Unlocking Peace: Beyond Violence and Conflict

Music. Well, hey, everybody, and welcome back to another week, episode 11 of the Life on 11 podcast.

Today, Jeremy and I continue our conversation from last week about peace and talk about how peace extends past just violence and weapons and things like that. So without further ado, let's take it to a look.

What's going on, Jeremy? How are you this fine evening? I'm doing fabulous. A little soggy outside. A little soggy outside. It's been very soggy the past two days, but, you know. We'll take it, though. We'll take it. It does make for some enjoyable evenings of just chilling on the couch and watching a little basketball. A little tube. NBA playoffs, full swing. Full swing. Full swing.

You know, I love NBA playoff times. I've enjoyed it, too. I haven't watched a lot of NBA playoffs in the past, but I've enjoyed this year. Yeah, it's good. Somebody, somebody, Tyrese Halliburton took some people's comments personally, dog. Oh, no doubt. They called him the most overrated player in the NBA just a few months ago. And he's like, you know what? He's been balling out. Take this. 35, 12, and 15 last night. No turnovers. That's pretty good.

First player ever in the NBA playoffs to have that stat line. All right. All right. Hold on. Time out. Are they taking every person's stat line and looking at it and seeing if it's ever been done before? I think what it was is, I think, don't quote me on this, I think it was first triple-double with no turnovers. Oh. That's what I interpret that to mean. Okay. You know, I mean, because you could be like, hey, this is the first guy ever to score one point and have one block.

Yes. You know what I'm saying? From what I, I did not dive deep from what I saw reading through. Okay. Well, that is your mission before the next podcast. Okay. To get me all of that information. Okay. You got it. Okay. You got it. And, of course, you got Oklahoma City. My kids are all about the SGA, so they're happy as larks. So, yeah. But other than NBA playoffs, how in the world has your week been? Oh, man, it's been good. It was a very busy Memorial Day weekend.

Had a lot of stuff going on. Yeah. Yep. Friday night, I had a little cookout, and then went and saw some soccer, and then Saturday morning, barbecued the best chicken in the Shenandoah Valley. Without a question. No doubt about it. If you didn't get any, that's your loss, because it's amazing. Mountain barbecue chicken. You need to get up on that. Absolutely the best. Then I took a three-hour nap. A three-hour nap. Yeah, exactly. Okay. And I don't remember what I did Saturday evening.

Well, because you were still recovering from your three-hour nap. I did something.

I don't remember what it was. sunday church and then good lunch with friends and then had a little date night on sunday night which was pretty fun and then a cookout again on monday so yeah i was good busy you ate busy you ate like a king i definitely ate like a king yes but i mean that's no different than any other time let's talk about this date night yeah it was a double date night it was you and your missus yep me and mine yep we experienced for jess and i the first time of an of an

escape room Oh, yeah. You and Tara done it before. Well, the funny thing is we hadn't done it together before. Okay. That was the first time we had done one together. Okay. We'd each done them separately with other people. And we went to the one in Harrisonburg. Escapism. Escapism. We did Shot Caller. Shot Caller. Which is supposed to be a 60-minute escape room. Got to break out of prison. Yeah. I mean, only the third time. So, you know, pretty much a pro at this point.

We didn't look like pros. Well, we got out. We did get out. Made the record show. We escaped. We did escape. We did escape. And as I recall, the gentleman said that not only were we one of the first, so it was two rooms. You had to get out of the cell and then you had to get out of the guard. Guards office or whatever. He said that we were not just one of the fastest that day, but one of the fastest teams through the cell that he had ever seen.

We were blazing. We were blazing. We definitely got held up when we got into the guard's office. Yeah. Definitely. Clues got harder. Clues got harder. And one of the clues got pretty dumb. Yeah, that was a dumb clue. The last clue was pretty stupid. In Jesus' name. I mean, that was all the love in the world. It was a great experience. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I want to do it again. I absolutely want to do it again. So shout out to Escapism and Harrisonburg.

Go check them out. If you're local to the area, go check them out. If you have never done an escape room before, I'm going to say that's a great date night opportunity. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Probably a double date. I don't know. It'd be better, yeah. If you do it just with your spouse, marital counseling might need to happen afterwards. Yeah, that could be. Yeah, but it's good. It's good, yeah. And, yeah, like you said, great service on Sunday.

