War and Peace and God

On 15 August 1945, following the dropping of two atomic bombs, the Japanese government announced its surrender to the Allied forces. The formal surrender was signed on 2nd September. Months earlier, Germany had signed its own unconditional surrender. Going back 27 years before, we often think of the end of the First World War as being on the 11 November 1918 but this was an armistice. Technically that war ended in June 1919, with the Treaty of Versailles, when the Allies dictated the terms. If Germany had not accepted these terms, there would likely have been a resumption of hostilities. Happily, with these surrenders came peace.

Now to another sort of peace. On TV dramas we sometimes come across a character that has faced the fact that they are terminally ill and say something like, ‘I’m ready; I’ve made my peace with God.’ I guess this must happen in real life too.

Just as Germany and Japan were in no position to dictate terms by which they could be at peace with the Allies, so it must be remembered that when we want peace with God it has to be on his terms and not ours. To speak of ourselves making peace with God does rather imply that we lay down our terms and expect that he will be glad to accept them and have us as his friends. We need to guard against such delusions.

The first Christian teachers sought to show how each one of us, by nature, are enemies of God. We don’t like the idea of doing the things that God requires if they don’t coincide with our own desires. To be candid, we are in rebellion.

Our war with God is one we’ll never win and, if we will surrender, we will actually find him to be a magnanimous, divine Heavenly Father, not a harsh overlord. So what are God’s peace terms?

Some Jews once asked Jesus, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’ On another occasion a non-Jew in desperate straits said, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Jesus’ disciples told him, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…’. We also are told to lay down our weapons, believe and trust in Jesus and then we will know peace with God.  

Hopeless funerals

Do we each have souls, i.e. the real you which, since conception, will exist independently of a pumping heart and a functioning brain? Put another way, when we are buried 6 feet under the earth or incinerated at the local crematorium, is that the end?

I’ve attended a couple of humanist funerals where there is no singing of hymns, nor prayers said. The celebrant, who acts as compere, won’t mention God. For me, such funerals are soulless and quite literally hope-less.

And yet… when friends and family bravely step forward at a humanist funeral to share their carefully prepared tribute we may hear things like, ‘I bet Grandad’s looking down now and having a right chuckle with us as we share these memories’ or ‘Mum, I know that you’ll still be watching over us’. Do such expressed sentiments, spoken at a time of sadness, indicate an ingrained sense that we have souls?

Henry Scott Holland’s poem, ‘All Is Well’, is sometimes read at funerals. It includes these lines: ‘All is well, Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped into the next room... there is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner.’

By what authority is this writer speaking? The words may meet an emotional need of the moment but do they speak truth? Do all the souls of the deceased exist in rest and peace and are they indeed awaiting us just over the way?

There are many voices which want to speak ‘peace, peace where there is no peace’. God calls such people false prophets. If there is more after we die, we need to be reckoning with it now. Is there an authoritative word someone can give us and if so, who is it?

It is Jesus, who is the embodiment of truth. Following his death, God raised him from the dead and so validated Jesus’ own identity and also his words of teaching and instruction. This means we’d do well to weigh up his words on matters like life and death, heaven and hell, peace and anguish, forgiveness and just punishment.

In summary, Jesus tells us to trust that he alone can forgive us when we turn to him; he is the way to a life with God for ever.

The Naked Truth

When I was a teenager, I developed an interest in the Second World War. I had a book about the Nazis in which there were some black and white photos. One of these has always stuck in my mind. It showed a number of naked women, of various ages and sizes, moving between huts with uniformed German soldiers looking on. Although some seemed uninterested, others appeared to be disdainful, sneering and perhaps uttering lewd comments. How humiliated and vulnerable those women must have felt.

The first man and woman were created naked. They had no sense of shame or humiliation; they were innocent. After they had rebelled against the word God had spoken to them, they realised that they were indeed naked. Their primary concern was not to be seen in this state by God and they hid from him whilst at the same time attempting to put in place a cover-up (the proverbial fig leaves).

This account comes to us in the Old Testament part of the Bible. So is it relevant to us today? The New Testament says emphatically ‘Yes’. We are told, ‘No creature is hidden from God's sight. All are naked and exposed before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.’ Our thoughts, words and actions are all seen and known by God and we will each need to explain ourselves; any attempt at cover-up will be seen for what it is.

Can you feel the weight of this? Jesus presses the matter home saying, ‘You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.’ He is speaking spiritually as the doctor of our souls. Happily, with his diagnosis comes a cure.

On Good Friday, Jesus was tortured, stripped naked and humiliated. In that state he was crucified; there was no cover-up - not even a loincloth. He took on our shame, our nakedness, suffering on behalf of people like you and me.

When our souls are exposed before God and the bare truth revealed, we’ll need to give an account. The Christian can point to Jesus who took our nakedness and clothed us in his own goodness. We do not need to find fig leaves but to trust that Jesus has paid the price to put us right with God.