The vision of the Peaceable Kingdom was a popular one
among the Old Testament prophets. They probably all knew it, and two of them
(or their followers) incorporated it into their writings: the first Isaiah
(chapter 2) and Micah (chapter 4). The prophets envisioned a time when armies
would stop fighting wars and instead raise food for their people: “Beat your
swords into plowshares.” This image is just as powerful today as it was
thousands of years ago, as depicted in a statue at the United Nations.
But this vision is not something that we can all of a
sudden decide to do. We cannot go directly from a war mindset to an attitude of
peace. We have to learn to think in a new way. Both Isaiah and Micah say,
“Nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war anymore.” Soldiers cannot
create an effective agricultural economy by poking holes in the ground with
their swords to plant seeds. It takes a wholesale economic restructuring, in
which industry produces plowshares instead of swords, or better yet, recycles
the now-useless implements of war into the equipment of peace.
Unfortunately, we can go the other way also. Because of
our violent human nature, bequeathed to us by evolution, we can easily slip
back into a mindset of war, without having to retrain our brains. The Old
Testament prophet Joel did this (chapter 3), when he envisioned a time when
people would beat their plowshares into swords.
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