The Way of the Warrior

by Erwin Raphael McManus

  I am convinced his words echo in every heart: “I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.” It is a story that all of us can write. It is the struggle that all of us know, some more profoundly than others.

  If precedent is an accurate predictor of the future, we should not expect we will ever know a world defined by peace. It is perplexing when I meet people who believe there is no God and yet still believe in peace. After all, peace is an ideal of which we speak, but it’s something this world has never fully known. The human story is marked by envy, jealousy, greed, violence, and bloodshed. There will never be peace on earth until there is peace in us. This is why the way of the warrior must begin here. To find your strength you must find your peace, for the path to inner strength is inner peace.

  This is where our journey begins. The way of the warrior begins with finding the missing peace. There are certain names that stand out throughout history as beacons of peace. Strangely, when you choose the path of peace in the midst of violence and rage, you are often simply remembered by a single name—for, example, Gandhi, Mandela, Teresa, Tutu, Buddha, and, of course, Jesus. Although each of them advocated for peace in the midst of violence, it is Jesus alone who claimed to actually be the peace our souls long for.

  Jesus lived in a time of turmoil and conflict. He was born in a world where his people were oppressed by a foreign empire. Although we think of Jesus as a man born free, he was actually born a slave. In fact, Jesus was a survivor of an infanticide ordered by a king who feared for his reign. All of Israel lived enslaved by the Roman Empire. Israel belonged to Rome. The Hebrews were the Romans’ possession. As a man, Jesus was considered a subject to a Caesar who proclaimed himself a god with the right to rule over the lives of all mankind. If Jesus knew freedom, it was not because of his circumstance. If Jesus knew peace, it was in contrast to the chaos that surrounded him. It is in this context that he spoke to his disciples and said to them, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”3

  Jesus’s words must have seemed both profound and perplexing to those who heard them. After all, they expected him to bring peace. Many who believed he was the Messiah thought that he would come to deliver them from the Roman Empire. The title Messiah had come to mean something very specific to the Jewish people. They expected that this Messiah would parallel the life of King David. It would be this Messiah that would lead his people to overthrow the greatest empire in the world. This Messiah would become their king, and the fulfillment of the promise would be found in their freedom. The coming of the Messiah would be the end of oppression.

  The words of Isaiah had been passed on for generations: “Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.”4

  There was a very simple litmus test for the Messiah: if he does not establish peace, he cannot be the Messiah. It was his responsibility to bring them peace; he was the embodiment of true peace, yet the type of peace they had hoped for never came. His words must have seemed bittersweet. He spoke of peace with such certainty in the midst of such chaos that it probably caused many onlookers to assume Jesus was a bit naive. There must have been many who wanted to look at Jesus and say, “As hopeful and poetic as your words may be, you need to get a grip on reality. This is not peace. If you came to set us free, to establish a kingdom of peace, then you are a dismal failure and a grave disappointment to all of us who have been waiting so long for the Messiah to bring about change.”

  No one had quite the courage to speak so bluntly to Jesus, but there couldn’t have been anything more frustrating for Jesus’s listeners than a declaration of peace when their world was in turmoil. Even today, Jesus’s words cut to the very depth of our souls, and he seems to know our thoughts even as he speaks peace into our lives: “I do not give to you as the world gives.” It’s almost as if in one quick phrase he indicts the history of human violence. The peace he brings will never come to us the way we had hoped or expected. This is not the way of the warrior, only the way of violence.

  You might find it peculiar that I would describe Jesus as a warrior. After all, he is most commonly known as a man of peace. Yet you cannot properly understand Jesus if you do not grasp that his entire life’s purpose was to win the greatest battle of the greatest war that has ever been fought.

  God stepped into human history to fight for us. He did not hope for peace; he fought for peace. Sometimes the true mission of Jesus is misunderstood because he never carried a physical weapon in his hands. Yet if you want to see the true marks of a warrior, you need to look at the scars on his hands. In his death and resurrection, Jesus took upon himself all the violence of the world so he could bring all the world his peace. That is why he is most profoundly and uniquely the warrior of peace. That is why we’re pursuing his path.

  The War Within

  Jesus tells us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”5 With simplicity and wisdom, he cuts between the two things that steal our peace, for the greatest enemies of the peace within are worry and fear.

  All around me I find troubled hearts—men and women drowning in worry. We have become so adept at worrying that we have created an endless number of names to describe the nuances. Whether we use the language of stress or anxiety or find ourselves in the depths of depression or despair, worry is the source of so much of our hearts’ troubles. Worry projects a negative view of the world around us. Worry projects a negative future. Worry is an act of faith. It is a deep-seated belief in worst-case scenarios. Worry is not rooted in reality but does affect our reality.

