is that Jesus is not hard to find. In fact, as the Bible says, “he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:27).