World Wide Peace In A World Of Problems

I read an article in December 08 that asked several spiritual leaders from a diverse set of backgrounds, if they had any new year resolutions.  The common thread in their responses was their intention to realize a state of inner peace and radiate that peace into the world to help achieve world wide peace.  This got me thinking whether world wide peace is really a possibility or simply a dream we cannot achieve.  We make progress every year and the “Interfaith Community Church” in Seattle is an example of taking a big step toward realizing peace in the religious spectrum in the world.  At the same time, old problems trundle along, sometimes subsiding in one area, only to pop up in another.  The middle east is a prime example of a problem that doesn’t show any signs of being resolved despite its extremely long lived history.  Along with the old problems, we continually have new issues come up as our world continues to evolve.  I have come to the not so startling conclusion that we are going to have problems and disputes into the far, far, far, foreseeable future.  The question then becomes, can world wide peace exist amidst this field of problems?  For the purpose of this essay I will take the issue of war off the table, if there is war, then clearly we can not have achieved peace. This still leaves an amazing plateau of human disputes however, and leads to the puzzle of how we can achieve peace while all this remains.

I propose that a big part of the solution lies in the pre-problem area of self identification.  The questions : Who am I? or Who are We? embodies the heart of the solution.  If we can realize a common identity, we can mediate our differences form a position of unity.  Currently, we are a disjointed patchwork quilt of identity with a large number of separated entities.  This commonly shared identity must withstand religious differences as well as crossing the line into the secular world to unite both into a whole.  There are many people who have no belief in God, don’t know, or don’t care if God exists at all. Every one must be included in this common identity if it is to work.

The answer is so obvious that we overlook it, or see it for a minute and then get distracted over and over again.  We are all human beings.  If you ask anyone who has even the most tenuous grasp of reality if they are a human being, they will say yes.  The phrase, “One People/One Planet”, aptly describes this concept.  I’m sure this is not headline news to you, but if it is so obvious, what stops us from achieving it?

The biggest generator of our illusory veils of separation is the misidentification of a characteristic or viewpoint for the person it describes.  It is born out of the way we use language to communicate our affiliation with a characteristic or viewpoint.  A political example would be, “I am a Republican.” A religious example would be, “I am a Christian”.  A nationalistic example would be,”I am an American”.  Using the phrase,”I am a blank”, leads to a conscious as well an unconscious confusion about our identity.  We are very creative and prolific in filling in that blank with words and ideas of all kinds.  When I say,”I am an American”, I don’t mean “I am a nationality.”  If we were to be clear, we would say: I am a human being that happens to have been born in the country known as America, and therefore my nationality is stated to be American.  Or we would say: I am a human being that finds the tenets of the Christian faith appealing and I walk the religious path of Christianity.  We can’t go around always prefacing our statements with,”I am a human being first…”, however, as people will look at us funny.  We can however, realize this common identity in our consciousness and take it with us, wherever we go and whatever we are doing.  This realization creates a living unity of identity that can grow and spread over the world.  There are no short cuts.  It must take root in the individual and pass among us with the allure of a smile from an innocent child.  I will use my own personal faith, as as example of how this concept works in both the religious and secular worlds.http://www.rationalfaith.net/

I chose the phrase,”Rational Faith”, partly in response to many conversations I have had with people at the “Socrates Cafe”.  It is an open to the public forum that discusses philosophical issues both big and small. Over the course of these discussions, I have had many intelligent and articulate people tell me they have no inner experience of the presence of the Divine.  They consider themselves to be atheist or agnostic with regard to the existence of God.  They quite often have either a conscious or unconscious assumption that belief in God is the result of taking a blind leap of faith.  The reasons for taking this leap are usually described in rather unflattering terms.  Examples would be, a believer is someone that is afraid of death and is looking for comfort, or a believer is someone that wants to be told what is right or wrong rather than making the necessary effort to determine such things for themselves, etc. When I explain that I have had and continue to have an ongoing experience of the presence of the Divine and as a result of this experience believe in God, the reasoning process becomes rational.  In fact, if I were to ignore this experience and deny the existence of God, it would be an irrational act.  This assertion is usually an attention grabber and is followed by a question or two. I am quite often asked what this experience is.  I describe it as “everything is connected to everything with an energy that is conscious, loving, as well as being personal and impersonal at the same time.”  They may not believe such an energy exists or has the qualities that I describe, but they can accept that I do have a genuine experience that I interpret, and that this interpretation leads to my belief and resulting faith.  One other question that sometimes pops up is : Why, if there is one God, is there such a variety of reactions and experiences as well as so many conflicting religious faiths and beliefs?  My response is that this is the nature of human experience.  If we take any issue or concept, such as justice, being a good parent, or love, and take a survey of humanities beliefs about them, we will find the responses to be all over the map.  The variety of answers does not, in and of themselves, either prove or disprove that justice, being a good parent, or love exists.

I acknowledge that their experience is as valid for them as mine is for me.  I do not argue over existence of God, as this is an exercise in futility.  Instead, I embrace our commonality of humanness, and that the scale of belief in God, ranging from atheist, to complete faith, is simply one of many  descriptive scales we can use to explore our personality and character as a unique human being.  This allows us to see each other as our sister or brother regardless of our belief in God.

As I share my experience with other religious people, we can acknowledge our differences while still realizing unity in our shared humanity.  An additional step is available to us in realizing we are all children of the Creator.  Our religious differences are simply part of the endless variety that God bestows on every child in His/Her unfolding.  Our differences may clash and be difficult to mediate but starting from Unity makes the process much easier to obtain harmony.  Even if we are unable to harmonize our disputes, and this holds true regardless of secular or religious disposition, we can walk away peaceably in the consciousness of, “We are all human beings, belonging to one family.”