You know, it was just a great day. Yep. It was a great day. Yep.

We want to continue our conversation from last week. So if you have not listened to last week's episode. Go ahead and press pause. Go listen to that first. And then come back. Right? Come back. And you're back. Okay. Okay. We sat down and talked with Scott Harris from Greenmount CBC. And Scott told us his story about peacemaking.

And we specifically, I mean, we should say, Like we specifically asked Scott to come on the podcast, talk about peace because of his story of his journey to peace, which I really, I really appreciated everything Scott had to say. There were quite a few things that he said that, quite honestly, I had never really thought that hard about. So it was really, really good. Good to hear him what he had to say. I enjoyed it a lot. And I've known Scott for a few years now, and I heard pieces.

I hadn't heard the story about the EMU thing with the roommate. I'd heard pieces of his story, but I'd never heard it all in one sitting. And so that was really good for me to hear that and really have an appreciation for his journey and where he's come out at. But we want to continue that conversation tonight because I feel like we only scratched the surface, really, of what peace can mean.

He would probably agree with that. Absolutely. And we've already said to Scott, we would love to have him back on again to talk. But all that to be said, we want to talk about some aspects of peace that are beyond violence and weapons and firearms and all of their like. That to me is the hot button ways that we talk about peace. Yeah, I mean, that's the way most everybody, you know, like he said, all the Miss Americas talk about world peace.

We want world peace. Well, they mean just no violence is what they mean. Right. And God's peace is about more than the absence of violence. So what, what for you, Jeremy, do you think like as somebody who, who thinks about peace with Christ, like, have you thought about other aspects of peace and what they mean to you? Yeah. So for me, when I think about peace, the first thing that comes to my mind is just like a, a piece within your soul with what is happening in your life. Okay. So to speak.

And the best way I can describe this is for those who don't know, our son Riley was born with a heart defect. You know, our first child really don't know what to expect becoming parents for the first time and then get this curve ball thrown at us. You know, everybody, everybody is like, Oh, this has to be like terrifying the worst experience of your life, this and that. But Tara and I really had just a sense of peace.

And it's only through God that we had that peace, just knowing that he had everything under control. So just the peace within our souls, within our hearts, that whatever happened, it was going to be okay. Unfortunately, he's 14 years old. He's doing great. He is one of the coolest human beings. Riley is one of my favorite human beings on the planet. I love Riley.

If you haven't met Riley you won't forget him I've got a ton of good Riley stories oh yeah there's a great one from just the other day where he crashed his tricycle well not really tricycle like trike thing. Didn't even cry. Got himself all tore up. I would have been. I mean, tore up. Yeah. I'd have been laying in the driveway like a shriveled mess. You'd probably still be laying there crying. Probably so. Yeah. Yeah. But no, seriously.

So for me, when I think about peace, that's completely different than the violence type of peace. But just being at peace with what's happening in life, knowing that whichever direction it goes, God is in control and it's going to be okay. Absolutely. Absolutely.

You know, when I think about peace, the term, and I have to say, part of this is the influence of the last 20 years of being brethren, brethren my whole life, but especially like we talked about, like that wasn't a big part of my upbringing. And then, especially when I went to seminary, so I went to Bethany Seminary, where peace is a big part of their program. That's a big part. And I would say my understanding of peace was probably different than a lot of my fellow seminarians.

So there was a lot of challenging conversations for me there. But the two words that I took away from my seminary experience, having to talk about peace a lot, was human flourishing. And that for me is the, for me, the foundational thought about peace, that peace is God's best for all of God's creation all the time. And so when somebody asked me, like, what does peace mean to you?

Realistically, violence is just a very small piece of what that is, because if you were to ask me, I think most of us can live the rest of our lives and not really have to worry about violence in our personal lives that much. I would agree here in the United States, especially. I mean, and where we live. I mean, right. I mean, most of the scenarios that we're like, you know, someone is going to, you know, that you have to take physical.

Yeah. We're not talking about somebody yelling at you at the stoplight. We're talking about like legit. Right. Like violence. Right. Physical altercation. I could probably go the rest of my life and never have to discharge a firearm at someone. I hopefully can go the rest of my life and never get in a fist fight.

