An Atmosphere of Peace
by Jonathan Brozozog
The God of the Bible has revealed himself as a God of peace. In fact, one of the nine manifestations of the “fruit of the Spirit” is peace (see Galatians 5:22) because peace is an attribute of both the Father and the Holy Spirit. In addition, Jesus came into the world to bring “peace, goodwill toward men” (Luke 2:14, NKJV). The Son of God came to make real peace a possibility for those who know the Lord. But some of the things we allow in our homes, including behaviors designed to be manipulative, can destroy the peace God wants to establish there. Without peace, there can be no realistic hope of maintaining the type of environment for children (or adults) that is conducive to healthy growth in faith and in interpersonal relationships. God is a God of peace, and only in the presence of peace can we live the kind of healthy and productive lives he has designed us to live.
A Life Worth Living
Peace exists in our homes whenever we have order where there once was disorder and structure where there once was chaos. This principle applies to every area of our family’s existence, from the most noticeable areas of human interaction to the most routine and mundane aspects of our family members’ lives.
Take your typical household clutter, for instance. My wife, Joanne, and I have eight kids, so I invite you to try to imagine how our house would look if we chose the path of least resistance and permitted chaos to prevail. I’ve been in houses with just one child where it was virtually impossible to navigate my way through all the toys, dirty clothes and schoolbooks scattered across the floor.
With our own growing family, Joanne and I learned quickly that we wouldn’t be able to survive very long if we didn’t find some way to teach our children how to be disciplined and orderly with their time and their stuff. The two of us have worked hard over the years to make sure our children understand the importance of an orderly home and their individual responsibilities in maintaining that order.
Now, with ten people living under the same roof and ages ranging from months old to decades old, there is bound to be a certain amount of commotion. After all, our kids are still growing. They’re not finished yet, and neither are we. Besides, there are times when Joanne and I actually welcome a certain amount of chaos and unpredictability in our lives (like at birthday parties). But we have been able, with God’s help, to build an amazing level of order and predictability into our home environment in spite of the number of people who live there. We require that our children prioritize their time and clean up their rooms, as well as helping to clean the rest of the house every night before they go to bed. We want our children to learn the value of order, and we want them to enjoy the long-term benefits of growing up in a house where order almost always prevails over chaos.
The dinner table is a great example. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue in most homes if two adults and eight children tried to share a meal together every night? It would be disastrous. That’s why we have created set times, instituted seating arrangements and established firm protocols for participating in our family meals. We refuse to let chaos govern our home or our lives.
More than just the absence of warfare, when the average person today is asked to describe “a peaceful home,” that person will often migrate toward the idea of a noise-free or activity-free environment. To a person who hasn’t really thought about it, a peaceful home is a home that is quiet, a place where you can hear a pin drop or listen to the ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer. It’s an environment where there is little or no activity and absolutely no noise. In a peaceful home, you should be able to hear your own heartbeat, right?
Not necessarily! Genuine peace—the kind of peace that is described in the Bible—has little to do with noise or activity. It has everything to do with order and healthy structures. A home can be quiet and still be chaotic and unhealthy, but a home that is genuinely peaceful will often be filled with music, singing, laughter and lots of fun and busyness.
In our home, we don’t sit still a lot. We enjoy more than our fair share of activity and interaction, and we plan lots of fun events as a family—both at home and away from home. We interact a lot with other people, especially people from our church, which helps our children understand the importance of healthy relationships and appropriate human interaction.
So please don’t think that in order to have peace in your home, you need to have silence or stillness. Peace is achieved through the repair of those aspects of your family life where chaos or the lack of order or structure has given birth to confusion. Spontaneity and the enthusiastic engagement of life are not chaos; these are the things that make life worth living. But when there are no boundaries regarding what is right and wrong in your home—no unifying elements to all the activities taking place there—division will prevail.
As parents, we must start laying the groundwork for a peaceful environment in our homes by teaching each member of our family that he (or she) is not the center of the universe. All members must know how to properly resolve conflict—especially their conflicts with one another. Conflict is not sinful. It is the natural consequence of placing two living organisms in a confined space. Place two birds next to each other in the same cage, and they will gradually establish boundaries that will define their relationship. It’s called a “pecking order,” and many species do it. We humans do it too, but in more sophisticated ways. As long as those ways align with God’s Word, this process can actually be healthy.
Disagreements at Home and Away
One of my favorite phrases in the Bible speaks directly to this subject of conflict resolution between believers. Shortly after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was driving the church into communities beyond Jerusalem and into nations beyond Israel, some of the most important church leaders of that era decided to gather in Jerusalem for an urgent church conference. They were there to discuss a new phenomenon that was sweeping through and threatening to divide the church: the influx of Gentile believers into the family of God.
Some of the church leaders at that pivotal gathering thought that Gentiles should be excluded because they were not Jewish. Others thought that Gentiles should be accepted—but only after they had become Jewish proselytes through circumcision. And a few, like Paul and Barnabas, argued in favor of a totally new concept. They argued for salvation by grace through faith apart from the Law—that Gentiles should be accepted into the church without any precondition (such as adherence to the Law of Moses). They argued that faith alone saves a person, not devotion to a religious code or participation in a religious ceremony (like circumcision). In Acts 15, we read about this meeting that was convened to settle a potentially divisive issue in the first-century church.
Because believers in 21st-century America are separated from first-century Jewish men by both time and culture, we cannot fully appreciate how revolutionary the concept of salvation by faith must have been to most of the church’s earliest leaders. This new approach to righteousness was absolutely blasphemous to many who attended that meeting.
