Seeds Will Grow

Cross-posting Fr. Richard Rohr’s reflections on this International Day of Peace (Source):

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Sunday, September 21, 2025
International Day of Peace

Father Richard Rohr reflects on the spiritual and moral futility of violence, drawing on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and his radical call to love: 

Part of the genius of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), inspired by the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi, was that he was able to show thoughtful people that violence was not only immoral but actually impractical and, finally, futile. In the long run, it doesn’t achieve its stated purposes, because it only deepens bitterness on both sides and leaves them in an endless and impossible cycle of violence that cannot be stopped by itself. Instead, some neutralizing force must be inserted from outside to stop the cycle and point us in a new direction.  

King insisted that true nonviolent practice is founded on a spiritual seeing and has little to do with mere education or what I would call the “calculative mind.” He thought it self-evident that the attitudes of nonviolence were finally impossible without an infusion of agape love from God and our reliance upon that infusion. He defined agape love as willingness to serve without the desire for reciprocation, willingness to suffer without the desire for retaliation, and willingness to reconcile without the desire for domination. This is clearly a Divine love that the small self cannot achieve by itself. We must live in and through Another to be truly nonviolent. [1] 

Palestinian Christian theologian Munther Isaac challenges us to confront the deep disconnect between the nonviolent teaching of Jesus and the ways Christianity has often aligned with systems of power and violence, even today: 

Christianity and violence should not go hand in hand, at least theoretically. The teachings of Jesus are very clear. The teachings of Paul and the apostles are very clear. There is no place for violence for the followers of Jesus. Yet an honest assessment of even the last 150 years will clearly reveal that many who claimed to be Christians committed some of the worst atrocities in our world: the Belgians in Congo, the Germans in Namibia, the French in Algeria, the Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Guatemalan genocide against the Maya indigenous people, and of course the Holocaust against the Jewish people in Europe.  

The Bible and theology have played a significant role in this war of genocide in Gaza.… To be clear, I fully believe that when Scripture is used to justify genocide or promote ideologies of supremacy, this use has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus nor the essence of the Christian faith. Yet, shamefully, the church has aligned itself with empire throughout the centuries. It has chosen the path of power and influence. One would expect Christians to have learned the lesson. We have not. [2] 

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References:  
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Martin Luther King Jr.’s Principles of Nonviolence,” ONEING 10, no. 2, Nonviolence (2022): 47–48. Available in print and PDF download. 

[2] Munther Issac, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza (Eerdmans, 2025), 229, 230. 

Image credit and inspiration: Toa Heftiba, untitled (detail), 2018, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Two people, different in perspective yet united in a shared value, reach across the divide—not with force but with courage, choosing the harder path of listening, of letting themselves be changed, of loving even when it is difficult.