  I’ve also found irony in these words of Paul: “Be anxious for nothing.”6 I know that what he means is that we should not allow anything to make us anxious, but the truth is that it is usually nothing that is making us anxious. Our anxiety, our distress, our worry—when stripped to its very essence—is rooted in nothing, or at least in nothing we can control. Paul’s solution, of course, is to be anxious in nothing, but in all things, through prayer, we should bring our thanksgiving to God.7 It seems he’s telling us that anxiety comes when we try to control things that are out of our control. We become anxious because we haven’t learned to trust.

  It is interesting that in another place where Jesus speaks of peace, he brings up trouble once more. Here he says to his disciples, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble.”8

  This is an important contrast. First he says to us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” but then he says to us, “In this world you will have trouble.” We have no control over the reality that in this world we will have trouble, but we have control over whether we decide to allow our hearts to be troubled. He makes the promise that though there will be trouble in this world, we can take heart, for he has overcome the world. Our worry will steal our peace, and when peace is missing, we find ourselves drowning in anxiety and crumbling under the weight of life’s pressures.

  He also said, “Do not be afraid.” If worry wars against our peace, fear is perhaps an even greater foe. When we live our lives afraid, it creates turmoil and chaos within us. Fear is the enemy of peace. While worry will rob our joy, fear will steal our freedom, for what we fear establishes the boundaries of our freedom. What we fear has mastery over our souls. When we are anxious, we lose our strength. When we are afraid, we lose our courage. When we have found peace, we have both the strength and courage to live the lives we were created to live.

  Even in my own life, I see the relationship between worry, anxiety, and the inability to control the world around me. Throughout my life I have had a fear of dogs. Even to this day I still jump when a dog moves in my direction, even though I love dogs. The root of this fear is not und
iagnosable for me.

  When I was around five years old, I saw my brother get bitten by a dog. It could have been either one of us, but as life would have it, he was the one the dog targeted. Oddly enough, my brother, who was actually bitten by the dog, never developed any fear of dogs whatsoever. My fear and anxiety were rooted in what could have happened and not in the reality of what did happen. It was as if for the rest of my life I kept waiting for what I feared to happen, even though to this day I have never been bitten by a dog.

  For years I was afraid of roller coasters. Again, it was not rooted in something irrational. When I was around ten years old, the seat belt broke while I was riding a roller coaster, and I held on for my dear life. I remember screaming my guts out, trying to get the operator’s attention, but he was too busy smoking to notice. I was never thrown out of the roller coaster, as I managed to hold on until it finally came to a stop, but out of that negative experience an enduring fear took over. I spent years watching other people ride roller coasters. But that’s exactly what fear and anxiety do to you: they put you on the sideline watching life happen. I couldn’t control the variables if I got into the roller coaster, so I stayed on solid ground to give me a sense of control.

  It was years later when I finally determined to overcome that fear. Without fully understanding the complex nature of fear and anxiety, I knew what I had to do was get on a roller coaster. I had to destroy an ingrained belief that if I got on the coaster I would die. Since that time, I have enjoyed a lifetime of extreme inclines and insane drops. I love roller coasters. I love the feeling that happens when my stomach drops. I love the illusion of free-falling and plummeting to my death.

  Ironically, those two phobias in my life helped me establish a pattern of overcoming fears in multiple arenas. Every fear feels justified. One reason is that every fear has a seed of truth in it. But the thing is that you do not ultimately have control over your life. Peace does not come because you finally have control over your life; peace comes when you no longer need control.

  If fear has a direct object, anxiety is fear without an object. We experience anxiety when we feel overwhelmed by life. In order to reduce our anxiety, we often create smaller and smaller boundaries to give us some sense of control over our lives.

  The Strength of Peace

  The warrior’s strength is their peace. Jesus did not come to conquer kingdoms or nations; he came to conquer hearts and minds. If you are going to walk in the way of Jesus, you must know that you are to enter darkness that desperately needs the light. In describing the path that John the Baptist would prepare for Jesus of Nazareth, these words were spoken about John at his birth by his father, Zechariah: “You will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”9

  The path of peace comes only when we’re willing to walk into our own darkness and face our own shadows. We must face the very things that steal our peace from us whether they are born out of our fear or our doubts. The concept of peace is deeply rooted in the history that shaped the world and culture of Jesus’s day. The Hebrew word for “peace” is shalom. The word shalom is layered, complex, and elegant in its nuances. At its most superficial level, shalom is basically used as a form of greeting. In many ways it can be compared with the English word goodbye, which is simply a part of our common language but is rooted in the phrase “God be with you.”