So that to me is a very small part of what it actually means to live peace, because I think most of us, especially in our context, can live that kind of peace pretty realistically, in my opinion. So for me, peace becomes more about how do we advocate and bring God's best to all of creation all the time? And that begins to expand the conversation way, way past. Oh, yeah, way beyond violence, for sure. And I will say, like... So human flourishing sounds like a super progressive term.

It does, but it's not. Like I would say, because I've said that before and other people are like, you know, but when you think about it, it's not, it's a super gospel, right? Because Jesus brought peace with God through his sacrifice on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. He brought peace with God through his preaching and trying to get folks to live lives that were holy and more in line with God's will.

He brought God's peace by doing healings and miracles and raising people from the dead and healing the blind. His whole message was human flourishing at some level. Everything Jesus ever commanded comes out for everyone involved to be better.

There's not a situation where jesus taught anything that made a human being less it always made a human being more does that make sense no yeah that absolutely makes sense yeah it's so go ahead no i was just going to say so how i'm going to go ahead and bring this up as like as a pastor how do you you know because a lot of times you're you're you're getting involved in someone's life in a difficult time more often than not.

So how do you, as a pastor, help them find what's the best for them, God's best for them? How do you help them find that, especially in difficult times? A lot of it is the scriptural discernment of pressing into what scripture says about us. But then also, a lot of times, my ministry, I don't know how other pastors are because I've never been another pastor.

Wait a second. There's a lot of times that I find myself getting involved with just some practical decisions, like just trying to help folks make practical decisions for God's best for them and their family. And really trying to recast how that decision either brings blessing to them and the people around them or not. So a conversation I was having with someone last week as they were trying to decide God's will for them and possibly relocating their home and possibly moving.

And so, I mean, it was like, how do you see God's best for you in this situation? All the way down to like, you know, the money, like, are you putting yourself in a financial stronghold to where you're not going to be able to, you're going to be stressed about money with the home you're looking to buy? Like, have you thought about that? Have you thought about, you know, the, the, the place you're going to purchase?

Like, have you thought about how it would impact your time with your family and all those things? And so it was more just about like, is this house better than the house they lived? Absolutely. It was better than the house they lived in. But at the end of the conversation, like, man, like, I feel like I would take on a lot of extra stress in my life purchasing this particular property. And I don't know that I want to take that on for me and my family.

And I'm like, hey, I'm not telling you not to buy the house. I'm just asking those questions to really think about, like, is this God's best for you? Because just because it has two more bedrooms and five more acres doesn't necessarily mean it's God's best for you. True. Okay.

If that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, no, that does make sense. You know, and I think practically one of the things I shared with you earlier was for Jess and I becoming foster parents is peacemaking for us. Okay. Because we are given the opportunity for these children who are living really in the depths of hell. I mean, they are living the worst situations that a human being can live with. And we are able to bring them to our home and provide for them a safe home,

a loving home. We are able to bring, you know, them a sense of security. And then like we do rehabilitative foster care. So we are trying to give those kids the tools to flourish here so that if and when they go back home or they go to another family, they have tools to live the best lives that they can. So for us, we don't just approach foster care to say, you're just going to live

with us forever. We approach foster care to say, how do we help you live a better life and give you tools and training? So for us, human flourishing looks like that. It's taking a kid who's in a really busted up situation, bringing them to our home and helping them live out God's best in our home so they can take it somewhere else. That's peacemaking to me. Yeah. So that brings me to another question.

In all these situations where we're trying to help others discern God's best for them, help them find peace, how do you work with someone who is clearly not making the decisions that are best for them and clearly seeing them fight against everything that could be bringing them peace? How do you, because I mean, that's got to be hard to watch. Oh, it is. It's extremely hard to watch, I think, for any of us.

And I think we're all faced with that, right? Like, if you're a parent, you see your child make decisions that are definitely not the best for them. You know, if you are, you know, just any place in our lives, I think we do. And like I've always said, my job is to preach and teach and to bring God's best to whatever situation I can. And if that person doesn't decide to follow that, that doesn't release me from my responsibility to bring God's peace into the situation.