Yet regardless of the fact that these men held different opinions about Gentiles coming into the church, they knew that they needed to be unified on this issue. They were few in number, surrounded by many powerful forces that wanted to imprison them, kill them and put an end to the message they were proclaiming. They certainly could not survive if they were divided by internal strife, so they gathered in Jerusalem to resolve this matter through frank discussion about the competing beliefs that were keeping them apart. Eventually, due to the wise and anointed leadership of men like Peter, James and Paul, they were able to settle this dispute.
But as we read about this conference and the things that transpired there, we eventually come upon a very short and somewhat-obscure phrase that is extremely important to the subject. Before Peter stood to address the crowd, before Paul and Barnabas explained how the Holy Spirit had come upon the Gentiles during their missionary journeys abroad and before James spoke up to offer a solution to this imbroglio, there was “much disputing” among these men. That’s right! These were some of the most powerful, most anointed and most committed followers of Jesus the world has ever known. All of them would end up devoting their lives to Christian service, and many of them would suffer tremendously for their faith, some dying a martyr’s death. Yet in spite of their fervent devotion to the Lord, they still had their differences—and their differences were not small. There was “much disputing” (Acts 15:7, KJV) among them.
In fact, just prior to this conference, in the church at Antioch—the most diverse and one of the most influential churches of the first century—we see that there was “no small dissension” (Acts 15:2, KJV) among the leaders when it came to this controversy. In other words, the divisions in Antioch were just as deep as they were elsewhere in the first-century church. Passions boiled over, and arguments were heated. This was not a gentlemen’s disagreement. Rather, it was an intense disagreement that had the capacity to split the church wide open because there was “no small dissension” among the leaders of all these congregations.
Stop and think about that for a moment! Most people would read right through those words without really considering them, but Luke wanted us to know that there was a really big argument going on within the first-century church over the issue of Gentile inclusion. This argument had the potential to destroy the church from within. It was loud in that conference room on the day this meeting was held in Jerusalem. Men may have been yelling, stomping their feet or waving their fists in the air. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But I do know that the level of disagreement wasn’t “small,” because the Bible says so. It was really, really big.
Keep this in mind the next time you are troubled by a disagreement in your church or your home. God never told us to fear disagreement. Disagreement can be a God-thing if it is handled appropriately—it can create the kind of healthy tension that keeps people on both sides of the argument balanced. We can learn to accept diversity when it comes to people’s gifts, callings, personalities, perspectives and all the other aspects of life where God has intentionally designed people to be different. We need only to reject diversity when it is used as an excuse for behaving in ways that God has forbidden in the Bible.
To keep peace, we must also learn how to have “no small dissension” (passionate disagreement) with our brothers and sisters in Christ without forgetting the common faith, heritage and destiny that bind us together. We can think like the leaders in Jerusalem while they were in the throes of fervent argumentation over an extremely divisive issue. Our unity is more important than any opinion, and resolution is possible if we allow the principles of sanity and reason to prevail.
Strive to Make Peace
With this powerful illustration from Acts serving as our guide for resolving conflicts, it is easier to understand why manipulation for the purpose of control—in one’s home or church—is such a serious sin. Manipulation brings chaos—the exact opposite of peace. If we want peace in our homes, we can’t allow our children to be outwardly moody in a manipulative way or to pout in ways that are designed to enable them to get their way. We can’t allow them to slam doors, give us or their siblings “the silent treatment” or “fake cry” (the type of manufactured crying where they are peeking to see if anyone is going to cave under the pressure of their manipulative tactics).
If they get their way by doing any of these things—if manipulative behavior like this is rewarded—it only instills in our children the idea that this method of control can work for them in all their relationships. They might attempt to control the behavior of others by resorting to these methods more frequently, and the peace that ought to prevail in the home will be lost. This is witchcraft, pure and simple. Our kids might as well be sticking pins in a doll.
The environment of the home is critical if we seek to raise children who are mentally, physically and spiritually prepared to engage life as adults. If the home isn’t conducive to the healthy development of children, parents will be at a disadvantage when it comes to their efforts to raise kids with strong moral character and the quality of self-discipline (one of the nine manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit). Peace is one of the essential elements of family life that we must seek and defend if we hope to succeed as parents.
Unfortunately, peace is neither the natural state of lost humanity nor is it present in the human condition by default. Peace is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s presence in a person’s life (see Galatians 5:22). It is on display where the Spirit of God abides, and it must be planted and nurtured over time before it can fully provide its benefits and its nourishment. This is why Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9, NIV). He did not say, “Blessed are the peacekeepers.”
Peacekeepers can only maintain a peace that already exists, which is usually deficient. Peacemakers are especially blessed by the Lord because they are willing to do the hard work needed to plant, tend, and nourish the seeds of peace where no peace presently exists. That is why James wrote, “A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (James 3:18). Peace must be made. It must be forged through sacrifice, resolve and inevitable warfare with the natural, sinful tendency of human beings who are inclined to migrate toward chaos and disorder in their lives.
As ironic as it may seem, peace can only be achieved through warfare. Aggressive nations are hindered or subdued by peace-loving nations. Peace within families can only be realized when the head of that household takes a stance and fights for it, regardless of the pushback he or she might receive. This is why the writer of Hebrews said, “Strive for peace” (Hebrews 12:14). Peace comes at the cost of effort and struggle.
So pray for peace, work for peace, and “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” (Colossians 3:15, NIV) and in your home.
