Rev Larry Wright, Religious Affairs Advisor to the Next Century Foundation, shares his perspective on a world at war. In this time of global crisis and gratuitous warfare, we may experience profound feelings of desperation, jeopardy and dread:

The world is on fire

While the dead and dying multiply, our fears and fantasies increase. Consequences are ambiguous, the future uncertain, the forces shaping destinies opaque. Is anyone competently in control?

Of course, we have been here before, innumerable times, humankind’s capacities for destruction seemingly limitless. But is a world on fire the culmination of irrational forces stirred up into a tempest of rationalised savagery or an eruption of such forces too long suppressed by inadequate means and contemptible compromise?

Our sacred texts point towards the temptations of turmoil and the promises of peace. In the chasm between, humanity wrestles with its passions and fears. During this season of Lent, Christians contemplate the seriousness of living in this chasm of ambivalence and awe, the valley of the shadow of death. We look for a path which dispels the shadow but know death’s company is unavoidable; it is living through this valley which requires every ounce of faith we have.

How alone we may feel in our fears. Knowing the measure of ours may be matched or not by those around us. Those glibly unconcerned, the inconsolable defeated, the despondent and the worldly cynical. But broken hearts share a common cause; repair or despair? To succumb to the shadowy miasma of
despondency or find courage enough to go on?

There are many sides in war. The armies and mechanics of death are dominant. The companies of the righteous are barely visible but endure; it is they who will ultimately inherit the earth, it is they
who will show the defiant hope which is their sacred inheritance.

For further reading: The Board of Peace: Challenged by Phase Two Gaza Reconstruction?