So just if they don't decide, like, let's say that this, I had this conversation with this person, like, nope, I'm absolutely going to buy this home and this is what I want. And even if my opinion is like, dude, that's a bad decision. Like, I don't get left off the hook because they didn't choose it.

Right it's still for me to continue to bring god's best into the situation and continue to to push them towards whatever god wants for them in the meantime right and we sure we've seen that in foster care like we're living that right now with one of one of our very close one of our one of our kids you know that he's making decisions that are outside of god's will and you know firsthand you and i've had some off-the-book conversations it is

so frustrating like i feel like i'm beating my head against the wall but then i see him and i'm like i still have to ask I still have to bring God's best in this situation, even though I know you're not going to listen to it. And I know that you're getting frustrated at me and I'm getting frustrated telling you, but I still have this burden to say like, this is God's best for you. You can still change this, right? You can still find something better.

And I think, you know, for us as Christians, like it's all of it, like digging wells in Haiti, it's peacemaking, right? They don't have clean drinking water. And if we have the necessity or we have the means to make that happen. Absolutely. Peacemaking is saying, hey, like, let's go drill a well in Haiti because we're bringing some of God's character and God's best to a community because we have the means to do it. Can you think of like areas in your life you're thinking about?

Um, I'm just trying to think of how different our lives could be if really, to go back to a little bit of your sermon from Sunday, if just one person is helping others to find peace and they go help five more people. And just how much everybody's life gets better because they're seeking God's peace, what's best for them. And that just completely changes our world. We all think that, oh, I'm just one person. I can't make a difference.

Really, we can just by sharing God's love and helping guide others to God's peace through what's best for them. Absolutely.

Absolutely well and so i know this might be the most controversial thing i've said on hey if we're 11 episodes in this is the most controversial thing i've said we're doing okay we're doing okay go ahead and let it out, If Christians did what Christians were called to do in the area of peacemaking, then we would have no need for the social service sector of the government. Yeah, I can agree 100% with that. Right. And so. I mean, it's literally been that way. I mean, since the beginning. Right.

Yeah. Right. What was, you know, when all the USA, USA and all that stuff was getting shut down earlier this year? I'm not sure. When Elon was doing his thing. Yeah. Oh, when they were shutting down all the things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Doge. Doge, yeah. Yeah, whatever it was. When all that was going down and they were cutting off humanitarian aid and stuff like that, I remember saying to people, hey, here's an idea.

If the church steps up and does what the church is supposed to do, then we wouldn't need that stuff. Exactly. Right? If we were agents of God's shalom. Yep. Agents of peace, like we talked about last week. Yep. If we were doing what we wanted to do, what we're called to do, then there would be no need.

And like, I remember specifically having a conversation with some friends that they were, they had some friends that were doing a humanitarian effort and they were afraid that they weren't going to be able to get home because the funding was cut. And I was like, well, here's an idea. Why doesn't the church pay to get them home? Exactly. And they just kind of looked at me and I was like, if you are that concerned, pay for the plane tickets.

Exactly. And get them home. Like, we are contracting out the government to bring human flourishing. Yes, I have argued this point with so many people over the years. It is not the government's job to... To do, like you said, these things. The church is called to do these things. Right. And like you said, we're subcontracting the government at a ridiculous rate, too, not to mention. Yeah, I mean, it's the church's job to facilitate human flourishing.

That is the church's job. Right. Not the government's job. Right. If someone from our church comes to me and says, I have a need, I don't say to them, like, well, let's call our state senator. Like, I'm like, let's the church rise up.

Yep. you know let's do this and let's help this person and that that's a that's an agent of the gospel yep right i agree and boy this could just we get on a whole wrap oh my god we're already there i know one of the things that infuriates me is when the church looks at those humanitarian efforts, only in means of evangelism so we'll help as long as we get as long as there's like results evangelism results from it now i do like one of the things we support samaritan's purse,

And I love the fact that they overtly talk about Jesus, right? Overtly helping Jesus think they overtly will give a Bible. They will pray. They will do all the things, right? But if we do a humanitarian effort, let's say that we decide, I read this really cool story a few years ago about this, this church had a bunch of money and they were really concerned about, you know, free lunches and student balances at their kids' schools.