  Shalom is a greeting with deep implications. It is most commonly translated and understood to mean “peace,” but the peace of shalom is rich in its textures. The word extends beyond meaning “peace” to meaning “harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare, and tranquility.”10 To experience shalom is to find wholeness. When we find peace, we are made whole. The ultimate goal of peace is that we not only are made whole within ourselves but also become part of the whole within all of creation. The very concept of shalom assumes that the original intention of God is for all things to be interconnected—that when there is peace, there is relationship and harmony between all things.

  The clearest evidence that we lack peace is that we all sense a tearing between us, a separation that divides us from God, from our true selves, and from others, and yes, even creation. The evidence that peace is missing is the break between us and God, the violence of brother against brother, and our destruction of and irresponsibility with the creation we have been entrusted with. When there is peace, all these relationships are made right and everything is made whole. When we are broken, all we are left with are the pieces of our true selves.

  As much evidence as there is around us that we desperately need to find our peace, there is even deeper proof within us of how peace has eluded us. When our hearts have not found peace, we become filled with the darkest expressions of ourselves. We’re filled with not only fear and doubt but also greed and envy, anger and bitterness, loneliness and disconnection, despair and hopelessness. Each of these are external forces that war against our inner worlds.

  We struggle with envy because we want the life that isn’t ours.

  We struggle with greed because we want to possess what is not ours to have.

  We struggle with feelings of insignificance because we have made our worth dependent on the opinions of others.

  We struggle with identity because we don’t know who we are outside of what we do.

  We struggle with loneliness because we are searching for love rather than giving it.

  We will never know peace as long as we are slaves to external forces of the world and create our identities from the outside in. We will never know peace if we lose the present because we are trapped in the past and paralyzed by the future. This is in no small part why we live in a culture crippled by depression and anxiety. Depression is rooted in your past; anxiety is rooted in your imagined future.

  Depression is how your soul processes regret; anxiety is how your soul processes fear.

  Depression traps you in your worst and most painful memories; anxiety imagines your worst and most painful future.

  You lose the present when you hide from your past and run from your future. Depression and anxiety convince you that the past is your future and so the future must be avoided at all costs. Scripture tells us to “be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”11

  It was intended for us to be fully present in the moment. Only the present will free you from the past, and only the present will free you to your future. The path to freedom from your past and freedom to your future is the connectedness that comes from living this moment fully present. It may seem strange, but you connect to the transcendent only when you are fully present. When you experience God’s presence in the moment, the moment becomes eternal.

  Be here right now.

  The path of peace comes not from the outside in but from the inside out. Here’s how Isaiah described the path toward peace: “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.”12

  This is the path to mindfulness. This is the way to peace of mind. Not a journey to nothingness, but a journey to fullness. It is God who gives us perfect peace. More specifically, it is Jesus who has come to bring us this peace that our souls long for.

  Forceful Peace

  John the Baptist was chosen to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus. His mission was “to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”13

  The last thing anyone would ever say to describe John the Baptist is that he was compliant or even cooperative. John was a nonconformist in every way. His message was confrontational, and his
very nature was forceful and powerful. Yet we are told that even his harsh tone and stark language were chosen for our own good. His purpose was to awaken those living in the darkness of the shadow of death and show that there is light and life available for all of us. It would be easy to see John as a man of war, yet his sole intent was to guide our feet into the path of peace.

  Recently I heard my son, Aaron, explain that God goes to war only for the purpose of peace. Remember, John came only to prepare us for Jesus. To follow Jesus is to choose the path of peace. Everywhere he reigns, there is peace. When he was born, the declaration of the angelic beings was “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”14 Through the most violent instrument of death the world has ever known, Jesus came to be our peace—yes, not to simply bring us peace but to be our peace.

  When Aaron was in high school, I got a call letting me know that he was in danger of being expelled for getting in a fight. I had never known my son to be violent, so I was a little surprised. But when I discovered what was happening, it made perfect sense to me. Apparently, there was a cluster of kids who were physically abusive to a specific group of outsiders. Their hostility had become an everyday occurrence at Aaron’s school. In this particular situation, there was a group of well-off white students bullying underprivileged Hispanic students.