They went in and paid off every overdue lunch account at the school. Okay. Interesting. It just paid off the balance, and that way every kid had a zero balance on their lunch. If no one ever came to church over that, no one ever came to their church because of that, that still was bringing the gospel. Agreed. We don't have to, like, we can't look at every opportunity to provide human flourishing that has to translate to a butt in a pew.

And I hate it when churches do that. Like, their means for doing the right thing is, well, if we do this, maybe somebody will come to church. Well, why don't we just do it? Because that's what Jesus told us to do. I don't know. There's a novel idea. Everything is about numbers now. I mean. Absolutely. Really, everything is about numbers. Absolutely.

And I mean, don't get me wrong. Like it would be awesome. Nothing would make me feel better than we did this thing for a group of 100 people and 20 of them came to church and they accepted Jesus. That's amazing. That's awesome. But if they didn't, we are not responsible. Like we don't get off the hook for bringing God's peace if nobody shows up to church because like we are called to be God, like put on the shoes of peace. Right. We are called to go be the messengers and deliver the truth.

That's our job. It's not to be judged on the results of doing said job because well done, thou good and faithful servant is because we did it. Listen, what better job to have, really, than to not be judged by the results? Right. I mean, what other job can you have where you're not going to be judged by your results? Exactly. None. Politics. Okay. All right. Let's let none of that. We almost started that train a second ago and you're trying to start it up again.

My bad. I was going to say meteorologist. So, and I know like you and I talked about this, like dream retirement scenario, right? Is to be wealthy enough in retirement to be able to just basically contract out your life for free. Yes.

Like I would love Jess and I've talked about that. Like we would love to be financially stable enough to where we would be able to either, whether that's pastorally go to a church and say, I don't need a salary. Let's use it for something else. Or to, you know, you've talked about just be able to say, I am available to do whatever to help somebody you need. I'm going to come install your dishwasher. Right. We can help fix your leaky roof. Yep.

We can, whatever it is. Absolutely. I would love it. Yeah. And like, to me, that's, that's one of those dream scenarios. Right. And I think, you know, even that, like for Jess and I, a lot of the decisions we make as a household aren't just about us. It's also like, how can this help the people around us to better their lives? You know, one of my favorite things, you know, I bought a two-post lift for my garage three years ago.

Good grief. Has it been that long? It's been a while. Man, time flies way too fast. And like one of my number one reasons for buying a lift wasn't just for John. It was so that people I know that couldn't necessarily afford mechanic bills could either come over here and do the work or I could help them do the work. So, I mean, tomorrow night I have somebody coming by and we're just going to throw his car up on the lift and see what's going on and see what's happening.

And before we can see it and address it and before he has to put out a couple thousand dollars to go to a mechanic. And if it's a job that we can't do, then at least he knows that. But if it's something we can take care of, we'll take care of it. Absolutely. That's part of doing your best for your neighbor. Mm-hmm. Sharing God's peace. Yeah. And by the way, we can talk about Jesus while we're doing it. Absolutely. You know? Is there food involved? There's always.

Absolutely. There's got to be food involved. Now, that is a way to spread God's peace is through some food. Mount Zion barbecue chicken. Exactly. Dude, Mount Zion barbecue chicken. You nailed it right there. We're done. That's it. That's it. Yeah. Well, and just like, I think we forget when you talk about the agents of peace with Scott, Like if we are living what God has for us, like the spiritual atmosphere of any place should change when we are present.

Yes. Agreed. And let's be honest. Like sometimes Christians don't always have that effect on people. That is true. Now we are still human. We are still human. But you're right. That does need to be our, that should be our goal. Right. I mean, me and the kids, Aiden and Elijah and I talk about this like all the time.

I wouldn't say it's 100% of the time, but a majority of the time when I am out at a restaurant or I'm in the Walmart checkout line or whatever, like I actually try to have a conversation with cashiers. And like, because to me, that's bringing God's peace, like just trying to be a smiling face, just trying to be somebody else than the last person who lectured them because their eggs cost too much money or their bag broke when they were going out or whatever it is.

Like just trying to be somebody who is like, we laugh, we'll go out places. And we'll often say like to the waitress, like we promise you will not have a better table than us all night. And while we come out, we don't go out to eat. Yeah, that's true. We say that tongue in cheek, but I actually mean it. Like, I want you to enjoy being like, I want you to enjoy me as a customer. And then you're, there's all kinds of times we get to have conversations about faith, about that.

You know, some, I don't know how many times people are like, well, you guys work together. Now we go to church together and we're able to talk to them, you know, about all that.

Like, that's how it should, like, that to me is God's peace that I know I've asked a question in a sermon before. Like, if you moved out of your home, would your neighborhood notice that you're gone? I don't, I mean, I only have one neighbor. That is true. Or would your street, like people, would people notice if the sign of prayer? I would like to think yes. Yeah. I would like to think so. Yeah.

So if God called you, your family to move to Missouri, I think there would be people in our community in Broadway that would notice you were gone. Fat boys, because they would lose your business. And that's a, that's a, that's a lot of business. No doubt about it. But like, you know, that, that's always that question. And then we can ask the same question about churches, whatever church you go to, if your church were to shut its doors tomorrow, would your community feel a difference?

Like would anyone even notice that you're not there anymore? And that tells a lot about how you're living out God's peace. That's good that's a really good way to look at it never never thought about it quite like that yeah, It's interesting. So how are you about God's peace in your life? We'd love to hear that from you. Comment.

Yeah, comment. Send us a message. Yeah. Maybe we'll have you on the podcast to tell you a story about how you're- Join us for a late night meal at Waffle House sometime. A late night meal at the Waffle House, an early evening meal at Fat Boy's, medium meal at B-Dubs. Hey, won't be too long and we can have a meal at Sheets right down the road. Y'all know, man. There's a Sheetz that's about to open up like five miles from my house. Oh, dude, it's not even five miles.

It's like two miles. It's going to be on. I'm going to have a charge account. It's going to be like Cheers. Hey, do you have the Sheetz app? Yes, I do. Okay. Yeah. Dude, you can order your stuff. We can order it sitting right here and it'll be ready and we'll just grab it and go. Have you ever watched Cheers? I haven't watched Cheers in a long time. Do you remember Cheers? When Norm walked in and the whole bar was like, Norm! That's going to be me

when I walk into Sheetz. That's going to be you when you walk into Sheetz. I'm like, John!

I'm like, hey guys, what's going on? it'll have the use nice yeah in fact i probably won't even have to order off the app like they'll probably just like see my car pull into the parking lot they're like oh hot dog time i do love me some sheets hot dogs aaron says chicky nugs are pretty good up there too the tacos the tacos are now i haven't had those surprisingly good surprisingly good you think we can talk them into getting maple spam on the

menu oh man that would be life-changing wouldn't a shmagle with some shmamm. A shmagle with some shmamm. Dude. Dude, that would be amazing. We're going to have to spit the idea to them. All right. We got it. Like you said, we're going to be on first name basis. Absolutely we are. I just saw the grand opening was posted today. Yes. Wow. All right. We're way too excited about this. We are way too. But we are going to be spreading God's shalom in sheets. That's right.

Is spam part of God's shalom? I don't know that spam is God's best for all of God's people. All right, now we're getting a little bit into the weeds here. I mean, you know, when we get to heaven, we get a new heavenly body. Is there spam in heaven? If it brings you joy, there's Smaim in heaven. Okay. Okay. I'm good with that. I'm good with that. We can discuss that topic further. That will be another time. Another podcast episode. There's Smaim in heaven.

Dude, it's been fun as always. Oh, yeah. Great time. Yeah. Let us know how you're living out God's peace, and we will see you next time on the Live. Later. Music. And that's a wrap for this week's Life on 11 podcast. As always, we hope that you will subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your feeds from. You can follow us on our social media channels by searching at Life on 11 podcast. And one of the best ways you can support what we do is to share this episode with your friends.

We hope you will join us next time on the Life on 11 podcast where faith is loud and God's truth is louder. If this episode stirred your spirit, share it with someone who needs a little hope today. Stay bold, stay rooted, and remember, we're called to not do the kingdom halfway. Keep living loud for Jesus. We'll see you next time.